Redevelopment of the Project Pascalis Properties and a 4-story, 228-vehicle, $7 million “structured parking solution” for national lab project leads Aiken City Council’s development priority list for 2023.

by Don Moniak

February 28, 2023
Updated March 4, 2023.

One hour and fifty minutes into its Monday, February 27, 2023 meeting, with the audience dwindled to a fraction of its original size, Aiken City Council quickly and quietly approved three “action items” (1) from its January 27, 2023 “New Horizons” work session. With the exception of the Powderhouse Road to Whiskey Road connector road that will facilitate largescale development and city growth, the prioritized actions involve the future of former city administrative properties and the city’s commercial property portfolio known as the Project Pascalis properties.

The vote on the matter took place during the “petitions and resolutions” portion of the meeting. If the wording of the priority list—coupled with its lateness on the agenda—was intended to mask controversy, the effort was successful. Nobody in the audience addressed the topic.

For the second consecutive year, a “structured parking solution” is in the works, this time in support of the proposed Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) “Workforce Development” office building and computational laboratory (2) that is currently on center stage in the city’s latest downtown demolition and redevelopment efforts. Council intends to further subsidize the federal lab’s new off-site facility—which already has a $20 million plutonium funds allocation—with hospitality tax revenues and plutonium settlement funds presently allocated to downtown and Northside redevelopment.

At the top of the priority list is:

“Downtown core improvements to include upgrades to Richland Avenue parcels, construction of a surface parking lot on Newberry Street, and pursuing a structured parking solution adjacent to the current Municipal Building.”

In this case, some translation is necessary:

• “Richland Avenue parcels” = Project Pascalis properties stretching from Hotel Aiken to Warneke Cleaners. 
• “Surface parking lot” = 86 vehicle parking lot on the 100 block of NW Newberry Street on property owned by the Aiken Corporation.
• “Structured Parking solution” = a $7 million, 228-vehicle, four-story parking garage between the new City Hall on Chesterfield and the Aiken Corporation’s Newberry Street building, where Department of Energy (DOE)/ Savannah River Site (SRS) contractor Amentum is presently the tenant. 
  
  (Update: On March 3rd, the City of Aiken and Cranston Engineering submitted an application to the city’s Design Review Board for a three-story, 162-vehicle parking garage).

According to the meeting minutes for the New Horizons workshop held the morning of Friday, January 27th at the Lessie B Price Senior and Youth Center, City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh told Council he already “submitted an application for the $20 million” of plutonium settlement funds for the “SRS lab.” He added that:

• “We want to construct the parking garage concurrent with any construction for the Lab.”
• “ The proposed parking garage would be for 228 spaces. It would be a four level garage with the fourth level not covered,” is estimated to cost $7 million, and would be on both city and Aiken Corporation property.
• “ The Aiken Corporation has a lot on Newberry Street which could be used for parking with about 86 spaces.” (There are actually three adjacent lots totalling 1.0 acre).
• The 320 combined parking spaces “should provide the parking needed for the Lab.”
• “We could fund a portion of the cost for a parking garage from the plutonium funds. We also have some funds from the Hospitality Tax that could be used by borrowing from the Hospitality Tax revenue to pay for a portion of a garage.”
  
  The downtown national lab office complex has endured an interesting ride in its first month of public visibility. After the project was introduced with great fanfare and finality on January 23rd, the vision was tempered during a public forum on Feburary 6th regarding a project “feasibility study.”
  
  At that meeting, moderator K.T. Jacobs stated, “what was said (two weeks prior) is not necessarily what is going to happen” and there were no drawings, blueprints, or plans to review. Jacobs, representing the architectural firm of McMillan, Pazdan, and Smith, chose not to disclose the firm’s “client for this study is the Aiken Corporation, not the City of Aiken,” until Feburary 23rd. If the lab project proceeds as planned, the Aiken Corporation will likely be the lab facility’s landlord.
  
  During its February 13th meeting, City Council was relatively muted about the project, with a few members claiming it was still new to them. But Council was made aware the path forward for the lab project will not be as contentious as Project Pascalis, when support was articulated by Luis Rinaldini— who is a plaintiff in the ongoing Blake et al vs City of Aiken et al lawsuit alleging multiple violations of state and local law during the Project Pascalis process. Rinaldini stated:
  
  “The consequence of your actions is that, for example on the Savannah River National Lab deal, you are now a negative despite all your good work on it. The public reception was very hostile and we’re having to work very hard to turn them around. If we defend you they hate us for defending you… I personally am a big supporter of that project.”
  
  Later, when speaking about Council’s plan to assume the duties of the AMDC, Rinaldini, who is also an Historic Aiken Foundation board member, stated that “we’re trying to explain to the community why a preservation organization and others might support the lab project.”

Also during the February 13th meeting, during a discussion on plutonium settlement funds utilization, Historic Aiken Foundation President Linda Johnson spoke in favor of paying off the $9.6 Project Pascalis debt from the $25 million settlement allocation. Johnson also suggested a path for Aiken’s northside—-which currently stands to receive little or no funding from the plutonium funds allocation—to receive a few million dollars from future sales of the properties, stating:

“Regarding the fact that we have $9.6 million to use to pay off the bond, presumably sometime in the future we could recoup some of that by selling properties, etc. She said she would like to see the City make a commitment to set aside the recouped money for special projects, possibly something like more for the northside which did not really get a big part of the money.”

Last night, Council adopted its path forward on the lab project without ever saying its name, contradicting the decisional timeline put forth during the February 6th public forum (3). Prior to the meeting, Council was scheduled to “receive a legal briefing on the Blake v. City of Aiken lawsuit,” during a closed-door Executive Session. The lawsuit is presently in a mediation phase (4). Council provided no comments about the briefing.

Read next: “It Doest Look Like Aiken.”

Footnotes

(1) City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh’s supporting memorandum for New Horizon’s Action Items.

(2) During the January 23, 2023 “State of the City” public relations extravaganza, SRNL Director Majidi described the office complex not only as a workforce development facility, but one for computational work.

“SRNL employees will perform some of our computational modeling and simulation. We’ll  have a team of employees working with the university to increase our engagement with faculty postdoctoral and graduate students interns and minority serving institution programs. Some of our employees will work on non-proliferation training programs while other will work on Workforce Development and HR functions moreover as a collaboration Hub.” 

(3) SRNL downtown office facility “Feasibility Study” schedule presented on February 6, 2023:

(4) A mediator was assigned to the Pascalis lawsuit on January 31, 2023.