John Matthews, Orangeburg County's senior senator, saw big potential in the fields surrounding Bowman and towns like it throughout the county.
The county is centrally located on the East Coast between Miami and New York. Interstates 26 and 95 intersect in the county. The Port of Charleston is nearby.
"Orangeburg County is in the best position," Matthews said.
And now the location seems to be paying off.
Charleston-based World Trade City Orangeburg LLC announced earlier this week it plans to develop about 1,200 acres near Bowman into a business center that could eventually draw $1 billion in investment and bring 1,000 jobs over a 10- to 15-year period.
In addition, Dubai-based Jafza International has announced plans to build a $600 to $700 million logistics megahub near Santee that could employ between 8,000 and 10,000 individuals.
"The county has used distribution logistics as its niche and it has fallen right into place," Matthews said.
It was all part of a plan, he says.
The county is in the eighth year of a projected 15-year plan to create an economic wheel with the hub of the wheel being Orangeburg, Matthews said.
"We started talking about this ten years ago," Matthews said, explaining how initial talks were generally related to an assessment of the area's strengths and weaknesses.
An economic development summit was held with various groups in attendance including chamber officials, utilities officials, business leaders and higher education officials.
"The first significant challenge was to get those in the county ... on the same page," Matthews said. "We needed to get the leadership of the county to agree to a concept and a strategy."
Matthews said it was crucial for the county to find its niche, develop it and to follow through and sustain its focus.
"The last eight years, the county has stayed with the strategy," he said.
Leaders ide.jpgied several components for drawing the county slowly from its agrarian roots and into an industrial economy.
One was the need to consolidate the Orangeburg County school system, which was fractured into eight independent districts. The county consolidated them into three districts, developing a system for sharing tax revenue more equitably among the districts.
"It was important to produce the kind of education people need to survive in the 21st century," Matthews said. Looking back, the process seems to have worked because the number of schools with an "unsatisfactory" rating has fallen over the years, he said.
Another step was to build up infrastructure. The county implemented a one-cent sales tax to fund road, water and sewer projects.
"We said we needed to get some infrastructure in place to build an economy," Matthews said. "We were committed to doing that."
With the sales tax in place, Matthews said bringing infrastructure such as water and sewer to appropriate areas of the county was paramount. That included plans to develop the Lake Marion Regional Water System.
In addition, Matthews said money from South Carolina's share of the tobacco settlement money was used to purchase strategic land for potential development and to get water and sewer to targeted sites.
This was in addition to successful negotiations with Orangeburg County landowner and SuperSod co-owner Jim Roquemore to hold property for future development.
"We decided to look at where potential economic development could take place," Matthews said. "My goal was to create an economic circle from the city of Orangeburg, tying in Bowman, Santee, Holly Hill, Harleyville and St. George and back to Bowman."
And the county has made progress toward developing "Class A" industrial parks within this region, he said.
The 450-acre Orangeburg County/City Industrial Park on U.S. 301 near Interstate 26 recently expanded into the project's second phase and the development of 220 acres.
In addition, a road has been cut into the John W. Matthews Industrial Park at the corner of U.S. 301 and 176.
"We all started out with a plan and are now reaping the benefits," Matthews said.
The area is still plagued by poverty, with the county's poverty rate at about 29 percent and unemployment frequently hovering in the double digits.
"We are the poverty belt of our state," Matthews said. "We need to make sure we increase the skill sets of our people. Knowledge and skill sets make a difference in the per capita income."
Matthews says closing the income gap by bringing in quality, high-paying jobs will give Orangeburg County families a better quality of life.
And if the leadership continues to be aggressive and think it important enough to invest in their own community, good things will continue to happen.
"People (in Orangeburg County) will continue to make progress," Matthews said.
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T&D Staff Writer Gene Zaleski can be reached by e-mail at gzaleski @timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5551. Discuss this and other stories online at The TandD.com.