Google buys land; no plans imminent

Google has completed acquiring a 466-acre parcel of land near Blythewood, but the Internet giant says it has no development plans for the site at this time.

“We regularly review our resources and customer needs, and will keep the community informed if and when new plans develop,” the company said in a statement Friday.

The site along I-77, just outside Blythewood was one of three properties in the Carolinas that Google started considering for server farms — complexes with massive warehouses chock-full of computers that process Internet search requests and online applications.

Google already has begun construction on two of the sites — in Berkeley County and about an hour’s drive north of Charlotte in Lenoir, N.C.

• Holiday Inn opens on Two Notch

The new Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites has opened at 8105 Two Notch Road.

The former Columbia Plaza Hotel was purchased by hotelier Rick Patel and underwent a multimillion dollar renovation.

Patel has branded the property as the only full service premier luxury hotel in Northeast Columbia.

Amenities include an in-house restaurant, The All American Grill; in-house coffee shop, Latte’s; and a reopened lounge, The Living Room. The renovation project also added five new boardrooms for meetings, as well as remodeled banquet hall.

• Sonoco launches new recycling business

HARTSVILLE — Packaging giant Sonoco has launched Sonoco Sustainability Solutions or S3, a new service to provide manufacturers with savings and increased profitability by finding alternative uses for unrecycled wastes.

S3, a new service of Sonoco Recycling, was developed and piloted at 12 Sonoco plants.

Sonoco waste reduction experts audit a customer’s location to review its existing program for handling wastes, then tailor programs to offer savings by reducing waste hauling charges and landfill fees.

The service also can produce income by facilitating the sale of previously landfilled materials and finding alternate uses for certain wastes.

Shares closed up 13 cents to $30.18.

• Collexis names government manager

Jon Lieberman has been named general manager for government and strategic accounts for the Americas at Collexis, the Columbia-based developer of knowledge management and discovery software.

Lieberman was formerly manager of Department of Defense and defense intelligence business at Convera.

In the last ten years, he has represented a series of vanguard software technologies including Convera, Siderean, and Vivisimo to federal and civilian clients.

Shares closed up 10 cents to $2.00.

• Force Protection awards subcontract

LADSON — Force Protection, Inc. has awarded a $52 million subcontract to Charlotte, Mich.-based Spartan Chassis, Inc., a subsidiary of Spartan Motors, Inc. to support production of Cougar series advanced tactical wheeled vehicles.

Spartan will supply and integrate key chassis components for the vehicles, slated for use by the U.S. military, by March 2008.

Shares closed up 77 cents to $21.66.