Commercial Electrician in Richburg, SC

There’s a new plan to bring hundreds of homes to Richburg, in Chester County.

Chester County Council approved the first of three votes needed to rezone property for the new subdivision. A public hearing will be needed. The properties combine for more than 170 acres on Gaston Farm Road, just west of I-77.

Plans from the company now known as Gaston Springs may look familiar.

This past spring Chester County saw two large residential projects that, combined, could have added 1,500 new homes. A D.R. Horton proposal for 1,100 homes, on close to 500 acres on Lancaster Highway south of Richburg, was withdrawn.

The other project was a Fielding Homes offering called Richburg Meadows. It would have put 400 homes on about 180 acres on Gaston Farm Road, by 2029. The Fielding Homes plan was withdrawn too. The property owner told county officials a new plan with a new builder would follow.

That new plan appeared when the property owner and partners presented it to the county planning commission in July. Fielding homes was replaced with Dream Finders Homes. The project still is for 400 homes.

There are new right turn lanes into the property from each access point. There are four parking spaces per home, including a garage and driveway. The site will have 40 acres of open space and a pond.

Homes would be in the 2,200- to 2,600-square-foot range, company reps told the planning commission.

Council heard more details last week on the subdivision that would have three main home products with the middle one priced in or around the low $300s, according to the builder. The property owner also said a development agreement would come before the next council meeting and there was an agreement for a $5,000 per home development fee.

Council still had questions on a range of issues from building density to whether homes would have front or side garage access, which would impact how many homes could go on the property. A workshop on zoning and other issues related to the plan is expected prior to a final approval vote.

“We have two more readings on this,” said Chairman Joe Branham. “All this does is just keeps the process moving.”

This story was originally published August 28, 2023, 12:00 AM.

Chester County deputies found Kevin Eby dead Friday night in Richburg, South Carolina.

YORK COUNTY, S.C. — A York County man who went missing nearly two weeks ago was found dead Friday night, according to deputies.

The York County Sherriff's Office said Kevin Davis Eby was last seen May 14 at 10:30 pm, at his home in Fort Mill. His wife told deputies he suffers from Huntington's Disease and that he had been off his medication for a few days.

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Chester County deputies found Eby dead Friday night in Richburg, South Carolina, according to the York County Sheriff's Office.

No word if there are any known suspects in Eby's death. WCNC Charlotte has reached out to the York County Sheriff's Office for more information.

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Details continue to take shape, quickly, on a new Chester County manufacturing project spanning 700 acres.

Chester County Council passed the first of three votes needed to rezone the property, on Wednesday night. The county planning commission had narrowly voted to approve the zoning changes. With two special called meetings, county council could finalize the zoning changes by March 13.

“This thing is time sensitive,” Council Chairman Joe Branham.

Richburg Magnolias of Chester applied to rezone two properties. The larger is 470 acres at 4375 Lancaster Highway, near Richburg Road. The smaller is 218 acres of unaddressed property off Lancaster Highway (S.C. 9). Advanced Chester of Sumter applied to rezone 22 acres at 510 Juniors Place.

The total property is east of I-77, between Richburg and Fort Lawn. County land records show the properties were involved in a 2018 sale for $4.5 million.

The new company hasn’t been named.

Kris Phillips with Chester County Economic Development updated county council last week on changes proposed by the company based on the planning commission meeting.

A rail line would be moved from the northeastern corner of the site near Bryant Corner Road, to the northwestern side to be farther away from homes on Bryant Corner. Only an administration building on a slab for a former spec facility, and not any manufacturing, would be within a 1,000-foot setback of nearby properties. There would be no road access off Bryant Corner to the adminstrative building.

“There’s no manufacturing, no processing there,” Phillips said.

All truck access would come off Lancaster Highway. The company would build a bridge over the highway for a rail line. Chemicals brought in wouldn’t be flammable or designated as high-risk to the environment by federal regulations, Phillips said.

Matt Gedney with L&C Railroad owner Gulf & Ohio Railways said the local line tries to steer clear of hazardous material transport and the new company would be no different.

“Nothing that is outside the mix of what we currently bring in,” Gedney said.

L&C serves some chemical and polymer facilities in the area. There’s a propane terminal in Lancaster County. But not sites with federally designated hazardous chemicals. The growing number of manufacturing facilities in Chester County also helps with safety concerns, Gedney said, as rail travels at a relatively low speed.

Phillips said the company is looking at sound walls and structures to avoid sound or light issues. The company intends to rely mostly on rail, but will evaluate what truck traffic the site will create. The company has spent tens of millions, Phillips said, at other sites to make sure environmental damage or air quality won’t be an issue.

Phillips said there will be significant activity on site.

“It’ll be a 24-7 operation,” Phillips said.

The planning commission voted 3-2 to recommend two of the zoning changes. The other, the largest property farthest from neighboring homes, got a 4-1 vote for recommendation.

Councilwoman Erin Mosley cast the only council vote against the zoning changes. Mosley said it wasn’t a slight to the company, but instead she felt more time is needed to study plans.

Plans would include a new 20-foot high by 40-foot wide berm to further insulate the site. Another part of the decision states if the property is rezoned and the company doesn’t bring the planned business, the zoning would revert to what it is now by November.

RICHBURG, S.C. (PINPOINT WEATHER) – It happens all too often.

A destructive hurricane rushes water in, peels off roofs, topples homes, and changes lives forever, but one type of destruction can change lives — for the better.

Right down the road in Richburg, South Carolina, there’s a wall of 105 powerful fans, so powerful, up to 350 horsepower can simulate winds up to 130 mph, near Category 3 hurricane strength.

It helps the researchers understand what mother nature could do inside their lab. Six-by-six-foot wind turbines simulate the eye of the storm at the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety.

“We’ve got a lot of them, and for good reason,” said Sarah Dillingham, the senior meteorologist at the facility. “We want to give the most real world-like feeling here.”

Cutting-edge research uses full-scale models of our homes and mimics real-world conditions to test hurricane resilience.

“What we’re looking at is how are buildings put together, how are those individual components pieced together, how are they installed,” Dillingham explained.

Her team tests entry points for wind using actual wind observations from hurricanes making landfalls and even rotating the homes on a turntable to simulate a spinning storm.

“For hurricanes, we know that wind may be coming at multiple sides of the building for a long duration,” she said. “So we’re also looking at component failures and the fatigue of some of those components as well.”

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Hurricanes often pack a punch with rain. Sprayers can hose the home with water that rushes in with the Category 3 force winds.

“It can be equivalent to about eight inches per hour of wetting onto a structure, so we can get those rainfall rates very similar to what you might experience in a real hurricane,” Dillingham added.

They can even pelt the homes with lab-simulated hail stones for springtime research!

“We’re very unique here in that we can do that kind of testing and find out where vulnerabilities are in the home,” Dillingham said. “And it’s those vulnerabilities that, once identified, then we can apply the right mitigation to try to prevent that kind of damage in the future.”

One of the most common vulnerabilities in the home is the garage door.

“Garage doors have been identified as a large vulnerability in regard to allowing wind into the home and can then cause a cascade of failures,” Dillingham elaborated.

Another point of entry for damage is the roof; it’s often the first line of defense for any home.

But not every home is brand new. The team at IBHS has a roof aging farm and dozens of standalone roofs, so shingles can get natural wear and tear from Mother Nature, whether it’s Carolina rain, heat, humidity, or wind. They can then take these shingles inside the lab to see how they can withstand strong winds and even hail.

Underneath the shingles should be more layers of protection. IBHS’s fortified roof is like a gold standard of storm protection. There are green caps that hold the roof’s lining down better, and it can be hard to remove.

“The wind is trying to pull up on this roof cover, and so if the wind can get underneath this, it can rip everything off,” Dillingham said as she showed QCN.

That’s exactly what happened without the extra pop of protection. Open roof seams layer wind damage with flood concerns, allowing heavy rain to creep into the seam, amplifying the damage inside the home.

“We now have to make a roof claim because our roof cover is damaged,” Dillingham explained a scenario for a homeowner with this amplified multi-layered damage. “Now we have to make a water claim because we didn’t have a sealed roof deck so that water is going to get in.”

The small cracks are needed to let the roof materials expand and contract with the summer heat. But if you cover them up with tape, you can avoid water damage.

We tested it out.

“On the fortified side, all of it is being redirected into your gutter,” Dillingham said.

Without the seals, 60% of the water seeped into the small crack of the unsealed home, meaning an extra insurance claim. Coupled with visits to storm-ravaged communities, this decade-long fortified program is one of the many ways IBHS puts its science into action, modernizing and updating building codes nationwide.

“Building codes are updated on a three-year cycle,” Dillingham explained. “We are constantly doing research here in the test chamber.”

Florida is an excellent example of this.

“Hurricane Ian, while very devastating from a surge perspective, was also a success story as far as wind mitigation is concerned,” she said.

After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the Sunshine State-enforced some of the most robust building codes in the country.

“We are watching the modern building codes in action play a role to stop the loss that we are seeing,” Dillingham said in awe.

This type of resilience IBHS research works to bring to states farther inland because, surprisingly, as Dillingham puts it, “I think when you say something is ‘built to code,’ sometimes we take that for granted.”

Not every state has a mandated building code.

“I look at a new home that I may have just purchased, and I say, ‘Oh, this was everything I wanted; of course, it was built to code, or it couldn’t be here!'” Dillingham said. “But we’re not asking the question of what code was in place. How old is the code? How well is it enforced here?”

These questions help educate all communities and ensure we build right at the most pivotal time.

Billion-dollar disasters have increased five-fold since the 1980s.

Where we used to see 20 different billion-dollar disasters in a decade, we now see them in just one year. The last three years have had more than 15 different billion-dollar disasters. This year is already on pace to hit another top spot. The average number of disasters in a year is just seven.

As these disasters increase, the time to recover between them decreases significantly. Rebuilding resilience is more important now than ever before.

“Hopefully, we’ll use those opportunities, those disasters are very unfortunate, but we use those as educational and learning opportunities to build better for the next time,” Dillingham reflected.

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And while we always hope there is never a next time, science tells us hurricanes are becoming slower, wetter, and more intense.

“We want to break the cycle of damage,” Dillingham added. “When we do it the second time around, let’s use those opportunities to build stronger.”

RICHBURG, S.C. (June 16, 2014) — Giti Tire Group, the predominantly Chinese tire maker based in Singapore, has selected a site in Chester County, S.C., for its first U.S. tire plant.

The $560 million project will, according to Giti, create 1,700 jobs over 10 years.

Giti Executive Chairman Enki Tan disclosed the company's plans this morning at a ceremony in Chester, accompanied by S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley, Secretary of Commerce Bobby Hitt, Singapore Ambassador Ashok Kumar Mipuir and other state, county and local officials.

The 1.8 million-sq.-ft. plant and distribution center will be designed with a first-phase annual capacity of 5 million tires, Mr. Tan said, for both replacement and OE customers. The factory will be engineered to allow for additional capacity “in response to future market demand and conditions,” said Tom McNamara, executive vice president of sales and marketing, Giti Tire (USA) Ltd., Giti Group's Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.-based sales and marketing subsidiary.

“This significant investment represents our strong commitment to customers in North America,” Mr. Tan said. “This is a key milestone for Giti Tire and an important part of our growth strategy worldwide. Existing business and strong demand for Giti Tire's passenger and light truck tires in North America has made this significant investment in South Carolina possible.”

Giti generated about 16 percent of its $2.7 billion in fiscal 2012 sales — $430 million — from business in North America, where it goes to market under the GT Radial, Primewell, Dextero, and Runway brands.

Keep checking tirebusiness.com for more reports on Giti Tire's new tire plant—including videos, photos and exclusive interviews with Tire Business.

Chester County is largely rural with about 33,000 residents in South Carolina's Piedmont area about 50 miles southwest of Charlotte, N.C. A plant in Chester County would have direct access to Interstate 77.

Lei Huai Chin, managing director of Giti Tire Group, called Chester County an “excellent location for Giti Tire, offering an extensive and efficient infrastructure network including interstate highways, rail, close proximity to airports and a major metropolitan area to support the company's needs and growth for many years to come.”

Mr. McNamara stressed the plant will be built with a “focus on maintaining a healthy balance with the environment and following Giti Tire's green initiative.”

Giti's project is the fourth greenfield tire plant to be located in South Carolina in the past four years, representing more than $3 billion in investment, according to Tire Business' archives. In addition, Bridgestone Corp. and Michelin North America Inc. have announced several hundred million dollars more in expansions of existing factories in the state.

“This is another huge win for our state and Team South Carolina,” Gov. Haley said. “… Giti's decision to come to our state is another great sign that our economic development efforts are paying off for the hard-working people of South Carolina.”

Mr. Hitt said the project “further bolsters our state's reputation as a manufacturing powerhouse and the nation's tire capital.

“We look forward to a long and successful partnership with Giti Tire in our state.”

South Carolina is offering $37.8 million in economic assistance and will be offering job creation credits once the plant reaches the target of 1,700 jobs, according to state officials. In addition, Gov. Haley's office said readySC — a division of the South Carolina Technical College System — will assist with recruiting and training the firm's initial workforce.

Brian Singleton, chairman of the Chester Development Association, said in a statement: “We…are anxious to work with them building this new world class tire manufacturing operation.”

Based on its estimated $2.8 billion to $3 billion in fiscal 2013 annual sales, Giti Tire Group is the 13th or 14th largest tire maker worldwide, according to Tire Business' annual analysis of the global industry.

It has eight plants in China — five tire production and three materials support plants — and is a minority owner of P.T. Gajah Tunggal Tbk. of Indonesia, which gives it access to production from that firm's tire manufacturing complex near Jakarta.

Gajah Tunggal in its own right reports more than $1 billion in annual revenue, a portion of which it derives from sales to Group Michelin, which holds a 10-percent ownership share in the Indonesian company.

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To reach this reporter: bdavis@crain.com; 330-865-6145. Follow Bruce on Twitter @reifenmensch.