Apple talks bearing fruit on King Street

It looks as if all the Apple talk will indeed bear fruit.

California-based technology giant Apple Inc. started recruiting workers for a King Street retail store on its Web site last week. Steve Jobs & Co. is seeking applicants who "have the potential to develop the retail sales and customer service skills that are the heart and soul of the Apple Store."

At the same time, city planners fielded a request to alter the storefront at 301 King St. That's the same property, formerly shared by Granny's Goodies thrift shop and Cumberland's nightclub, that Apple architects were looking at a few weeks ago.

Richard Faenza, the owner of 301 King, said Friday that no one has inked a lease on the building yet, though he acknowledged that Apple came knocking a few weeks ago. It's a safe bet that Apple required Faenza to sign a confidentiality agreement, but if it's really interesting in keeping its cards close to its chest, Apple should get its HR people connected with its PR people, not to mention its architects.

To see what Apple's new King Street store will look like, go to http://www.tinyurl.com/ypxm43 and click on the "charlestoncity.info" link, which is the agenda for the Board of Architectural Review meeting this week. The iPod maker's proposed building alterations start on page 86, but page 90 offers the most realistic image of what's to come.

Green speak

Human behavior, not human-built buildings, is the key to keeping the green movement going. That was a theme driven home in Pittsburgh last week by John L. Knott Jr. , CEO of the Noisette Co. LLC, who was the lead-off speaker at the Green Building Alliance's annual "Green$ense" conference.

Knott, according to the Pittsburgh Business Times, told the crowd of almost 400 people about "the values and processes that go into creating a truly sustainable community, using the example of the sustainable restoration of 3,000 acres of the historic urban core of a South Carolina city."

The newspaper's account said North Charleston-based Noisette has been "focusing on everything from physical restoration of parks to the economics of attracting businesses to the social aspects of improving home ownership and school drop-out rates.

"You can build all the green buildings you want," Knott said, "but if the behavior of the people in them doesn't change, it just delays the problem. It's not sustainable."

Hammering on

The real estate slump has pinched the bottom line at Lowe's Cos. by cutting demand for home-related purchases. But it's apparently not enough to affect the company's plans in North Charleston.

The nation's second-largest home improvement retailer is moving forward with plans for a store off Dorchester Road near the entrance of Wescott Plantation.

Last week, the company applied for a permit from the Department of Health and Environmental Control. The North Carolina-based chain already has received a handful of variances that will allow it to build a 140,000-square-foot big-box location, according to the developer of the Wescott property, Hull Storey Retail Group. Lowe's hopes to begin construction in fall and open in the spring of 2009, according to the Augusta-based real estate company's Web site.

The Wescott site would mark the company's seventh store in the Charleston area. Lowe's newest store was opened in the fall of 2006 in Goose Creek, near the intersection of U.S. Highway 176 and Old Mount Holly Road.

While its latest permit request was being processed, the company last week said its fourth-quarter profit dropped by a third to $406 million, hurt by the soft housing market. Sales were steady at just under $10.4 billion.

Port's big export

The State Ports Authority's four old cranes that were replaced with state-of-the-art "super post-Panamax" models 12 months ago will soon be on their way out of Charleston bound for the west coast — of Africa, that is.

The SPA reached an agreement with a U.K.-based firm to load the machines onto a barge and transport them to a port in Nigeria.

Two of the cranes that were at the North Charleston terminal were scheduled to be loaded onto a ship, more or less fully assembled, over the weekend and moved to the Wando Welch Terminal in Mount Pleasant, where the other two will be loaded. That's expected to take about three weeks. Then, when the weather's right, all four cranes will set sail from Charleston Harbor to Africa. In November 2006, the SPA requested bids from anyone interested in buying the cranes. By the March 2007 closing date, not a single bid was received.

In previous years when older cranes were replaced, the SPA was able to find a buyer in the Caribbean that had lost its own cranes to a tropical storm. On other occasions the agency has ended up selling them for scrap. This time, the SPA effectively gave the cranes away, with the new owners paying to move them.