GREENVILLE — Clemson University’s automotive research campus hopes to create a city of dreamers in a pine forest off Interstate 85.

Planners released sketches Tuesday of its International Center for Automotive Research. The university hopes the $176 million campus will develop into five clusters of labs, offices and other buildings on a 250-acre site that served as a forest screen for a textile machinery plant.

“In the same way the Research Triangle has provided a vision for North Carolina, ICAR is going to do the same thing for South Carolina,” Gov. Mark Sanford told 700 people at the Gunter Theatre in downtown Greenville.

Clemens Schmitz-Justen, head of BMW’s operations in Spartanburg County, said the center will become home to one of the most “innovative graduate programs in the world. It will be a breakthrough in engineering education.”

The Clemson research campus is being constructed as USC in Columbia and the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston also plan expansions. USC will focus on health sciences and other fields in facilities planned along Assembly Street. MUSC plans to build a drug discovery and development building and to renovate other facilities.

The $220 million to finance the projects comes through the Life Sciences Act, which lets the three schools use public-private partnerships to pay for research facilities.

Clemson today will ask the state for an additional $32 million to build two more buildings, bringing the project’s total cost to $176 million. Clemson is asking the state to pay for 57 percent of the bill.

Like USC, people in Greenville will walk about among dense clusters of buildings with strategic open spaces — colliding and creating in the same “new urbanism” of Columbia’s research campus.

The first Clemson building at the site, to be completed in late July, will be home to a BMW lab. Clemson researchers hope by January 2007 to occupy the centerpiece engineering building, named for former Gov. Carroll Campbell.

Bob Geolas, executive director of the International Center for Automotive Research, said the completion of the plan shows how buildings and people will meet, but he said he won’t predict a jobs or construction timetable.

“Clemson ICAR isn’t so much about the jobs we can offer today, but about the jobs we can offer our children and grandchildren,” he said. “We’re about building a program, helping students learn more and better.”

Plans for the automotive research campus were first announced in September 2002 by former Gov. Jim Hodges as part of an incentives deal the Democrat struck to encourage a $400 million, 400-job expansion of BMW’s car plant in Spartanburg County.

“Technology transfer is a body contact sport, and your campus is your field of play,” Geolas said. “We have to make sure Clemson’s ICAR never looks like a typical business park, office park. Those are old models.”

Unlike USC, which will fence out cars on the periphery, Clemson’s research campus will “celebrate the car,” Geolas said.

Cars will have limited access to the plazas, and the engineering building will have ramps broad enough to allow a truck to drive into labs or onto a stage.

Geolas also hopes the parking garages will have lighting or other features that showcase cars.

But perhaps the biggest difference is between the landscapes. USC is building within Columbia’s central downtown, while Clemson will have to clear forests.

Geolas said building a city from the ground up will be “tough,” but allows the university to start with a fresh canvas.

While USC’s design employs brick, stucco and other features to carry the inspiration of the USC Horseshoe into its research campus, Clemson will depart from the neoclassical designs of the oldest buildings on its main campus, 30 miles away, and tucked within a largely rural area hidden from view from interstate travelers.

The new campus gives Clemson a face on the busy I-85 corridor. Its designers intend to grab the attention of motorists and, ideally, draw them off the highway and into the campus.

There, they will find exhibits in the engineering building, perhaps showcasing concepts for future cars, Geolas said.

The master plan shows 3 million square feet of offices and labs in buildings three or four stories high.

The engineering building is named for Campbell, the former Republican governor who struck the deal that helped BMW pick Greer as the site for its first U.S. plant. The building is expected to be completed next summer, but probably won’t be occupied until January 2007, six months later than planned.

The first class will start in the fall of 2006 with five researchers with doctoral degrees, and 15 graduate students. During the first semester, they will meet on the main Clemson campus, which Geolas said will provide them a grounding in Clemson tradition and allow more time to make sure the new building is ready.

The program will grow to 100 students by 2008 or 2009, he said.

Reach DuPlessis at (803) 771-8305 or jduplessis@thestate.com.