Page One view: Plaintiffs and Defendants in Project Pascalis lawsuit.
Lawyers for nine plaintiffs, including the Historic Aiken Foundation, Green Boundary Foundation and former City Councilperson Dick Dewar, filed a complaint in the Second Judicial Circuit of South Carolina against two dozen City of Aiken officials and a pair of development companies collaborating with the city to demolish and reconstruct a substantial portion of historic, downtown Aiken.
Pages one to thirty-six of the plea assiduously outline the legal basis for their claims, including South Carolina Community Development, Freedom of Information, Ethics and Government Accountability statutes; and City of Aiken zoning ordinances.
Pages 36 to 90 contain the general factual allegations and provide welcome summertime nonfiction for a majority of Aiken area residents who object to Project Pascalis. Like a good true white collar crime story, the allegations detail sham proceedings, citizens locked out of a distorted and confusing public process, conflict of interest violations from the Mayor to the City Attorney, and city boards that regulate the public while serving the developers they are charged with monitoring.
Recently obtained documents confirm the evolution of the $75-100 million downtown demolition and reconstruction effort known as Project Pascalis. While one of the earliest project descriptions indicated a greater presence on Laurens Street, every conceptual design from the early days includes substantial development in The Alley, and an absence of options for renovating historic buildings such as the Hotel Aiken.
Today, The Alley is in the midst of the project area, yet city officials have denied or downplayed any plans that may impact the popular gathering area and its businesses, just as officials withheld conceptual designs from 2021—just four years removed from the multi-million dollar renovation that disrupted local businesses for more than a year.
For example, at the Aiken Municipal Development Commission’s (AMDC) April 20, 2022 public “design review” meeting, the following submitted question was read aloud by the meeting’s Zoom moderator:
How much more will the Project Pascalis footprint grow? In 2020 downtown redevelopment only included properties fronting Richland and the new municipal building. The most recent online map includes Newberry. Now with the addition of the (old) Municipal building the project (area) has grown threefold and an (private) ownership island occupies the middle. Are there any plans for this existing private property?
The answer from AMDC executive director and meeting moderator Tim O’Briant was: “there are none.” (1)
One of the earliest Project Pascalis documents is the Wyatt-Boudreaux Group letter of agreement, recently obtained from the City of Aiken via a Freedom of Information Act request.
On March 12, 2021 Boudreaux Group of Columbia President Heather Mitchell signed an agreement to complete “Downtown Development Project Conceptual Design Services” on behalf of Wyatt Development (GAC, LLC) (2) for an unnamed project involving a 100 room hotel, 125 unit apartment complex, conference center with a 450 seat capacity, upscale retail space, and a parking garage large enough to complement the development.
The Wyatt-Boudreaux agreement was finalized ten days after Weldon’s WTC Investments, LLC had signed a contract to purchase three downtown properties—collectively referred to later as the “Shah Property”—for $7.5 million. (3) WTC’s involvement came only one year after it backed out of a similar project at the “old hospital” and Aiken County office complex at 828 Richland Ave E. (4) Its “agent” in both the downtown Aiken deal and the failed old hospital venture was Aiken Attorney Ray Massey, whose law partner Gary Smith has served as Aiken City Attorney for more than twenty years.
The Wyatt-Boudreaux agreement described the project as encompassing everything from The Antique Mall on Laurens to the Hotel Aiken, wrapping east around Richland Avenue to Newberry Street, south to The Alley, and north up Bee Lane. The description clearly includes buildings in The Alley as well as the eastern portion of the Aiken Municipal Building on The Alley’s south side.
Aiken Antique Mall, Candidate for Demolition in March 2021
Three days after the agreement was signed by Boudreaux and sent to Wyatt for his signature and Tim O’Briant for his records, Ray Massey’s “Aiken Alley Holdings, LLC” moved forward on procuring a key portion of The Alley for the project. On March 15th his investment firm—registered with the SC Secretary of State only a month prior—closed on a $2.025 million deal for 200 The Alley and 214 The Alley, parcels housing TakoSushi, Aiken Taproom, and several other businesses. The deal also included a parking area behind 214 The Alley on Bee Lane.
Three days after the closing, the AMDC publicly announced Project Pascalis. Few details were announced beyond the news of a commission resolution allowing AMDC Chair Keith Wood and O’Briant to pursue an agreement with an “experienced and well-capitalized” private developer the commission had “recruited and identified.”
In a subsequent interview, Tim O’Briant told the Aiken Standard “transparency is key” and promised additional pubic information within a few months. The Boudreaux/Wyatt agreement specified a timeline of April 12, 2021 for a presentation to City Council and “invited stakeholders.” The terms “public meeting” and “public hearing” are absent from the agreement.
That schedule was never met. No public meetings or presentations to council were held in April, 2021. However, the AMDC did meet behind closed doors in Executive Session on April 13th; a habit the commission would undertake during more than sixty percent of its meetings in the next six months. (5)
(1) April 20, 2021 AMDC “Design Workshop,” 5:30 meeting to 7:00 pm meeting that extended into a scheduled City Council work session. Listen to question/answer at 2:56:07 in the video below.
(2) Weldon Wyatt signed the agreement on March 23. The words “Wyatt Development Company” are crossed out below the letterhead and on the signature page, and “GAC, LLC” is handwritten in their place. This typo may have foreshadowed Wyatt’s early exit from the project; as well as the general lack of attention to detail that has plagued the project. The last version of Wyatt Development, LLC was actually dissolved in April, 2013.
(3) From: “Resolution Authorizing Acceptance of Assignments
Adopted November 9, 2021” Aiken Municipal Development Commission:
“In anticipation of the Commission’s efforts to consolidate ownership of real property in connection with Project Pascalis, the Greater Aiken County Chamber of Commerce (the “Chamber of Commerce”) has entered into the following purchase and sale agreeme for the acquisition of such real property: (i) a Purchase and Sale Agreement by and between Myrtle H. Anderson, seller, and WTC Investments, LLC, as purchaser, dated April 15, 2021 (the “Anderson Agreement”), for the purchase ofreal property identified as TMS# 121-21-08-004(the “Anderson Property”) for the purchase price of $2,000,000; and (ii) a Purchase and Sale Agreement by and among Historic Hospitality, LLC, S&N Hospitality, LLC, Shah Enterprises, LLC, and Paresh Shah, LLC, collectively as sellers, and WTC Investments, LLC, as purchaser, dated March 2, 2021 (the “Shah Agreement” and together with the Anderson Agreement, the “Agreements”), for the purchase of real property identified as TMS# 121-21-09-002, 121-21-08- 001, 121-21-08-002, 121-21-08-003, 121-21-08-009, and 121-21-09-001 (the “Shah Property” and collectively with the Anderson Property, the “Properties”), for the purchase price of $7,500,000. (5) Pursuant to a bond ordinance of City Council enacted August 23, 2021, the City issued its $9,600,000 General Obligation Bond, Taxable Series 2021.”
