Summey rips '11th hour' offer

Chamber pressured, mayor says

The Post and Courier

North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey

The Post and Courier

A Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce committee decided about a month ago to pick a site off Remount Road for the group's new headquarters, but it had second thoughts after feeling pressured to consider another location, North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey said Wednesday.

Summey did not name names, but Charleston Mayor Joe Riley has made recent efforts to woo the chamber's main office back into his city's boundaries.

Riley said Wednesday that he did not feel he was pressuring the chamber to pick his location. He said he was only doing his job as mayor in promoting what he called a "world-class site" for the group's headquarters.

Summey said he felt otherwise. He said it's not important that the chamber locate in North Charleston, but local governments should not try to influence the selection process at the "eleventh hour."

Chamber officials "should have been allowed to make their decision without government input," said Summey,

speaking publicly on the controversy for the first time Wednesday. "They should have been allowed to make their own decision based on what's good for the chamber."

This latest round of bickering between North Charleston and Charleston appears to be over for the time being. Riley and Summey agreed separately Wednesday to steer clear of the selection process, said architect Thompson E. Penney, the chamber's board chairman.

"As far as active lobbying, it's going to be left to the board to make the right decision," Penney said.

He said the group is confident it can pick a site without it becoming "a battle between two cities."

"It's about what's best for the chamber and the region," he said.

The chamber had been based on the Charleston peninsula for most of its 235-year history. In 2004, to bolster its finances, the region's largest business-membership organization sold its former Mary Street headquarters and moved to temporary offices in a former North Charleston hospital.

The chamber since has fielded about two dozen proposals for a permanent home.

The search came to a boil Tuesday when the chamber's board of directors was expected to pick a site recommended by its executive committee. The top choice, Summey thought, was 2.9 acres in North Charleston near Remount Road and Interstate 26 that the city obtained from the Navy for free.

"The executive committee as recently as last month had decided to select the Remount Road site," he said. "At the eleventh hour, there was this interference from outside the chamber that applied pressure."

Summey left Tuesday's board meeting in a huff before it began, and after learning that no decision would be made, according to others at the meeting. He also threatened to form a new North Charleston chamber of commerce.

The "interference" he referred to was a deal Riley presented to the chamber within the last two weeks. Riley is pitching the top floor of a planned four-story, 80,000-square-foot building at Magnolia, a proposed neighborhood in his city's Neck area that will contain shops, offices, hotels and homes.

Riley said Wednesday that Charleston had offered the chamber other locations, but none worked out. He said he recently learned that a decision about the headquarters was forthcoming.

"I realized if we had a site (that met the search criteria), we need to get moving," he said. "And we did."

Summey and Riley met separately with chamber officials Wednesday. Riley called the talks productive, and Summey said his meeting was businesslike and "cordial."

Summey said he was "waiting for a response to the proposal I made. That will determine whether we move forward with our own chamber or not."

Chamber officials could not say Wednesday when they will make a decision.

Reach Katy Stech at 937-5549 or kstech@postandcourier.com; Warren Wise at 745-5850 or wwise@postandcourier.com; John McDermott at 937-5572 or