The Aiken Corporation Study Missed the Most Essential Detail of All: The Scope of the Study.
Less than two weeks after the long-awaited Feasibility Study was released to the public, the Aiken Corporation voted Monday morning to recommend a Newberry Street site to City Council for a $20 million “mixed-use facility.” This recommendation came almost 8 months to the day after the mayor’s January 2023 announcement that the City of Aiken was partnering with Savannah River National Lab (SRNL) to build a $20 million “workforce development center” on the property known to most of us as the failed Project Pascalis properties.
The Aiken Corporation is a not-for-profit entity doing business for the City as part of a “public-private partnership”. There are no elected officials on the Board and, according to their bylaws, membership is chosen by the Board.
In March — two months after the January announcement of the City of Aiken’s partnership with SRNL, and despite the fact that there was no signed contract with SRNL — the Aiken Corporation was awarded a $250K , no-bid contract to do pre-development work for the SRNL project. The contract identified a single downtown site on publicly-owned, Pascalis project properties to be evaluated for both the proposed SRNL facility and retail use.
Three notable changes occurred between the January announcement and the September feasibility study release:
- The size of the building was reduced from 45,000 sq ft to 36,000 sq ft.
- The project morphed from an SRNL workforce development building to a $20 million mixed-use spec building with no committed tenants.
- The number of potential sites grew from one to a surprising five options.
One thing that did not change were the terms of the March 2023 contract with the Aiken Corporation, which not only defined road boundaries, it listed specific property Tax ID numbers for the scope of the study. Had the Aiken Corporation read the details of their contract, they’d have realized that all but one of the properties in their study, including the Newberry Street site they recommended, were outside of the scope of the contract’s defined boundaries! More on this in a moment.
“The Unforced Error”
One of the biggest points of discussion preceding the Newberry Street vote in the Monday morning Aiken Corporation meeting regarded the major snafu at the second public input meeting on Thursday night, September 21. At that meeting, a citizen pointed out that the poster board presentation of the old Aiken County Hospital site, (which had been featured in the first meeting on September 14), was missing.
The Aiken Corporation panel was caught completely off-guard and meeting attendees were treated to the Aiken Corp’s version of Whose on First? Neither MPS nor the Aiken Corporation told the public on Thursday that the hospital site had been removed from consideration. In fact, it seemed like the Aiken Corp panelists had no idea the Old Hospital Site had been eliminated somewhere between their first public reveal a week earlier and the Thurs Sept 21st Q and A session.
One Aiken Corporation panel member offered that the reason was because the hospital property is under contract, as if that precluded it from being considered. The hospital property developer, Aiken County native Tracey Turner, had mentioned interest in the SRNL option to City Council during an August 14th work session meeting featuring his presentation of the project vision.
The Old Hospital property was the favored site by the majority of citizen attendees, who were also overwhelmingly opposed to the lab facility being built on the taxpayer-funded, failed Project Pascalis properties. Mr. Turner was in attendance at the Thursday, September 21 meeting and spoke on the topic of the missing poster board on this hospital property.
By Monday morning, in the Aiken Corporation meeting, the narrative had shifted to state that the site didn’t meet the criteria of the study. The Thursday night snafu, which had the Aiken Corporation Board not giving notice on the removal of the hospital site poster boards, was deemed, “an unforced error.” Below is a video clip of KJ Jacobs of McMillan Pazdan Smith, the architectural firm tasked with the Feasibility Study, speaking to Aiken Corp Members via Zoom in the Monday morning meeting.
Architect K.J. Jacobs: “Maybe the mistake was looking at the site at all because it never met the criteria of the study in the first place “
Scope of The Project
Newsflash: With the exception of the “Richland Avenue” site on the Pascalis project properties, not a single alternative site met the criteria of the study.
As reported in Three Missing Pages, the site boundaries and tax parcel numbers were defined in Exhibit A of the March 14th Professional Services Agreement. City Council was told on March 13th that “
The scope of the project is located on a portion of property between Bee Lane, The Alley, Richland Ave West, and Newberry St. Southwest .”
( March 13th City Council Meeting Minutes, Page 16)
These boundaries are highlighted in yellow on the map below.
So, not only did the Old Hospital Site not meet the location criteria as defined by the city, none of the other sites, which had somehow been added to the study without the public’s knowledge, met the location criteria.
The only site that meets the scope of the project, because it falls within the prescribed boundaries, is Site 1 — Richland Avenue. The other four sites all fall outside of the study’s boundaries, including the Newberry Street site that was recommended by the Aiken Corporation.
If the Aiken Corporation can’t adhere to the most basic condition, the scope of the study, how can we have confidence of their oversight moving forward?
The relevance of this question is more pronounced when examining other points of contractual noncompliance, including the lack of a mandated public “goal-setting” forum intended to “create consensus among stakeholders regarding the goals of the project,” and the absence of an “internet web site published specifically to chronicle” all public forum proceedings and feedback and information gathered during the process. The Aiken Corporation website only contains the feasibility report, but no feedback, input, comments, or any data used to reach conclusions.
The Details
When it came time to vote on the Newberry Street site recommendation during the Monday morning Aiken Corporation meeting, two of the members abstained from voting but stayed in the discussion. If Aiken officials learned one thing from failed Project Pascalis it should have been how to properly recuse from meetings when potential conflicts of interest are at play.
Ironically, that evening, during the regular Monday night City Council meeting, Aiken Corporation’s Vice-Chairman, Pat Cunning, went on to tell Council, while extolling their success with public-private partnerships such as this, “The devil is in the details. We just watch the money.”
FOOTNOTES
The $250k, no-bid contract received by the Aiken Corporation to do pre-development work came with a defined territory of study as listed in the March 13th, 2023 City Council minutes and the March 14th, 2023 Professional Agreement signed by the City.
A December 9, 2022 contract between the Aiken Corporation and McMillan Pazdan Smith was also referred to in a March 14 Professional Agreement and a Nov 30th letter which was signed Buzz Rich on Dec 9th also references the location
30 November 2022
ATTN: Mr. Tim O’ Briant
Chairman Arthur W. ” Buzz” Rich
Aiken Corporation
111 Chesterfield Street
Aiken, SC 29801
RE: Goal Setting Programming for New Office Building + Meeting Venue
City of Aiken, South Carolina
Dear Tim:
Thank you for the opportunity to provide this proposal related to your proposed new, mixed- use building in downtown Aiken. We understand that the proposed site is an +/- 0. 55- acre, T- shaped parcel bounded by Richland Avenue NW, Newberry Street NW and Bee Lane. The project, which will be constructed and owned by the Aiken Corporation, is conceptualized as a mixed- use building containing approximately 30, 000 square feet of office space and a 10, 000- 15, 000 square foot exhibition hall with associated meeting and support spaces. The site is currently occupied by a variety of existing buildings, some of which may be of cultural of historical significance.
This is a fantastic article and solid research. Thank you.
Excellent and detailed cometary, even though I am not a city resident all the back room & good old boy activities just makes me angry.
Here is a point of clarification the Aiken Corporation itself has not made:
The Aiken Corporation is maintaining two website.
The first is at aikencorporation.org.
This is where the link to the feasibility study is provided in this article:
https://aikencorporation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Aiken-Corp-Progress-Report-on-Mixed-Use-Facility-Feasibility-Study-2023.pdf
There is also aikenscproject.info where there is now a page on the “Mixed Use Project” that is dedicated strictly to this project. There is no link from aikencorporation.org to this aikenscproject.info page.
On Sept 21st I visited the aikenscproject.info page, and it only had this link up: https://aikenscproject.info/project-information/
Since then the following has been added: Frequently Asked Questions; written, anonymous comments submitted on September 14th, and three op-eds written by project supporters—two Aiken Corp members and Mayor Rick Osbon.
Neither Aiken Corporation nor McMillan Pazdan and Smith has yet to provide any information at aikenscproject.info pertaining to:
a. The existence of the February 6, 2023 public forum, aka “the listening session.”
b. Comments submitted to Nationallabaikenproject@mcmillanpazdansmith.com , the email account identified at the February 6, 2023 public forum as the means to communicate with MPS.
c. Any information pertaining to other “stakeholder” meetings held by MPS and Aiken Corp.
d. Any reports other than the feasibility report generated as a requirement under the Aiken Corp’s contract with the City of Aiken.
e. The Aiken Corporations Contract with the City of Aiken, which can be viewed and downloaded from here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PhxhW7wwsFo26qjMmWfs5BEj6lBbQ2oR/view
Thank you Don!
Thank you Kelly for your thoughtful and thorough review of this City history. It continues to raise more issues that it answers.
The Aiken Corporation (AC) has played a silent partner role with the City Council for many years. It appears to be a default relationship, when the City has money to spend on a project.
Late in 2022, November or December, some contact with SRNL occurred, which lead to the City positioning itself to utilize $20Million in Pu monies to build an office facility in Aiken. Obviously, AC had some fairly explicit knowledge of the SRNL objectives, as it engaged McMIllan Pazdan Smith (MPS) to assist in developing specifications, location and initial space requirements.
It was not until January, 2023 that the Aiken public knew anything about this project, when Ed Woltz talked about it in the State of the City broadcast. He talked about all the six-figure jobs that would be employed at the facility and the implied economic benefits to the community.
It was not until February that the public had a chance to see and hear about the SRNL facility that was decided for Bee Lane. MPS conducted the meeting for AC and the general view of the public was negative. I believe that the reason for that was twofold: first, because it was hatched in City Council executive session and second because the location was not palatable to the public.
Another month went by and City Council awarded a $250,000 contract to AC to do further study and to bring the project to a more developed status. This major amount of money was awarded on a no-bid basis, as has been the Council’s pattern for most thing involving construction. Meanwhile, City departments were (and are) struggling with insufficient budgets to provide for: clean water, public safety and overall City maintenance.
In last week’s City Council meeting, Buzz Rich described the relationship of AC to City Council as “cousins”. Think about that. Such a sense of entitlement for a private, non-profit organization to presume a relationship equal to Council, with no elected members and no direct accountability to Aiken citizens. This is nonsensical.
The outrage that erupted from Project Pascalis was justified, and I suggest that the same cast of characters and the same process is in play today, absenting the AMDC. City Council continues on cruise control to throw money to the AC with little or no thought to the public’s preference. Now, AC has decided to recommend property owned by them as the preferred site for the SRNL facility.
As taxpayers and voters, we must demand that the City rethink how it does business. There are only a few reasons for Council to go into executive sessions, and vital discussions about City redevelopment and the expenditure of Pu monies are not among them. All conversation about such major changes in our city demand public hearing and dialog. Dispersal of funds for major projects demand an RFP process every time. A new Mayor will be with us in November and we can only hope that a fresh, citizen-involved Council will begin to restore our confidence in elected leadership.
Spot on!!! the text of another letter to the editor Aiken Standard should publish. 😉
Aiken Corp. Where FUBU becomes FUBAR. And always, the taxpayer is on the hook.
The Aiken Corporation should be abolished!
This all started with Hotel Aiken and after all these years nothing but wasted funds, lost ways, cronyism and a practical giving up.
At the city council meeting on September 25th, Buzz Rich stood before everyone and publicly stated the project would be brought in on budget and on time, he Guaranteed it. He then went on to state that if it had cost overruns, the Aiken Corp would be fiscally responsible for paying for those overages, why, if they had to, they would mortgage the Admentum bldg. There would be no taxpayer monies involved.
#1 – How can you guarantee that the project will happen on time and on budget when there are no blueprints and no scope of work?
#2 – The Aiken Corp forgot to mention that they owned the property they recommended for the site. A property they overpaid for to the tune of $650,000 . They used the Realtor that was a board member, no other Realtors were sought, and paid her an 8% commission. She did recuse herself while the board discussed it but I still consider it a conflict of interest.
#3 – The Aiken Corp also stated there were projects they wanted to do for the community but didn’t have the funds. They get a good chunk of change every month from rents, grants, etc. Did the fact that they gave the Train Museum $700,000 on top of spending $650,000 on real estate speculation ( that something would be built on said Newberry Street parcel), and paying for a mortgage they took out deplete their funds?
#4 – The Aiken Corp has a track record of cost overruns, unapproved additions to the scope of work, etc..
Well written. We all must convey this to council & stop all the lies & deceit. We all know the truth about the Aiken Corp & all that fly around Buzz Rich. Let’s stand together on bringing them down!
I think it is time for all of us to stop bickering about this. It is time to focus on what brought most of the people of the so called Do It Right Alliance together. Eliminating the SRNL office building option from the Richland Avenue site asap lets us ask the City to accelerate the release of the RFP for the Hotel Aiken property. The longer the debate goes on the longer the city can stall the resolution of the Hotel property.
After the meeting at the Center for African American History, Art and Culture on September 21, I was told by a member of city council that their objective was to have an RFP out for the Hotel Aiken property by Spring 2024. The council member was quite rational and said this without any reservations. Needless to say, I almost fell over. We need to push the city for what all citizens agreed upon almost 2 years ago. That is, that the Hotel Aiken Property blight needed to be addressed regardless of what the solution was. Let’s move on. We do not even know if either the Newberry site or the hospital site would be acceptable to the SRNL. If many of us cannot stay united, we could find ourselves with the SRNL office building ending up right smack in the middle of the “Pascalis Block.” There are forces that still want this there.
I agree completely