[ Above, developer Cliff Rosen (right) talks with Clemson University President James Clements (left) at the groundbreaking of Greenville Technical College and Clemson University’s Center Manufacturing Innovation. ]
‘This is my last building’
Delegations from all over the world come to see it. State legislators beam while talking about it. The 250-acre Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research is a magnet for business, a powerhouse of academia and industry at the center of the Southeast manufacturing revitalization, according to its supporters.
But one name you might not hear in the story of CU-ICAR, one person who hasn’t been in area news recently, is Cliff Rosen, save for a lonely mention at the bottom of stories about the 106,000-square-foot workforce development project next to CU-ICAR. That $25 million Center for Manufacturing Innovation – which broke ground this week and is slated for completion in 2016 – is to be built on a 30-acre piece of land that represents Rosen’s final gift and contribution to the technology research center’s Millennium Campus. It also likely represents the Miami-based developer’s last project in the Greenville area.
His contribution was made in the form of a bargain sale – when an owner sells for less than market value. Rosen’s bargain sale for the Center for Manufacturing Innovation sold the land for $4.4 million less than market. The Phinnize J. Fisher Middle School, Bon Secours St. Francis Health System and much of the land CU-ICAR sits on was also gifted to the collective tune of $52 million, according to figures from Rosen.
“This is my last building, and so I thought, if I don’t talk about it now, it’s never going to happen,” said Rosen in what he calls his first real interview. Rosen – who said he bought and financed much of the land on which CU-ICAR currently sits – says he feels partial ownership for CU-ICAR’s success, but says his public image was tarnished during a drawn-out lawsuit against BMW Manufacturing, alleging that the manufacturer and Clemson University conspired to force Rosen out of the project.
“I didn’t make anything happen; it happened to me,” he insists. “But I was there in the front of it and spent my money and my effort and my executive abilities to garner the resources here.”
By “resources,” court files allege that Rosen lost around $99 million in profits and fees from the development of the sale and real estate.
‘A very cool thing’
In January 2001, Rosen was approached by Ray Don Rice, then director of the Brooks Institute, about the possibility of building and developing an off-campus facility to be known as the Clemson University Center for Motor Sports Excellence.
“He wanted to develop it, and it was his vision for a campus that one day would have some graduate engineering component, but it was a motorsports center for excellence,” said Rosen. “He interviewed builders and developers all over the place, and wealthy people, and couldn’t find anyone to help him build it, and he came to me. He said, ‘Would you be interested?’ and that’s how it started, with Donald.”
The anchor of the project – which eventually evolved into CU-ICAR – was to be a full-scale rolling-road, adaptive-wall wind tunnel, about a $50 million building, said Rosen. The profit and fees from the development and operation of the wind tunnel would have signified an additional $33 million, according to court documents.
“I knew this wind tunnel would be a great attraction that would start it,” said Rosen, who said he spent millions master-planning the project with blueprints and models. It was like building a project in Sim City, he said, to develop CU-ICAR. “I thought it would have been great. It would have been a very cool thing.”
Rosen handpicked the site for CU-ICAR, land which he acquired through Hollingsworth Funds. Though stakeholders considered other sites throughout the process, according to court documents, Rosen kept pitching it. “It was so clear to me that that was the spot, so I pursued it,” he said. “With Clemson’s approval, and that’s probably a big part of it. Clemson was by my side.”
Change of plans
But the tunnel was not to be, as the project was never finalized, according to court documents. While Rice’s vision for the technology center was motor sports, plans shifted to a research technology park with BMW Manufacturing as the anchor tenant.
Court documents show BMW proposed in May 2002 to make a major investment in South Carolina, and identified the graduate center as one of the infrastructure projects that would require the company to invest $400 million and create 400 jobs in the state. The move cleared the way for the state to provide infrastructure funding amounting to $25 million earmarked for Clemson’s “graduate automotive engineering education and training center.”
Ultimately, a federal judge ruled in BMW’s favor, writing that the manufacturer had a right under the First Amendment to try to influence public officials, even if the means employed “can be termed unethical,” according to documents.
Rosen, who has since been awarded the Order of the Palmetto by Gov. Nikki Haley, in 2012, would not talk about “the lawsuit” to the Upstate Business Journal, saying it was too negative to bring up.
“I’m not going negative on anybody or anything, because what’s happened here is incredibly positive and I’m very, very thrilled to have had a position in it,” he said. “It was sort of like a dark chapter in the process of this great campus, and … having been there and done really good things for the community and the community reciprocating and doing really good things for me, ultimately, I’d like that to be the legacy.”
‘A lot of giving’
Rosen’s donations include $4.4 million to Greenville Tech, $4 million to the Greenville County School System, $6 million for the Bon Secours St. Francis Health System and $42 million for land associated with the Clemson University Foundation. The real estate developer – who also teaches yoga in his spare time – says while he is a businessman, he wants people to understand that when you give, you receive back tenfold or more.
“Along the way, what occurred was in order to make things happen, I had to really take on and embrace the philosophy of gifting and philanthropy,” he said. “I did a lot of giving to make things happen, and my dream was to make this incredibly technologically forward-thinking innovative campus, which was the ICAR part.”
Today, Rosen says the CU-ICAR project, along with developments he donated to, have exceeded his expectations, and he predicts they will only continue to grow in economic development potential and ability to bring innovative solutions to the state and its industries.
“It is God’s race, not me, and if Don hadn’t called me, and I hadn’t come to town and bought the site, it probably wouldn’t be there,” he said. “It would be something, somewhere, but I don’t know what would have happened. It wouldn’t be there.”
Greenville Technical College President Keith Miller recognized Rosen’s contribution at the groundbreaking this week, saying it would not have been possible in this form without him.
“The location for our new CMI is an ideal location because of its proximity to Clemson University’s ICAR, as well as Dr. Fisher Middle School,” said Miller, who collaborated with Clemson University on the project. “Cliff helped make that happen.”
Today, Rosen still owns around 35 acres surrounding the CU-ICAR site, all of which are for sale. The negativity of the BMW lawsuit “most definitely slowed me down” in terms of his Greenville ventures, he said.
“When you attack the big dog in town, you get kicked a little bit,” he said. “If none of that had happened it would be a very different world. Originally I was the developer of the entire campus, all of it, so that was the original plan. So I’d be living here, and busy.”
