Should the Aiken Corporation be dissolved? This question is not new, but the question is being raised more often today as growing numbers of citizens take a critical look at the purpose, performance and history of this organization and ask, “Whose interests are being served?”and “Has it been worth the cost over the past 25 years?” The thoughts, below, will be explored more fully in an upcoming article on the Aiken Corporation’s “Amentum Model.”

Every so often, the Aiken Corporation gets a wild hair to do something big. It seems the bigger and boondogglier the project, the more urgent the push to get it done. Accounts from old newspaper articles, editorials and letters-to-the-editor regarding these projects suggest a habitual lack of organization, cost overruns, management by crisis, a disregard for citizen input, and promises of the economic prosperity to follow.

This all started in 2000, with the Amentum (nee Knudsen-Morrison-Westinghouse-Washington-URS-AECOM) building on Newberry Street, when the Aiken Corporation helped stage a corporate coup via an SRS contractor which transformed a modest community project into a $7.7 million boondoggle. The Amentum building project was plagued with so many cost overruns that the interior had to be finished with volunteer labor. The exterior suffered for lack of funds to extend the brickwork around to the backside of the building. There was talk for awhile of planting some shrubs to cover their derrière, but that idea passed.

____________

The 2002 Washington/Amentum Center building project went on to be repeated, albeit on a smaller scale, in the controversial Railroad Depot project on Union Street, which likewise promised to draw tourists and bring prosperity to the downtown. The Depot was to serve as the Aiken Visitors Center, the office for Aiken, Parks, Recreation and Tourism Department, a railroad museum, and an events space. The facility would be self-supporting, with rentals for events, reception and business meetings covering the operating and maintenance costs.

The Railroad Depot project was widely protested from its pre-2000 inception through the 2008 groundbreaking — and onward past its 2010 completion. Per the Amentum model, the Depot costs repeatedly overran the original projections. As one local resident wrote in a July 17, 2007 letter to the Aiken Standard:

“The Aiken Corporation and Depot Committee pat each other on the back and tell each other everybody loves their plan. I disliked this project for the original $300,000; for $3 million I hate it.”¹

In this same letter, the citizen commented on the latest design changes to the Railroad Depot along with the Aiken Corporation’s request for another $250k:

“On Monday, the Depot project presenter used the Washington Center and Newberry Street as references. The Washington Center project and the problems that are now glossed over were a big mess — changing designs, not enough money, incomplete business plan. How soon Council forgets. This Depot seems on track for more of the same.”¹

Another local citizen, who described the Railroad Depot project as a “D.C.-style bailout,” wrote in her August 23, 2010 letter to the editor,

“Ten years after the mayor and city council told taxpayers that the railroad depot would be privately funded, they have gone back on their promise, and now the taxpayer will be on the hook to complete and maintain the newest downtown money pit.“²

And speaking of pits, the self-supporting Railroad Depot was recipient to $0.9. million in plutonium money in 2022. The money will be used in the transition to “discontinue using the existing Depot as a Visitors Center and to use it for an upscale railroad museum.” 

_____________

Why is the Aiken Corporation pushing so urgently to shoehorn Pascalis 2.0, into the heart of our historic downtown? And is it our imagination that City Council seems to be pressing harder still on the accelerator pedal this September, as if there is a hurry to get someplace before November?

After the Amentum fiasco in 2002, there were calls for an independent, 3rd party audit. This never happened. After the Railroad Depot boondoggle in 2011, there were calls to dissolve the Aiken Corporation. This never happened.

It’s 2023. We’re eight+ months into the Aiken Corporation’s latest big project which has piggybacked atop the AMDC’s (Aiken Municipal Development Commission’s) failed $9.6 million Project Pascalis. Promised deadlines came and went. The long-awaited Feasibility Study revealed little. Taxpayers who footed the $250k bill for “predevelopment” work on the SRNL office complex would like to know what they bought with that money. The public has been very vocal for months now in their rejection of putting this lab in the downtown — and in the accompanying parking garage that this office complex would likely necessitate.

Citizens have been urging, ever since the SRNL project was announced, that properties outside the historic downtown core be considered. The old Aiken County Hospital property, whose buyer is clearly amenable to developing the SRNL office building on that property, has been perhaps the most favored site, followed by the various empty office buildings on the southside.

During a September 25, 2023 morning meeting, the Aiken Corporation Board described their consideration of the Hospital property as an act of “appeasing” and of going “above and beyond” in assessing it. Public participation in the upcoming City Council meeting was equated with “a circus.” There it is again — that disregard for public input.

It would appear that little has changed since 2002 and 2010.

This might be a good time to revisit the November 9, 2011 guest editorial in the Aiken Standard, written by then-Councilman Dick Dewar, who called into question the Aiken Corporation’s “financial and management acumen” in the wake of these projects.

On the Washington [Amentum] building, he described the Aiken Corporation’s latest request to change the terms of their $3.4 million loan — the third such request. On the Railroad Depot, he wrote:

“Without city Council approval, the Aiken corporation expanded the scope of the depot project and in the process spent over $2 million and incurred debt of over $800,000.”³

He also wrote,:

“In summary, the Aiken Corporation has repeatedly initiated projects for small amounts, or to be funded privately, but has an expanded the size incurring debt and responsibilities they cannot support. They then appeal to the City Council to use taxpayer dollars to meet these responsibilities. Given the history of financial and management problems with the Aiken corporation, I think the city Council needs to restrict their ability to initiate projects without adequate funding.”³

Laying the responsibility onto City Council to impose stringent costs controls on the Aiken Corporation, he finished with this:

“If City Council cannot get the Aiken Corporation under control, it should be dissolved.”³

This isn’t about disliking the individuals on the Aiken Corporation Board. This isn’t about disliking the Railroad Depot, the Amenteum Center, or the Savannah River Site. It’s about, among other things, returning the control over the decisions that affect the City to the people.

__________________

1. Stoker, Jenne, “Depot Project a Boondoggle?” Aiken Standard, July 17, 2007.
2. Pate, Kathy, “Depot Project a D.C.-style Bailout,” Aiken Standard, August 23, 2010.
3. Dewar, Dick, “Aiken Corp. Needs to be More Accountable,” Aiken Standard, November 9, 2011.

More on the Aiken Corporation: https://aikenchronicles.com/2023/07/13/news-release-aiken-corporation-issued-notice-of-violation/