Laurens County will partner with Spartanburg County to develop an industrial park near Clinton, and the first tenant will be Coastal Precast Systems LLC and Dubrook Properties LLC for a $9 Million investment.
The Clinton Chronicle posted the name of the company, based on a legally required ad for a 3rd and final public hearing before the Laurens County Council, but took the post down at the request of a public official. There was a fear that naming the company in a news setting would jeopardize the project before the name was revealed at the Feb. 9 Laurens County Council meeting (the advertisement appeared on Jan. 28).
Jon Coleman, executive director of the Laurens County Development Corporation, told the council that the 5 projects on its agenda for action would invest more money in just the first 2 months of 2026 than the county saw invested in all of 2025.
Hydrite Chemical Co. announced a $68.6 Million investment in the Laurens’ Hunter Industrial Park. It will be the first tenant once a new park agreement is given final approval, and the other industries there then will be listed as Hunter tenants.
It was not acted on for 3rd reading last Monday, but at the Jan. 12 meeting, 2nd reading was given to an ordinance forming the Clinton Multi-county Industrial Park. Laurens County gets 99% of the fee-in-lieu-of-taxes revenue there, and Spartanburg County gets 1% - the 99% figure is then divided this way: 25% to School District 56, 25% to Laurens County, 25% to the City of Clinton, and 25% to the Laurens County economic development fund. Coastal Precast Systems, based in Virginia, will locate behind the Pilot station on Hwy 56 on tracts of 32.81 acres, 11.99 acres, and 7.19 acres, according to its FILOT agreement.
The company is “a manufacturer of precast and prestressed concrete components for bridge and marine infrastructure,” according to a SC Commerce Department announcement (it was referred to as Project Diamond before it was publicly named ahead of the FILOT ordinance public hearing).
“The newspaper said they make pre-cast bridges, but they are a lot more than that,” Coleman told the county council.
The company’s main office is in Chesapeake, Virginia. It has an office in Wilmington, North Carolina (2014), and an Eastern Shore office in Cape Charles, Virginia (2019), with a South Carolina office coming soon (2025), according to its website. It started as a trucking company in 1946 in Brookeville, Pennsylvania.
It expects to employ 70 people at the Clinton location, which is within the city limits adjacent to I-26.
When Hydrite Chemical goes into the Hunter Industrial Park, that long-established area will continue to be a Laurens County - Greenville County partnership.
Laurens County gets 99% of the revenues there, and Greenville County gets 1%. Of the 99%, this is the distribution: 25% to the City of Laurens, 25% to the Hunter Economic Development Fund (under a March 14, 2021 agreement), 25% to Laurens County, and 25% to School District 55.
These two projects - Coastal Precast/Project Diamond and Hydrite Chemical/Project Floyd - were approved on 3rd and final reading Feb. 9 by the Laurens County Council. No one spoke at legally-required public hearings - the projects are code-named until final action for competitive reasons.
There are 3 other projects before the council on 2nd and 1st readings.
Project Palmetto (company not named) is a New York firm’s headquarters relocation of a company already in The Connexial Center near Gray Court, a $20.2 Million investment to bring in 57 jobs (second reading). The proposed FILOT agreement sets the investment at $19,216,000 and says the land description will be provided later to the county.
Project Basel (company not named) is an amendment to a current agreement, providing a $40 Million investment, bringing the company’s total investment in Laurens County to over $110 Million. A document lists these previous investments by this company: 2015, $17.6M, 38 jobs; 2019, $12.1M, 25 jobs; and 2021, $49.56M, 39 jobs. No property description accompanies the paperwork.
Finally, revealed for the first time at the Feb. 9 meeting, Project Oracle is projected also for Connexial - a partnership of Laurens and Greenville counties on I-385 - with an investment of $120,815,000. This is a Tier 1 auto supplier expecting to create 277 new jobs, Coleman said.
A document said The Connexial Center will be enlarged to include additional property for Project Oracle.
More about Coastal Precast Systems here.
More about Hydrite Chemical Company here.
More about investing in Laurens County here.
