North Charleston gives 80 acres to Clemson to build research campus

The North Charleston City Council voted unanimously Thursday to give Clemson University 80 acres on the former Charleston Naval Base to build a research campus and restorative sciences program around the Hunley, the first submarine to sink an enemy ship in battle.

“We are just terrifically excited about this,” said Jan Schach, dean of Clemson’s School of Architecture, Arts and Humanities and director of the Restorative Institute. “The first thing we are going to do is go to the state and ask them for $10 million for improvements to the (Warren Lasch) Conservation Center (where the Hunley is being restored).”

Money not used at the conservation center goes toward construction of a new building as part of the restorative institute, she said.

Details of the agreement between the city, Clemson, Friends of the Hunley and the Hunley Commission are still to be worked out, but the resolution passed by the council paves the way for the turnover of property that houses an old tank farm and rusting warehouses.

“North Charleston has taken brown fields and turned them into gold fields,” state Sen. Glenn McConnell and Hunley Commission chairman said after the vote. “I can’t begin to tell you how big this is for the city of North Charleston. The city of North Charleston could have chosen to go for a few nickels, but they chose to go for millions instead.”

Before the meeting, there were concerns that the city would hold out for guarantees of tax money from future buildings on the property, but both city officials and McConnell said that is no longer a problem.

“The roadblocks are out of the way,” McConnell said.

The initiative will lead to private investors setting up shop to support Clemson’s efforts and pump new taxes through leased office space into North Charleston’s coffers, McConnell said.

“It’s an opportunity for us to utilize that property. We have no plans for it,” Councilman Bob King said.

“The research center will create incubator businesses that will provide excellent jobs for this area and the state,” Mayor Keith Summey said. “Short term it will benefit the community, but the greater benefit will be long term. By building a high-technology infrastructure within our community, it assures we will be on the cutting edge of technology for the future and will bring in jobs that will be beneficial to the children of today and tomorrow.”

The 80-acre campus, 5 percent of the 1,600-acre former base, will branch out from the Warren Lasch Conservation Center and would form the hub of a restoration institute that ultimately could employ nearly 5,000 people and have a $500 million annual economic impact. Sixty-five acres of the land is bounded by Viaduct Road, Hob-son Avenue and Reynolds Avenue. The other 15 acres are around the Lasch center.

On Wednesday, the Hunley Commission approved the initial step in the deal, which will turn over the conservation lab to Clemson in exchange for the university funding the Confederate sub’s restoration.

The deal locks in money for the sub’s restoration, something the Hunley Commission is paying for with private donations and dwindling federal funds.

Once title to the land is transferred, Clemson will take over the lab with 90 full-time employees and a payroll of more than $5 million annually. Hunley scientists will remain in current jobs, and Friends of the Hunley will continue to raise money for the restoration and 142-year-old vessel’s eventual museum home.

Clemson could eventually build a campus that would create between 2,000 and 4,750 jobs with annual payrolls between $125.8 million and $286.3 million. Tentative plans call for a number of new buildings that would generate between $1.7 million and $4 million a year in property taxes for North Charleston.

After Clemson takes over restoration efforts, Summey expects to have the Hunley on display in a new museum by 2009.

“I think this is a win-win situation for Clemson, for us and the state of South Carolina as a whole,” he said.

Hunley Commission member Randy Burbage summed up the historic move.

“The eight crewmen on the Hunley had no idea they would have such an economic impact on this area,” he said.

In other business, the council gave initial approval to a plan to rezone 84 properties in the old Garco Village from multi-family residential to single-family residential and referred the issue to its Public Safety Committee for further study.

James Island resident Dick Mappus asked council to spare his less than half-acre lot from the plan because he wants to put four units on the lot at Gaffney Street and Jenkins Avenue, where one house now sits that he rents out.

Northeast Park Circle Civic Club President Gayle Frampton opposed Mappus’ request.

“We don’t need to crowd up housing on one lot or create a problem that we are trying to overcome now,” she said.