Numerous Claredon County, SC, government facilities are currently being upgraded, and two companies have a big hand in the work. Hunter Builders is one of the companies.
County government leaders have, in recent years, built several new office structures in the county seat of Manning. Those buildings house health, emergency services and fire departments. Now, a building for the sheriff’s office is being constructed, too, and Hunter Builders is the general contractor.
It is not unfamiliar territory for the Sumter firm. The health department building was a Hunter project, too, and the company soon will begin construction of nine recycling centers around the county.
The sheriff’s office is bing built downtown, adjacent to the new emergency services and fire department building. It was planned that way all along. The buildings not only share a front entranceway and receptionist, they share a common architecture.
That’s because the architect in the project, Stewart-Cooper-Newell, is another big player in Clarendon County government construction. The firm “specializes in government office buildings,” said architect Jim Stewart, and some of the evidence of its specialty is in Manning.
Besides the foregoing buildings, the firm also is working on plans for an administrative building. It will tie into an existing social services building and help relieve office pressure in the county’s courthouse.
The project under way at the moment, the sheriff’s office, is scheduled for completion in April 2001.
The building is a two-story structure containing almost 23,000 sq. ft. (2,070 sq m). The structure lacks a below-ground level and will rise from the concrete slab poured on a prepaid site that used to be the fire department’s parking lot.
The building’s facade is a combination of brick veneer and split-faced 4-in. (10.2 cm) concrete block sections wrapped around a structural steel frame with a flat roof. Metal studs and sheet rock will break the interior into offices, a crime lab area, an elevator chute and some interrogation rooms.
Some of the more interesting components of construction are its special security features, such as card access entranceways and bullet-resistant glass in the foyer.
On the job, Hunter will oversee the laying of 68,000 red bricks supplied by Palmetto Brick Co. of Cheraw, SC. Some 4,200 split-face blocks will be used for architectural accents.
Hunter generally operates with its own pieces of smaller equipment — backhoes, forklifts, Bobcat skid steer loaders and Kubota tractors, for instance.
When it needs heavier equipment, it often turns to Neff Rental Co., which operates virtually next door to Hunter in Sumter.
Unlike the project’s architectural firm, Hunter doesn’t specialize in government buildings. Its commercial work includes churches, strip malls, office buildings — “and for a while there we were doing a lot of hotels,” said Ryan Peters, project manager of the Clarendon job. Charles Pate is project superintendent.
The company does specialize in erecting Butler Buildings, however, for which it is the supplier in three counties. The Butler jobs have ranged from 40-ft. by 60-ft. (120 cm by 180 cm) buildings to ones measuring 250 ft. (75.5 m) square.
Two of the Butler buildings have been raised in the Clarendon County Industrial Park. Four years ago, a company, Tufco, contracted with Hunter to build a 62,000-sq.-ft. (5,580 sq m) facility in the park. The company now has ordered a second one of that size.
Clarendon County’s health department building erected by Hunter also was a Butler Building.
“We do a lot of design and build work,” Peters said of the Butler arm of the company.
Hunter has annual business volume of $7 to $8 million, according to Peters. Some 10 separate projects are under way at this time, one of the others being a mental health clinic in Georgetown, SC. Most of its contracting is in South Carolina.
Wayne and Wanda Hunter are president and vice president, respectively, of a family company that started operating from their home 12 years ago.
Stewart-Cooper-Newell began 30 years ago. It has offices today in Gastonia, NC, and Columbia, SC. Ken Newell is in the Columbia office, and the firm operates exclusively in the two states.
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