By Don Moniak
Presently, the City of Aiken is pursuing the repurposing of its historic, recently vacated Municipal Building at 214 Park Avenue, SW into a city-owned conference center. At the same time, Aiken County is pursuing purchasing the same building to use as the new, centralized offices of the Aiken County Solicitor’s Office. There has yet to be a single public meeting or City Council hearing regarding the future of this depression-era, New Deal funded structure. If the City of Aiken stays true to its latest plan, Aiken County taxpayers will be saddled with tens of millions of dollars in additional costs to alleviate the serious overcrowding at the Aiken County Courthouse; downtown Aiken will lose more than 110 jobs; and another historic structure will sit vacant.
On July 15, 2022, the following question was posed to Aiken County Council Chairman Gary Bunker:
“If the county were to obtain 214 Park Avenue, SW for office space for the solicitor’s office, etc; can you provide an estimate of how many people who might also patronize downtown Aiken businesses would be working there five days a week, fifty two weeks a year?”
A week later Chairman Bunker responded:
Dear Don,
I will answer this two different ways.
First, if the Courthouse was moved to a new location, then ~110 current courthouse employees would leave downtown Aiken for the proposed University Parkway location.
Second, if the Solicitor’s office moved to 214 Park Avenue, there would be ~40 personnel shifted to this location. This includes ~25 moving from the courthouse (thereby freeing up space in the courthouse) and ~15 consolidating in from the York Street and University Parkway offices.
On Tuesday, August 16, 2022, the following question was submitted to City of Aiken Mayor Rick Osbon:
“Why is the City of Aiken balking at selling its old Municipal Building to Aiken County when doing so would place more than forty full time county workers in that downtown facility; avoid the loss of 113 county jobs from downtown Aiken and the inevitable associated loss of attorneys’ offices located in close proximity to the Judicial Center, and potentially save Aiken County taxpayers tens of millions of dollars?”
Mayor Osbon has yet to answer or even acknowledge receipt of the letter.
Background: The County Seat, Downtown Aiken, and the Aiken County Judicial Center
According to the City of Aiken’s “Master Economic Development Action Plan” (1) developed by the AECOM corporation and approved by Aiken City Council in March, 2021:
The City of Aiken, located just west of the South Carolina/Georgia Border, is slightly over 21 square miles, and is the county seat of Aiken County. (Page 7).
Beyond that singular statement, there is no further reference to The City of Aiken’s status as the county seat; and no associated discussion of the economic impact and benefits, past, present, and future, of being the seat of Aiken County government.
Aiken County has an annual budget of nearly $80 million and employs more than 900 people. Much of that workforce is stationed in and around the City of Aiken, including Sheriff’s Department headquarters, county prison, health department, emergency services, animal shelter, and the Aiken County Government Building on University Parkway that was completed in 2014.
Downtown Aiken is home to the Aiken County Courthouse, the main branch of Aiken-Barnwell-Bamberg-Edgefield (ABBE) regional library system, and the county’s historical museum. In 2014, the downtown Parkway District lost the jobs located at the county administrative building located at 828 Richland Avenue, West when the new University Parkway building opened on the edge of town.
That same year complaints of overcrowding at the Courthouse began, and Aiken County Council initiated discussions to find alternatives. One of the alternatives then, and now, is a new of judicial center on county-owned land adjacent to the Aiken County Government Building. (2)
The Aiken County Courthouse was built in 1881 and renovated in the 1980s and is the center of the county’s judicial system (3). More than 110 people work in the historic courthouse, which remains one of the most prominent and iconic buildings in downtown Aiken. An additional micro-economy of attorney’s offices exist around it, further adding economic vibrancy to the downtown.
The Future of the Old Municipal Building
To alleviate the overcrowding, Aiken County has negotiated with the City of Aiken to purchase the historic “Municipal Building” at 214 Park Avenue, SW; which functioned as Aiken’s City Hall for over three-quarters of a century. (4) Linda Johnson, President of the Historic Aiken Foundation, describes the building this way:
“This Depression-era brick structure served as Aiken’s municipal building from 1939 until 2022 and once housed Aiken’s Fire Headquarters and Police Barracks. The original doors from which fire engines raced out still front the building on Park Avenue, while remnants of the police station and its ‘calaboose’ stand guard along the Alley.”
Johnson added that this former City Hall was “built on the site of the Aiken Opera house and Aiken’s original fire headquarters which were both destroyed by fire,” and that it was funded by the Roosevelt administration’s New Deal agency the Public Works Administration.
In mid April of this year the City of Aiken completed its consolidation of all city offices into a new, centralized City Hall building at 111 Chesterfield Street, South. According to Aiken City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh, the cost to buy and renovate the former Henderson Hotel and Regions Bank Building was $13.75 million. But the move left the city as the owner of the empty, two story Municipal Building.
With the Municipal Building a mere block and half from the Aiken County Courthouse, it is an ideal location to alleviate overcrowding in the county judicial system. So Aiken County has sought to buy the old Municipal Building, and keep it for its original purpose—office space for the most basic and essential government functions, the criminal justice system.
In this scenario, the building would be occupied by forty five or more full time employees of the Aiken County’s Solicitor’s Office; with its annual budget of $2.7 million per year to prosecute crime, provide assistance to crime victims, conduct pre-trial interventions, operate the drug court, conduct juvenile arbitration, and help recover funds for any recipient of a bad check. Consolidation of the office after years of employees being scattered around the city is also expected to increase the efficiency of office operations.
The current Second Circuit Solicitor is Bill Weeks, who was first elected in 2020 to oversee prosecutors in Aiken, Bamberg, and Barnwell Counties. According to Bunker, Weeks “thinks internal improvements to make the space suitable will be minimal. Outside of security improvements, and perhaps some shifting of drywall to optimize the office space, it’s almost (but not quite) ready to be occupied ‘as is.” The Municipal Building also houses large conference rooms ideal for legal planning and plea meetings.
The County Seat Privately Hatches Its Own Plans.
Unfortunately for the County’s judicial system needs, and county and city taxpayers, a handful of unelected officials in the City of Aiken decided in April of this year to designate the Municipal Building for a new, $15-20 million, publicly owned and privately operated conference center, proposed as part of the $100 million plus demolition and redevelopment endeavor known as Project Pascalis.
In a story first reported by Aiken Standard reporter Dede Biles on April 14, 2022, Aiken Municipal Development Director (AMDC) Tim O’Briant unilaterally announced the plan to relocate the conference center previously proposed for the Newberry Hall and Warneke Cleaner properties to the old City Hall. He attributed the idea to Aiken Design Review Board (DRB) Chairman McDonald Law, and Biles quoted him saying:
“I’m as giddy as a schoolboy about how this is going to make all of downtown, instead of just The Alley, such an exciting place to hang out, live, work and play. It’s going to be fantastic.’” (5)
While elected city officials acknowledged the proposal was just that, a proposal and not a done deal, architects working for the AMDC’s chosen developers RPM Development Partners had a set of conceptual design drawings ready for the commission’s first and only Project Pascalis public meetings on April 20, 2022. It looked like a done deal, and no elected officials attended the meetings to offer any words to the contrary.
The AMDC’s announcement did not follow any public process, it was unilateral and decided through back channels. On March 20, 2022 DRB Chairman Law submitted comments to O’Briant to be forwarded to the Project Pascalis developer’s Design Review Team for the proposed complex of apartments, parking garage, and conference center. The comments were a followup to a March 17th DRB public workshop. The minutes of that public workshop contain no mention of the possibility of using the Municipal Building as a conference center. (6).
In the email, Law offered the following suggestion:
“I believe the Plan B option, relocating the Conference Center into the Municipal Building block while freeing up space in the apartment block, should be seriously considered to address some of these concerns with the scale of the new building along a main thoroughfare.”
Law added in a subsequent email:
“Adding the extra depth by relocating the Conference Center seems to shake loose a lot of things, especially on Richland Ave. where we have the complaints about scale.” (8)
AMDC Executive Director Tim O’Briant is also the city’s Economic Development Director, responsible for using “all available resources to assist small business owners and attract investors to the City of Aiken’s downtown.” (9) In the case of the Municipal Building though, O’Briant has not indicated they view Aiken County as a source of investment and jobs.
A month later, as the project began to experience increased public opposition, Bunker told the Aiken Standard:
“It is still my belief that the details of Project Pascalis are not set in stone at this point, so I think we should continue discussions with the city.” (10)
The Other, “Not cheap” Judicial Center Options.
The City’s pursuit of a new conference center at the Municipal Building would likely cost Aiken County tens of millions of dollars.
A second alternative for Aiken County is to buy and renovate the historic Charles Simon’s Federal Courthouse (11) at 213 Park Avenue, West, also a block and a half from The Courthouse. But this building may not even be available to the county, and at present there are no cost estimates for repurposing it for county judicial functions. While the county’s appraised value ($475,000) for the Simon’s building is similar to that of the Municipal Building ($500,000), the former is not office-ready and would likely require substantial renovations, perhaps similar to the $13.75 million renovation of the Henderson Hotel for a new City Hall.
A third choice is to buy and renovate the old Farmer’s and Merchants Bank building at the corner of Laurens and Park, almost three blocks from the courthouse. This building is currently leased by Bank of America, which recently announced it will close that branch. Again, there are no cost estimates for renovation, and the county assessor’s appraised value of the property is more than two-thirds ($823,000) greater than the Municipal Building. It, too, would require renovations to convert banking space to judicial office space.
The final and most expensive alternative is a new County Judicial Center located on University Parkway next to the new County administration complex. The county owns thirty-one acres of property adjacent to its looming headquarters; land purchased in 2011 for $1.1 million to provide for such contingencies. The estimated cost of a new judicial center is $30-40 million depending on size, but this is based on costs from other counties prior to inflationary impacts on building supplies and labor costs.
According to Bunker, the $30-40 million cost estimates are, “only at a very high ‘parametric’ level. This is because we have data on recent courthouses across South Carolina that were combined to get this +/- 50% type number. At this stage, this is simply to communicate the ‘order of magnitude’ cost. In other words, it will be a lot, and not cheap.”
Conclusion:
If Aiken County moves to a new Judicial Center on University Parkway, at least 113 jobs will be lost from downtown Aiken and the most prominent, historic building in downtown Aiken will be the latest vacant building.
If the City of Aiken decides it will not sell the Municipal Building to Aiken County, that decision will require Aiken County taxpayers to spend tens of millions of dollars to upgrade judicial departments, probably requiring either a tax increase or budget cuts to other county departments.
The move would also likely lead to an inevitable exodus of private attorney practices from the downtown area located in close proximity to the courthouse. The impact on downtown businesses of losing the Aiken County Courthouse from downtown Aiken, where it has been since the 1880’s, has not been measured, assessed, or even considered by the City Council, City Manager or his economic development department.
The potential economic and civic benefits of converting the Municipal Building into a city-owned conference center are highly uncertain. One hospitality study commissioned by the AMDC predicted only five to ten conferences per year of 150 people or more. (12) The remaining business would derive from smaller groups. A second study estimated an annual operating loss of $300,000 for the City of Aiken, and presumed a focus not on conventions and trade shows, but banquets and local events that could be held at smaller venues. (13)
On the other hand, the certain and clearly-defined benefits of transferring the building to the Aiken County Government—for use as a sorely-needed and cost effective adjunct to the existing Aiken County Courthouse—are obvious, and are reinforced by the principles of common sense, good judgment, and civic virtue. The Solicitor’s Office is an essential branch of government that works to protect the safety of all county residents, and assisting it in its mission should be viewed as a civic responsibility by the Aiken County seat of government, the City of Aiken.
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References
(1) AECOM Prepared “Strategic Economic Development Master Plan.”
https://aikenmdc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/AikenStrategicEDPlan_FINAL-WEB-PDF.pdf
(2) Aiken Standard. March 1, 2014: “Officials: Judicial Center outgrows usefulness.” . https://www.postandcourier.com/aikenstandard/news/officials-judicial-center-outgrows-usefulness/article_8185597a-f09b-5336-b892-beb6859908fd.html
(3) South Carolina Picture Project: Aiken County Courthouse https://www.scpictureproject.org/aiken-county/aiken-county-courthouse.html
(4) State Historic Register file for 214 Park Avenue, W; The “Municipal Building.” https://webapps.cityofaikensc.gov/historic_resources_survey/hrs_form.aspx?site_no=1484
(5) “Aiken to Dedicate New Municipal Building.” Aiken Standard and Review, October 25, 1939, https://newspaperarchive.com/aiken-standard-and-review-oct-25-1939-p-1/ Accessed August 23, 2022
(6) Aiken Standard. April 14, 2022: New Project Pascalis proposal includes using old Aiken Municipal Building. https://www.postandcourier.com/aikenstandard/news/local-government/new-project-pascalis-proposal-includes-using-old-aiken-municipal-building/article_5cb81eaa-bb6e-11ec-9a00-e3b6fc8c43dd.html
(7) DRB Meeting Minutes. March 17, 2022: https://edoc.cityofaikensc.gov/WebLink/DocView.aspx?id=2735904&dbid=0&repo=City-of-Aiken-LF
(8) March 20 Email exchange between McDonald Law and Tim O’Briant, cc’ed to Mary Tilton.
(9) City of Aiken 2022 Budget Report.
https://edoc.cityofaikensc.gov/WebLink/DocView.aspx?id=624200&dbid=0&repo=City-of-Aiken-LF&cr=1
(10) Aiken Standard. May 8, 2022. “Aiken County Council chairman forms ad hoc committee to look at Judicial Center issues.”
https://www.postandcourier.com/aikenstandard/news/aiken-county-council-chairman-forms-ad-hoc-committee-to-look-at-judicial-center-issues/article_457303c2-d5f9-11ec-8081-db9015f6c65e.html?fbclid=IwAR0LHQ2n5ap31FizSktgjNcd4HJeMjaoxy3v8_LfTbHT23LOq94SeO7OYzI
(11) Statewide Survey of Historic Properties for the Charles Simons Federal Courthouse. https://webapps.cityofaikensc.gov/historic_resources_survey/hrs_form.aspx?site_no=1624
(12) Proposed Conference Center Market Analysis Aiken, Summary of Findings, March 18, 2022. HVS Convention, Sports & Entertainment Facility Consulting.
(13) AECOM Downtown Aiken Hotel + Conference Center + Municipal Garage Market & Financial Findings. July 12, 2021.
County property