Jacobs Engineering to send old building out with a bang

Company to build new facility after imploding former General Dynamics plant in Bushy Park

That big, white cube of a building on the Cooper River is about to disappear from the local skyline.

Its owner plans to implode the 210-foot-tall former General Dynamics plant in Bushy Park in a controlled fashion sometime in March to make way for improvements that will allow it to increase its payroll to more than 1,100 workers by the end of this year.

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., which uses the waterfront site to make industrial processing plants that can be shipped to customers in sections, will replace the mammoth structure with another building that is not as tall.

Tyrone Walker
The Post and Courier

Jacobs Engineering group plans to implode its current plant and replace it with a new building.

Daniel Gaa, vice president of the Pasadena, Calif.-based company's local operation, said the 34-year-old landmark plant is outdated. "It needs to be modernized," Gaa said. "We just think it's outlived its useful life."

He said he expects to set a specific demolition date in the next few weeks.

While the existing main plant is too tall for Jacobs Engineering's needs, the original occupant needed almost every inch of height it offered.

Defense contracting giant General Dynamics once used the cavernous space to fabricate huge metal spheres that were used to treat liquid waste. The spheres measured 14 stories high, requiring a manufacturing building that had at least a 150-foot-tall opening. Workers frequently had to wait for low tide to ensure the egg-shaped structures could pass safely under the old Cooper River bridges.

The building was among the largest industrial structures in the Southeast.

General Dynamics shuttered its local plant in 1993 and it sold the property to a company that was proposing to build barge-mounted power generators but never got off the ground. Jacobs Engineering paid $8.5 million for the building at a bankruptcy court auction in 1998.

The company is updating the Charleston site as it prepares to take on growing demand for modular oil refinery plants. "Companies want to produce oil because demand right now is so strong," Gaa said.

The industry's problem is that skilled labor is in short supply on the Gulf Coast and in other places where petroleum companies are looking to set up new refineries. As a result, Jacobs sees demand growing for its transportable pre-manufactured units, which Gaa noted can usually be built more quickly than a conventional refinery.

The company's 550-employee Cooper River operation uses three large manufacturing buildings and outdoor work sites. Jacobs is planning to install several heavy-duty concrete slabs on its property to create more outdoor work space.

The building that will replace the existing 26-story cube will be equipped with cranes that can lift up to 60 tons — three times what the current equipment can handle. The company does not know yet when the replacement structure will be completed.

Engineers and workers at the Cooper River site design the modular units and build them, installing major components such as drywall, electrical systems and air-conditioning units, as well as smaller details, such as water fountains and exit signs.

Buyers of the portable processing plants include the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. But Jacobs has had its eye on the oil refinery market in the decade since it relocated to Berkeley County from Orangeburg.

Jacobs hopes to hire another 100 engineers and another 500 workers by the end of the year, more than doubling its current labor force, Gaa said.

Reach Katy Stech at 937-5549 or kstech@postandcourier.com.