CHARLOTTE — Fort Lawn, South Carolina, has been looking for hope ever since Springs Industries shut down one of the textile company’s last plants there in 2007.
Fourteen years later, the tiny town, little more than a crossroads of S.C. Highway 9 and U.S. Highway 21 with a population under 1,000, scored one of the biggest economic development deals in state history.
E. & J. Gallo Winery announced in June it would build its East Coast operations hub there. The nation’s largest winemaker committed to invest $423 million and create 496 jobs in a first phase, which is under construction. More phases will follow over several decades.
The project’s potential impact has drawn comparisons to BMW, which put South Carolina on the global economic development map when it located an auto plant in Greer in 1992. BMW has invested over $11 billion in continual expansions and upgrades at the site, with the impact felt from Atlanta to Charlotte.
Gallo’s impact on Fort Lawn, Chester County and the entire region could mirror BMW’s transformation of Greer and the Upstate. It will certainly remake the fortunes of those small towns in the area that were decimated by the demise of Springs and the loss of thousands of textile jobs through the early 2000s.
“We felt like Charlie Brown and Lucy pulled the football away before we kicked every single time,” S.C. State Sen. Mike Fanning, who represents Chester County, said of past economic development frustrations. “Over the last three or four decades, a football has come into presence, and we get ready to kick it and the football gets taken away and we land on our butts. ... It took a while for folks to believe. There is an energy now in Chester.”
Construction on the first piece of Gallo’s investment is expected to wrap up this summer. The first phase will include a production facility, bottling, canning, warehousing, a regional distribution center and an import and export hub.
Erich Kaepp, who leads Gallo’s East Coast operations, said the initial portion of the Chester County facility will focus on the company’s spirits business. And Gallo’s future expansions will likely come to the same site, he said.
Keep reading here about what the project could mean for Fort Lawn and the greater Charlotte region.
Read more here.
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