Retirement business

The Capital City Lake Murray Country Region will be the host organization for the 11th Annual National Active Retirement Association Business Conference, October 20–22. About 500 delegates from across the country are expected to attend the meetings at the convention center on Lincoln Street. For more information, call Amy Roof Hoffman, special events manager, 781.5940, extension 3.

Food facility

FPL Food LLC is locating its further processing facility in Lexington County, generating another 75 jobs on top of the 75 already in place. FPL Food is a producer of high–quality, value–added beef products, the largest privately held beef provider in the Southeast. The company is accepting applications. Visit www.fplfood.com or apply in person at the Lexington OneStop Center at 714 South Lake Drive.

Columbia loses one

Avista Solutions produces online mortgage origination software for banks, credit unions, and independent mortgage bankers. Avista recently relocated its headquarters from Columbia to Charleston. Out of the company’s current 40 people in its Columbia work force, only about eight to ten employees will move to open the Charleston headquarters.

Careful: It could happen here.

A casino is being planned for Underground Atlanta, but few elements of the plan are exposed. According to the

Atlanta Business Chronicle, lottery officials have studied a casino since last May. The Georgia Lottery has already commissioned a public relations firm to plan the promotion. The state’s attorney general has told the lottery’s executive board they can approve video lottery terminals, similar to what’s in play in Delaware’s Dover Downs. The Georgia Lottery estimates another $150 million coming in annually from the casino in support of the state’s college scholarships and pre–K programs. Georgia’s lottery–supported HOPE scholarship program is projected to run $243 million in the red for fiscal 2011, which ends next June. The next fiscal year, if no new revenues are found, the shortfall can come to $317 million in the red. Most of the money from lottery ticket sales last year, about $2.1 billion, was paid out as prizes, while education was paid less than $1 billion.

Foreclosures

In its Midyear 2010 Metropolitan Foreclosure Market Report, RealtyTrac reported greater Charleston had the highest rate of foreclosure filings in the state for the past six months. Some of the state’s lowest rates of foreclosure are in Columbia, Spartanburg, and the Grand Strand. Greater Charleston has one home in distress for every 68, while Columbia has only one home in distress for every 111. Conway–Myrtle Beach has just one home in distress for every 121.

Get a deeper harbor

Charleston Harbor is the beneficiary of a bill—the Water Resources Development Act of 2010—passed on Thursday, July 29 in the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The bill’s language authorizes reviews of dredging work to deepen the harbor. Once the expansion of the Panama Canal is complete near the end of 2014, a harbor depth approaching 50 feet is needed to accommodate just about all classes of the world’s most modern vessels. Charleston Harbor currently has about 45 feet of depth. Up to 2004, it was 40 feet. The Georgia Ports Authority announced in early July it planned to spend $20 million to deepen Savannah’s harbor, Charleston’s main competitor, to 48 feet. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham has recently estimated the Port of Charleston is responsible for 260,800 jobs in S.C., almost $12 billion in wages, and $1.5 billion in state and local taxes.

Midlands getting the heat, Midlands getting organized

Elected officials and leading members of the chamber’s of commerce in the Midlands are feeling the heat when compared with the success stories in the Upstate and the Lowcountry. The catalyst for collaboration among the Midlands’ leaders probably came most from the decision by discount airline Southwest to serve both Charleston and Greenville but not Columbia. The recently arrived executive director of the Columbia Metropolitan Airport is applying for a $750,000 federal grant to help with expansion of existing carriers at Columbia or to help with attracting a discount carrier like Jet Blue or Air Tran.