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Biotech company relocates its headquarters back to the Charleston region

Dec. 1, 2003
Charleston Post and Courier
By John McDermott
Struthers Inc., a small publicly traded biotechnology company that specialized in swine genetics, has relocated its headquarters back to the Charleston region from Iowa under a new board of directors and its former chief executive officer.

As for its future plans, the newly resurrected Struthers isn't ready to say.

Now based in Mount Pleasant, the company said it is mulling several business proposals and combinations, including some biotech initiatives and "other nontraditional types of business operations."

"While on the one hand we are planning on leveraging our existing technology, licenses, patents and trademarks to the fullest extent possible, we are also entertaining other proposals which involve new types of revenue streams for the company," said Douglas Beatty, who was Struthers' CEO before the company moved its head-quarter to Waukon, Iowa, in 2001.

In its most recent public financial statement, filed in November 2001, Struthers said it lost $4.3 million on sales of $2.6 million in the first nine months of that calendar year.

The reborn Struthers is focusing on "growth and profitability," said Bertram Remley, secretary and treasurer.

LOSS OF SHELF LIFE

The King Street building that has housed Atlantic Books for the past 11 years has been sold for $790,000.

As part of the deal, Atlantic Books owner Jason Woolf agreed to give up his lease a year before it was set to expire. Woolf said he plans to close the store Jan. 31.

He said he will know by Jan. 5 whether Atlantic Books will be staying in the

Charleston area or relocating to Western North Carolina, where Woolf moved his East Bay Street store earlier this year.

Rental rates, of course, will be the key determining factor. It's an issue that many locally owned retail businesses that do not own their premises have wrestled with on King Street and other parts of downtown Charleston.

"We love Charleston and we're going to do what we can to stay, but because of the economics we might have to move elsewhere," Woolf said.

The building's new owner, Bubba Bear LLC, purchased 310 King this month from Susan Garfinkel. The listing brokers were Buddy Bebergal and Kit Regnery of NAI Batten & Moore, and the selling broker was Steve Bailey of The Steven Bailey Co. Bebergal said the new owner is planning to develop the upstairs space into apartments or condominiums and keep the ground-floor space as a retail store.
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