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Years of simmering tensions between the region's local governments boiled over at times before the council board conducted a rare roll-call vote on the resolution.
The board -- whose members hail from Beaufort, Colleton, Hampton and Jasper counties -- adopted the resolution after about an hour and a half of discussion and procedural maneuvering at the council's office in Point South. The vote was 16-8, with three abstentions.
The incentives proposal has divided local residents, public officials and special interest groups.
About a third of Sembler's proposed site is in Beaufort County, but it has all been annexed into the city of Hardeeville, which lies mostly in Jasper County.
Sembler officials say the incentives bill, which the state Senate could consider as soon as Tuesday, is essential to the company's plan to invest more than $400 million and create as many as 2,500 jobs in a relatively poor, rural region of South Carolina.
Sembler envisions Okatie Crossings as a tourist attraction of more than 1.5 million square feet for national retailers and Italian and American designers at the intersection of two major traffic arteries: U.S. 278 and S.C. 170.
Projects such as Sembler's would have to result in $200 million in investment and 1,250 jobs to be eligible for the incentives.
Company officials value those incentives at about $40 million. Others have estimated they would be worth more than $130 million.
DUELING PRESENTATIONS
Thursday's drama began almost as soon as the board reached the third item on its agenda, the resolution regarding the incentives.
Beaufort County Councilman Jerry Stewart immediately moved to table the resolution. Hilton Head Island Town Councilman George Williams seconded the motion, which failed.
The board then heard dueling presentations. The first was by Greer Scoggins, Sembler's director of construction, who championed the incentives.
The second was by Paul Sommerville, vice chairman of Beaufort County Council, who spoke against them.
Scoggins came out swinging at opponents, who fear the company will pirate tenants from competing developers.
He took particular aim at Tanger Factory Outlet Centers, a rival lobbying against the incentives. Tanger operates two shopping centers in greater Bluffton within a few minutes' drive of the Sembler site.
Scoggins charged that Tanger has hired more lobbyists than Sembler has and recently employed a luxury retail specialist, apparently to "poach" some of the tenants Sembler is pursuing.
Scoggins also said Beaufort County officials, who have expressed concern about Okatie Crossings' size and potential impact on the already-impaired Okatie River, allowed Tanger to replace one of its existing centers with a more dense one that will not meet the stormwater standards to which Sembler has verbally agreed. Tanger also hired a contractor from Minnesota for its project rather than a local firm, he said.
"Why am I the bad guy?" Scoggins repeatedly asked during his presentation.
Asked to respond Friday, a Tanger spokeswoman said the company uses a general contractor from Minnesota, with which it has a 20-year relationship, at many of its projects around the country.
That contractor will employ many local firms, director of corporate communications Mona Walsh said. If there are about 150 workers each day at a given site, only about three are from the general contractor, she said.
Tanger has has not hired a lobbyist to directly oppose the incentives, although it has retained the McNair Law Firm, which has long worked for the company in South Carolina, she said.
She said Tanger's stormwater plan will exceed required standards. In addition, the company plans to seek Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification for its project, she said.
"We would hope the proposed Sembler project would follow our lead," Walsh said.
She also said Tanger has not hired a luxury retail specialist.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Sommerville, who said he is friends with several Sembler supporters, decried what he said has been a lack of communication among local governments that resulted in a "fistfight over a mega-mall."
He said Okatie Crossings would shift jobs from elsewhere rather than create new ones. He also said the bill is not clear enough about the capital investment developers would have to make to earn the incentives.
He questioned Sembler's claims that Okatie Crossings would not harm the rivers to which it would send stormwater.
Current technology cannot protect the Okatie and New rivers from a "huge expanse" of pavement covered in grime and pollutants, so Okatie Crossings could negate Beaufort County's efforts to buy land to protect the waterways, Sommerville said.
"In our humble opinion, it's too much impervious surface for that particular location," Sommerville said.
He pointed to what he said were a host of unanswered questions:
• Why does Sembler's project need public money if other developers built without it?
• Why does Sembler need state money when it is already getting some aid through a separate agreement with Jasper and Hampton counties?
• Why would Okatie Crossings succeed in an area where empty storefronts abound and at a time when of other commercial projects are failing?
• Would Sembler build without incentives?
• Would the state next grant incentives to lure a Walmart or a Hardee's?
• Could Sembler's project be built in a less environmentally sensitive location?
"I don't know the answer to that," Sommerville repeatedly said.
DIVIDED VIEWS
Sembler and Hardeeville officials contended they spoke with Beaufort County staff and other county leaders long before the company first gave a formal presentation to Beaufort County Council earlier this month.
Beaufort County Council Chairman Weston Newton and county administrator Gary Kubic have said they rebuffed other attempts at communication because Okatie Crossings' backers sought to meet informally with individual council members or small groups. Such meetings would not have been appropriate because they would not have been open to the public, Newton and Kubic said.
Hardeeville Mayor Bronco Bostick urged opponents to remember many Beaufort County developments have contributed to polluting local waters.
"Where did your stormwater (go)?" Bostick asked. "Do some soul searching. We've got one project."
After one board member's motion to cut off debate failed, Colleton County Council Chairman Joseph Flowers said he didn't see the point in the board weighing in on a decision that would ultimately fall to state lawmakers.
"It's not going to help this project one way or the other in Columbia," Flowers said. "This is going to fall on deaf ears."
Flowers said he had not heard of the project until last month, but he indicated he wasn't inclined to support incentives because small businesses such as his do not receive similar advantages.
Beyond that, waging a bitter struggle over a resolution of limited value could make regional cooperation even more difficult in the future, he said.
Stewart suggested Sembler officials agree to reopen their development agreements with Hardeeville and rewrite them with input from Beaufort County to add more legally binding language about how to pay for any future road widening Okatie Crossings might necessitate.
"That's a way to show you truly, indeed want to work with all the government entities," Stewart said.
He said he has suggested such a strategy to Sembler president Jeff Fuqua.
Ridgeland Mayor Gary Hodges took exception to the notion Jasper County and its municipalities haven't shouldered their share of highway burdens over the years. The region's rural routes have taken a beating for decades to help visitors "drive to Hilton Head to spend the weekend playing golf," he said.
He said it seems that Beaufort County, which has long prospered with the labor of workers from surrounding areas, doesn't want its neighbors to gain economic clout of their own.
"If you keep fighting this, we're going without you," Hodges said.
