Charleston has always been indelibly linked to the water since its founding in 1670. It boasts the largest deepwater port on America’s East Coast, and shipping has been the lifeblood of the city for more than three centuries. “Charleston will always have a maritime economy,” says Barbara Melvin, who was named president and CEO of SC Ports in 2022 after serving the port in various capacities since 1998. “The future is building on the past.”
With South Carolina’s remarkable strides in manufacturing—generally autos from the Upstate, tires from the Midlands, and now aeronautics in the Lowcountry—coupled with the growing Southeast’s appetite for imported retail goods, the port has become more vital than ever. In the past decade, to remain globally competitive, the port has embarked on a dramatic expansion to handle the new Panamax freighters, the largest ships designed to pass through the Panama Canal. The Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, which opened 2005, was the first step in that conversion. Then, in 2021, phase one of the new Hugh Leatherman Terminal opened on Daniel Island, and in 2022, a 20-year dredging project was completed that deepened Charleston’s harbor to 52 feet to accommodate the massive new ships.
Last year, the port announced the acquisition of the WestRock paper mill on the Cooper River. The 280-acre campus will allow the port, currently ranked eighth largest in the United States, to expand both its North Charleston terminal and rail capacity. With the other improvements, the port hopes to handle 10 million containers annually by 2050, up from 2.5 million today, significantly raising its national profile. “It’s our job to grow,” Melvin says.
But the future will also be defined by high tech. In 2001, the city created the Charleston Digital Corridor to grow and attract high-tech companies. Two decades later, it opened the Charleston Tech Center, a six-story office building on Morrison Drive that hosts a business incubator, coworking spaces, educational facilities, and networking opportunities. The goal is to attract the higher paying jobs the tech sector brings and further diversify the economy.
Today, high-tech firms employ more than 14,000 technical workers, such as developers and programmers, who earn on average $120,000 a year—double the area’s median salary. The companies span varied fields, such as QuickSort RX in pharmaceutical purchasing, Case Status in legal support, and acuCyber in digital security. That diversity “is very healthy for our high-tech industry,” says Ernest Andrade, the digital corridor’s founder and executive director. “We’re not just a one-trick pony.”