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Novel Digital Corridor
to spark city's high-tech growth
Excerpted from the Charleston
Regional Business Journal
March 12, 2001
Every study, survey or comprehensive plan done of the Charleston
region’s economic growth potential during the coming years
has identified the need to attract additional knowledge-based industry
to the area. In fact, the Charleston Regional Development Alliance,
Center for Technology Innovation and other key economic development
groups have luring high-tech business to the area a priority goal.
The latest initiative in the tech-based arena, just underway, is
the Charleston
Digital Corridor. Spearheaded by the City of Charleston’s
economic development department, the goal is to
build public-private partnerships that will support and nurture
knowledge-based enterprise on portions of the Charleston peninsula.
The Digital Corridor is the brainchild of Ernest Andrade, assistant
economic development officer for the City of Charleston.
“The city’s role will be to facilitate public-private
partnerships and clear some of the local legislative barriers which
have hampered high-tech growth in the past,” he says. “We
want to help create an environment where technology oriented companies
will thrive.”
A key priority of the Charleston Digital Corridor is to make life
easier for new high-tech firms thinking of locating to Charleston.
Some measures already adopted include:
Andy Brack [now of The Brack Group] is excited about the
Charleston Digital Corridor.
“The challenge for the next decade will be taking advantage
of the huge opportunity for technology growth which exists,”
Brack says. The Digital Corridor is exactly the type of initiative
we should be pursuing because it is aimed at attracting small high-tech
firms who do lots of business out of town, bringing dollars into
the economy, and are not a drain on the area’s natural resources.”
Brack, recently appointed by Gov. Jim Hodges to the Southern Governors’
Association Advisory Committee on Research, Development, and Technology,
admits the area still has work to do in attracting knowledge-based
companies. “ Public education needs to be improved, air fares
are too high and our universities must focus even more on technology
education in order to provide a workforce pool for technology firms.
Still, the quality of life in this area is going to attract people
and we need to take full advantage by building on that strength,”
Brack says.
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