5-STAR USA announces business incubator in Bennettsville

From their porch on Maple Street, Billy and Ida Ridges can see the former Boro wood manufacturing complex, which now consists of dilapidated buildings, a large vacant lot and miscellaneous building materials strewn about with grass growing over it all.

In the vacant lot where they say high traffic and noise prevail at night, officials held a press conference Wednesday announcing the venture capital firm 5-STAR USA will locate its headquarters there.

“It will make the community look better,” Billy Ridges said.

The sentiment echoed by Marlboro County Council Chairman Ron Munnerlyn, who said, “We’re excited that not only are we going to create jobs and capital investment but rehabilitates a former industrial site. So often counties relocate new business, but we have these old sites that need rehabilitation.”

A planned $25 million investment by 5-STAR USA will renovate and redesign 167,000 square feet of the five existing structures into administrative offices, manufacturing plants, a technical library, child care and health and fitness facilities.

In one of those five buildings, ECAPS Corp., a manufacturer of green building materials that recently located to the site earlier this year, will be the main anchor on the campus. ECAPS produces aluminum composite building panels and is expected to create 150 jobs in the area during the next five years.

As a business incubator, 5-STAR USA will help small businesses, such as ECAPS, through access to capital, shared operating costs and other resources located on the soon-to-be renovated campus.

“Small businesses start on their own and many of them don’t succeed because they don’t have access to the expert services and information they need,” Dr. Darlene Andert, chairwoman of the 5-STAR USA Board of Directors, said. “We’re taking a look at creating a large and comprehensive set of experts and others who can be here to incubate the many businesses we’re looking forward to serve.”

A main reason 5-STAR chose to locate in Bennettsville is because incentives granted by Marlboro County and the state.

In addition to “aggressive tax and infrastructure incentives,” Munnerlyn said, the state has approved 1,000 job credits to be used as jobs are created and gave the county money to purchase the building. “The county is in a good position as we didn’t have to put a lot of money into the project, but we are able to provide incentives and support to help grow it,” Munnerlyn said.

According to the National Business Incubators Association (NBIA), for every $1 of estimated public operating subsidy provided to an incubator, clients and graduates of NBIA member incubators generate about $30 in local tax revenue alone. In addition to increased tax revenue, 84 percent of incubator graduates, successful businesses, stay in their communities — something desperately needed in Marlboro County, which had an unemployment rate of 18.1 percent, almost double the national average, in June, according to the most recent S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce figures.

Business incubators aren’t a new concept. They’ve been around since the 1950s, but really came on the scene in the late 1990s with the tech boom. Incubators help small businesses develop and become, on average, more successful than they would if they went at it alone.

Wednesday’s press conference served only as an announcement of the beginning stages of development for the site; a timeframe for completion and full operations hasn’t been announced.