VW leaves S.C. in dust as it searches for site

File/Joerg Sarbach/AP

Richard Auer (left) a developer for German automaker Volkswagen AG, introduces the company's self-parking car at an industrial fair last month in Hannover, Germany. An auto industry magazine says VW won't be parking a new factory in South Carolina.

Volkswagen AG has passed South Carolina on by in its hunt for a North American automotive plant site.

The German company had been eyeing the Anderson area, according to a report in Automotive News published earlier this year. One of the purported main attractions: access to the Port of Charleston.

Anderson officials recently learned that their region had been scratched off the list, which they said underscored the need to have so-called shovel-ready sites available to show and impress big companies like VW.

"We have to have more than a pasture or a field," Heather Jones, Anderson County economic development director, told the Greenville News. "We have to go three or four steps beyond that. We have to grade and balance the land and get them to a point where, when clients come, we can meet their expectations."

But even that is no guarantee: A prime tract that Savannah bought several years ago in a failed bid to attract DaimlerChrysler AG (a deal that eventually landed in North Charleston, albeit on a much smaller scale) also did not make the VW short list, according to published reports.

The automaker has pared its U.S. search to Alabama, Michigan and Tennessee. It also stressed that it has not yet decided whether to build a new plant in the United States.

Scrub that figure

Scana Corp. , the parent of South Carolina Electric & Gas, announced last week that the cost of putting pollution filters on two of its dirtiest plants has surged by $120 million, almost a third.

The Columbia-based utility will be tacking that extra cost onto bills at some point, though it could not say last week how much extra each of its 639,000 electricity customers would shoulder.

The so-called "scrubber" units will cap the utility's Williams Station in Goose Creek and its Wateree Station in the Midlands town of Eastover. The two plants produce enough electricity to power roughly 670,000 homes. SCE&G needs to reduce its emissions to comply with tighter Environmental Protection Agency rules that take effect in 2010. The government can fine violators up to $32,500 a day.

Scana initially ball-parked the cost a year and a half to two years ago, according to spokesman Robin Montgomery. Since that time, the cost of construction materials has surged.

"It's really everything from A to Z that would affect the job," Montgomery said.

Checking up

Blackbaud Inc. CEO Marc Chardon took home $3.5 million last year, a little more than half as much as in 2006, according to documents the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week.

It's not that Chardon didn't do a good job. He ticked up profits by a little and revenue by a lot. In fact, the board bumped Chardon's base salary up 3.5 percent to $543,375 and his cash bonus jumped by about a third to $530,955. It's just that Chardon pocketed about $2.7 million less in stock options than he did in 2006. Those options are likely worth even less now. Shares of Blackbaud have dropped about 10 percent so far this year, as investors bet that the software maker will be pinched by the slumping economy.

Meanwhile, the company's board members were paid between $62,498 and $156,602 apiece for their 2007 service.

Managed care

A 16 percent growth spurt in its rental business has nudged Charleston-based Greystar Real Estate Partners up a notch among the nation's biggest apartment managers. The company is the sixth-largest player in that field, according to an annual ranking by the National Multi Housing Council. As of January, Greystar had 93,954 apartments in 16 states under its care, up from 81,000 a year earlier.

The company, which oversees a $1.5 billion real estate portfolio, is headed by former state Commerce Secretary Bob Faith. Its headquarters — one of 14 offices it operates in nine states — has grown from eight employees less than decade ago to 51 today. Greystar's $500 million development portfolio includes a 281-unit apartment complex that's expected to be completed this summer near Bishop England High School on Daniel Island. Elsewhere locally, the company is an investor in the Daniel Island Co. and the proposed 113-acre Central Mount Pleasant project. It also owns two area apartment communities — Ashley Crossing and Edgewater Plantation.