Main Street to lose SCANA headquarters

SCANA Corp. - South Carolina's largest publicly traded company and one of Columbia's largest employers - is leaving its Main Street headquarters, the power company announced Wednesday.

In late 2009, SCANA executives and about 1,100 of the company's Columbia-based employees plan to occupy a new 450,000-square-foot, low-rise campus to be constructed in Cayce, near the 12th Street exit off I-77.

The decision was based on productivity and cost, SCANA chief executive Bill Timmerman said.

"I appreciate the numerous, candid discussions we have had with (Columbia Mayor Bob Coble) and other city officials, as well as a number of groups from Columbia," Timmerman said. "At the end of the day, the economics for building a low-rise campus on land we already own was overwhelming."

The move will end an 80-year presence on Main Street, and city and business leaders expressed concern Wednesday.

"Losing those employees right there at ground zero is going to have an impact," said Matt Kennell, executive director of Center City Partnership.

Timmerman, though, is adamant about not wanting the move to be a black eye on the city.

"This is not an 'in your face' for the city of Columbia," said Timmerman, who wants to help the city find new tenants for the Main Street spaces SCANA is vacating - Palmetto Center at 1426 Main St. and 1401 Main across the street.

"I have lunch around here. I shake hands and know the guys who run the lunch areas. If we can refill (the Palmetto Center), there will be 800 to 900 new jobs."

But SCANA needs a new headquarters, one that cannot easily, or affordably, be built downtown, he said.

Instead, Timmerman said the company is moving to a parcel of land SCANA has owned for 40 years. It is nestled between the Congaree Creek Heritage Preserve and 1,200 acres of mostly wetlands in Cayce that the company also owns. Downtown Columbia is about a 10-minute drive away.

Lexington County is kicking in some tax incentives, but considering the incentives' total estimated value of about $23 million over the course of 20 years, they hardly equal corporate welfare. In 2005, SCANA averaged earnings of $26.7 million per month.

With annual revenues of more than $4.8 billion, SCANA is South Carolina's only Fortune 500 company and has more than 600,000 electric customers in the state and more than 1 million natural gas customers in the Carolinas and Georgia.

The move of SCANA's headquarters and 1,100 employees to Cayce has more to do with being cost-effective and flexible for the next several decades than any sort of short-term cash award, Timmerman said.

Also, federal regulators have increased the security demands of power companies, including SCANA, which runs fuel pipelines and a nuclear power plant. Meeting those requirements will be easier -and less expensive -in a new facility than trying to upgrade SCANA's current home on Main Street, Timmerman said.

Still, creating a more time- and cost-efficient workplace is what Timmerman says is driving the move.

With employees scattered on several floors of two separate Main Street buildings and more working out of three other facilities dotting Columbia, too much time is spent traveling to meet.

For instance, SCANA's fossil fuel generation employees - the people who help run the company's large, coal-fired plans - work several miles away from Timmerman's office.

On top of that, the company shares the cost of finding about 1,000 parking spaces downtown. The new campus will have free parking.

The campus will be environmentally friendly by using passive solar energy and efficient lighting. Also, Timmerman said construction materials will be bought from S.C. companies, especially SCANA's customers, when possible.

But for the most part, Timmerman added, the campus will be modest, three-story structures.

"We definitely have our eyes on the dollars. This will not be a Taj Mahal."

Reach Werner at (803) 771-8509. Staff writer Jeff Wilkinson contributed.