Blame it on jet lag.

With Orangeburg County Council Chairman Harry Wimberly and County Administrator Bill Clark fresh off a 12-hour weekend flight from the Middle East, the regularly scheduled Monday council meeting has been postponed for a week.

Aside from the long flight for the county's top officials, sufficient time is also needed to prepare the regular council agenda.

So, instead of on March 17, County Council will meet at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, March 24.

Wimberly, Clark, Development Director Gregg Robinson and Development Commission Chairman Jeannine Kees left Orangeburg March 8 for a week-long fact-finding visit to Dubai, the headquarters of Jafza.

The United Arab Emirates-based logistics company, a subsidiary of Dubai World, announced last fall that it intends to invest between $600 million and $700 million in Orangeburg County. Plans call for a logistics, manufacturing and distribution hub that could employ between 8,000 and 10,000 workers. With construction planned for late 2009, the project is expected to attract some $1.2 billion in private investment.

Applied Technology and Management Inc., a Florida-based engineering, design and consulting firm, has been chosen to provide program management and development support services for the first phase of the 1,300-acre center. The company has a staff of 15 working in Dubai on a number of projects.

The local delegation, which also includes a state Department of Commerce official with the global business division and a writer for the "Charleston Business Journal," is expected to see first-hand how the Jebel Ali Free Trade Zone (Jafza) operates.

The Jebel Ali foreign trade zone project has been cited as a model of what Jafza would like to see occur in Orangeburg. The local center would be Jafza's first entry into the United States.

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