For SCE&G’s Kevin Marsh, the man cave in Chin Li beckons
They call it “Chin Li.”
Welcome to Kevin and Sue Marsh’s mountain home — a place where “Ying meets Yang” to combine their different tastes, interests and personalities to “create something uniquely their own.” It is where they escape Columbia on weekends and holidays and plan to retire when Kevin Marsh calls an end to his long career at SCANA Corp., the parent of SCE&G.
Sitting on 4.8 acres in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains straddling the South Carolina-North Carolina state line, the Marshes’ home is part of Cliffs Valley, “a classic interpretation of the iconic American club” amid 12,000 acres of protected national forests, Leigh Savage wrote in the Fall/Winter 2014 edition of Greenville’s At Home magazine. There is a Ben Wright golf course, an expansive wellness center, tennis courts, indoor and outdoor pools and more.
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The home itself is “an oasis that combines Sue’s love of all things Asian with Kevin’s taste for classic, rugged mountain-home decor,” the article gushed. In the entryway, guests encounter large wooden sculptural parts left over from Indonesian sugar processing plants, Savage tells us. Nearby is framed Chinese calligraphy depicting the home’s name, Chin Li.
“We didn’t know what that meant when we named it that, but later found out that means gold or money and mountain range,” Sue said. “Which is perfect because we threw one at the other to make this house!”
Downstairs is Kevin’s “man cave,” complete with 72-inch television and Wii system, perfect for football games. Designer Cynthia Masters, with a Greenville interior design firm serving “discerning” clients, wanted something fun near the stairs in the man cave, and two statutes in the corner — Elmer and Bertha — fit the bill. They were in a store and not for sale, but “they were perfect, so I insisted,” she explained.
When the Marshes will make Chin Li their full-time home is not so clear. Kevin Marsh is super busy these days trying to save his job as chief executive officer since SCANA and its partner Santee Cooper pulled the plug on the Kevin B. Marsh and Lonnie N. Carter Twin Nuclear Reactors in tiny Jenkinsville (pop. 534), a place that doesn’t have a Ben Wright golf course, best I can tell.
“I would not even contemplate retirement until these nuclear plants are done,” Kevin said in a chummy profile in Columbia Metropolitan magazine in 2013. “It is certainly a goal of mine to make sure we see those two plants through to completion, and we stay on schedule. It’s a big obligation for the company. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to make sure that we do it right.”
Added Kevin: “I believe customers will be served with that energy source for 60 years down the road.”
That is not going to work out. Customers will be getting no energy — none — from the Kevin B. and Lonnie N. reactors, but they will be getting a bill for it for the next 60 years if state regulators go along with Kevin and SCE&G’s plans to pay for the failed project.
Marsh hangs on at SCANA, and who wouldn’t at these prices?
Carter, 58, has taken the honorable way out at Santee Cooper, announcing his retirement in a tearful statement in August. But Marsh, 61, hangs on at SCANA, and who wouldn’t at these prices? Marsh made $6 million last year and $27.7 million over the past five years, including bonuses for his good work in overseeing the nuclear moneypits. Walker Zanger tiles in a fish-scale pattern, plus natural stone floor tiles with radiant heat in the master bath doesn’t come cheap.
Marsh is still on the job and Carter isn’t because they serve different masters. Carter is gone because he ran a state-owned utility, answerable at least indirectly to the governor and the Legislature. Marsh works for shareholders who had seen the value of their investments climb on the assumption that they were protected from the Jenkinsville meltdown by a law the company wrote and its friends in Columbia waved through without so much as a hearing.
SCANA’s shares have been going south in a big way with every disclosure of incompetence or worse. Grand jury investigations aren’t good for stock prices. Let the shares continue to slide, and Kevin may be be watching more football in his Chin Li man cave sooner than he expected.
Mr. Bailey, a journalist living in Charleston, was a reporter at The State in the 1970s. Contact him at sjbailey1060@yahoo.com.
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This story was originally published October 24, 2017 at 8:42 AM with the headline "For SCE&G’s Kevin Marsh, the man cave in Chin Li beckons."