Former airport employee climbs on board

Spencer B. Pryor has come full circle at Charleston International Airport.

The North Charleston director of public safety communications was recently appointed to fill a seat on the Charleston County Aviation Authority, the board that owns and operates the airport.

In a previous career, and before he became a local TV news reporter and anchor, Pryor went by his first name: Bennett. He also was in charge of ground transportation services as an employee of Charleston International.

He attended his first board meeting Nov. 19. Pryor took Thomas Botchie's place on the airport authority.

Dialed in

AT&T has activated a new cell site in North Charleston to increase mobile broadband coverage for customers.

The new site keeps with the company's goals of extending its wireless network. Between 2006 and 2008. AT&T's capital investment in South Carolina wireless and wireline networks totaled nearly $875 million.

AT&T's expanded local services comes just in time for customers to phone in their holiday wish lists. Those who text message "SANTA" to 1224 between now and Christmas Eve get a response asking what they want from St. Nick.

Company officials cited a "special arrangement between Santa and AT&T" for providing the service free.

Separately, national prepaid cell phone provider PlatinumTel recently announced service in South Carolina.

The company offers unlimited talk, text and nationwide roaming, plus 100 megabytes of Web service for $50 a month. For an extra $10, customers can get unlimited Web service.

Chicago-based PlatinumTel launched in 2001, targeting the cell phone user who didn't want a contract.

O, Canada

Myrtle Beach International Airport will begin nonstop, twice-weekly service on Porter Airlines from Toronto City Center Airport in Canada.

The service begins Feb. 28 and is scheduled through May 30. One-way fares start at $179 before taxes.

Nearly 1 million Canadian tourists visited South Carolina in 2008, according to the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce and the area's Convention and Visitors Bureau. More than 85 percent of Myrtle Beach's international visitors come from Canada, the statistics also found.

The Grand Strand chamber and CVB recently appointed Kimberly Hartley, president and executive director of Travel Solutions by Design, as director for Canada.

Small time

Friday is the last day to nominate a small, local business for its good works through the U.S. Small Business Administration's 2010 awards.

Agency officials will take nominations for standards categories such as Small Business Person of the Year, but it also includes some more exotic honors that recognize small business exporters, family-owned businesses and small business investors. The details are posted at www.sba.gov/sc.

Nominations can be sent to the SBA's South Carolina District Office at 1835 Assembly St., Suite 1425, Columbia, SC 29201. Direct your questions to Anna Huntley at anna.huntley@sba.gov or 803-253-3753.

Charleston-area companies have done well before in these types of awards competitions.

Earlier this year, International Public Works, a North Charleston-based construction and engineering firm with 22 employees, brought home a major national award: the 2009 National Minority Small Business of the Year.

The firm, founded by Cyrus Sinor and Kai Yeh, started in 2002 after Yeh lost his job through a corporate restructuring.

When Sinor had to work overseas shortly after the firm opened up, Yeh ran IPW out of his kitchen and was unable to take a paycheck for over a year, according to a company profile on the Small Business Administration's local Web site.

The award recognized their firm's consistent growth and their efforts to reach out to other certified, historically disadvantaged businesses in the Charleston area. Approximately 25 percent of its subcontracts go to minority-owned small businesses.

Gov't green

Carolina-Pacific's dried, densified wood briquette facility in Georgetown recently became a qualified Biomass Conversion Facility under the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Biomass Crop Assistance program.

The South Carolina-based exporter of the renewable energy source in July signed a 20-year contract with the State Ports Authority, a signal of a rebirth at the underused Georgetown Terminal. Carolina-Pacific plans to export its first shipment to Scandinavia early in the new year.

Its new designation under the BCAP program means the federal government will pay sawmills, lumber yards, plywood manufacturers and others to deliver their waste wood to the company. Carolina-Pacific will turn that trash into its briquettes to ship to customers in Europe.

The plant can take 4,000 tons per month of loose wood product to make the briquettes.