The Lowcountry is home to a number of businesses that started on local grounds, but have expanded upwards and outwards to open locations outside of their Beaufort County homelands. Here are just a few.
The Cypress: Continued caring
If those pesky winters weren’t quite so long, Cypress Group founding president Jim Coleman says he’d open another Cypress continuing-care retirement community in his beloved Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
“But it’s a little too seasonal here,” Coleman said from his mountain retreat in Blowing Rock, N.C. “You know THE blowing rock? I’m looking out at it right now. But I had to put on a sweater this morning.”
Coleman and his partner, Marc Puntereri, started The Cypress of Hilton Head in 1992 and have since opened high-end continuing care communities in Charlotte, Chapel Hill, (where Coleman graduated from UNC) and Raleigh. (The Chapel Hill community is called The Cedars.)
But when he first launched The Cypress of Hilton Head, Coleman didn’t foresee the success of the company outside of Beaufort County. “I had been involved with other developments, including Hilton Head Plantation, Indigo Run, Main Street and a few golf courses, but I realized that the continuing-care retirement field was enjoyable, so I shifted my focus” he says.