by Lisa Smith

On May 10, 2023, the Aiken Corporation Board of Directors met at City Hall with Mr. Tim O’Briant, City of Aiken Economic Development Director and Mr. K.J. Jacobs of McMillan, Pazdan, Smith, (MPS) out of Greenville, SC, who was present on the big screen via a Zoom call. Mr. Jacobs is the Lead Architect conducting the $250,000 taxpayer funded feasibility study on the proposed Savannah River National Laboratory’s (SRNL) downtown Aiken building project. The Aiken Corporation is the private non-governmental non-profit corporation directed by Aurthur “Buzz” Rich, which received the $250,000 from City Council to administer the study.

Mr. Jacobs, a well-spoken professional, began his Zoom presentation by reviewing the progress to date. The timeline of events presented at the public meeting he conducted in February, estimated the feasibility study would be completed within 10 weeks (May). The current estimate is that it will be completed by August, which if done, doubles the original time estimate. The original MPS timeline also included public meeting #2 and #3 to be held in May, just before and after their final report was due. Because of research done and published in previous Aiken Chronicles’ articles (links to relevant articles below) we know that this concept has been in closed door discussions for at least eight months. To date there has been one public meeting. The next public meeting is now set tentatively for August when all of the work, and “internal meetings” will be completed. With Mr. O’Briant’s assistance, Mr. Jacobs went on to update the Aiken Corporation on the current status of the project and what he anticipates will be happening in the future months.

This article will discuss the important issues that were brought up during the Zoom presentation and will also include a transcript of the presentation. I’ve edited the transcript, only in instances where it improves the readability, for example removing “um” and “ah”. I’ve included contact information for each person mentioned at the bottom of the page and links to other relevant articles.

Here is a summary of important points:

• A public listening session was conducted by Mr. Jacobs in Aiken in February 2023
• In March, more meetings were held privately with “stakeholders” including the City of Aiken, The SRNL, USCA, Aiken Tech and the Aiken County Public Schools
• Additional meetings were held with SRNL to understand their basic needs and to determine their need for space. After reviewing their needs against budget, the size of the building was reduced to the current estimate of 45,000 sq ft. The space will be divided over three floors with 15,000 sq ft on each. The three-story building will be 50′ tall and may be “T” shaped. Two thirds will be dedicated fully to secured space for the SRNL (“Not for public consumption…the lab obviously has a need for a segregated space…a lot of the work that they do is behind access control”), one third has been envisioned as a ground floor conference space. The SRNL is still envisioning how they will use the space.
• Sharon Marra, Deputy Director of Operations at SRNL, is leading the process
• In addition to the $250,000+ taxpayer dollars being spent on this study, MPS has also been contracted by the City of Aiken Design Review Board (DRB) to propose solutions for stabilizing the Hotel Aiken in order to prevent further deterioration.
• MPS Structural engineers have determined that the Hotel Aiken is structurally sound.
• According to Mr. Jacobs, Glenn Keyes, a trained preservation architect from Charleston, SC is “kind of on the team”. (We do not know the cost or extent of this. I’ve sent an email inquiry to Mr. Keyes and phoned his office. I was told “He’s just helping out with this; it is not a project going through our office”)
• In addition, Cranston Engineering was engaged by the City of Aiken for a three-year contract (Cranston Engineering brought us the current Aiken County Municipal Palace on University Parkway). According to Mr. Jacobs, “Cranston Engineering was engaged to design the parking deck next to the municipal building (on Chesterfield St) …their initial pass had a bit of a hiccup. We (MPS) have now been engaged by Cranston to help with the design process…our whole team, including Cranston, will be working with the city and that proposal is now being reviewed…the parking need (200 cars) is related to this project (SRNL) but is a separate project.”
• MPS has performed (as per Mr. O’Briant “not inexpensive”) laser scans of the Hotel Aiken, and “those retail buildings” including Warneke Cleaners, The Johnson Drug Store, Taj Restaurant and the other vacant retail stores. They now have accurate floor plans and other “powerful data” that can be used when the City issues “Requests for Quotations” (RFQ) to developers.
• According to Mr. Jacobs, “It is not a foregone conclusion that anything gets torn down as a part of this process. We all agree that the Motel is probably going to go, but beyond that we don’t know yet what our opinion is as far as which buildings or portions of buildings.”
• According to Mr. O’Briant, “The new program space does not include any retail footprint, but the overall site that we are studying does include retail aspects, specifically that’s why we had laser scans of the retail strip to examine how best to accommodate the displaced retail within those existing buildings…there is currently no intent to incorporate new and old together as one building, we think that whatever is there will remain as separate edifices”
• Mr. Jacobs, “I don’t know yet who might be impacted…I think it’s appropriate to say Warneke could be affected, Taj could be affected…if the building needs to be in a certain spot and somebody needs to move, then, that’s just part of that design option” “…I don’t think it’s a 100% foregone conclusion that we have to get rid of Warneke”. Mr. O’Briant, “Ha, ha, KJ’s not going to get nailed down on this…”
• Mr. O’Briant, “…the Aiken Corporation is undertaking pre-development exploration, they’ve engaged MPS and much like the AMENTUM model the Aiken Corporation will present the results…to the City, because this will be a City project…the Aiken Corporation won’t be building a building…you(Aiken Corp) will bring your recommendations to City Council ..(the City) would then undertake that project…and then if we did follow the AMENTUM model, there could be a role for the Aiken Corporation in managing that facility after it is constructed.”

The following is the transcript, taken from my iPhone video of Mr. Jacobs’ Zoom presentation. Although Mr. O’Briant described this as a public meeting, and we were allowed to observe without commenting, there was no public notice given of the meeting. The next Aiken Corporation Board Meeting will be at 10:00 am on June 14, 2023, at City Hall. There is also no public notice of that meeting.

KJ:  How are you all?

Tim:  We’re better now that IT, is ah, figured out how to turn everything on.

Alright, so, KJ this is our public meeting with the Aiken Corporation we have, um, we look forward to ah, getting an update from you and, ah, hopefully in the next few months we’ll be doing that and will be following the project as we go.

KJ:  Good Morning everyone. Thank you for allowing me to join virtually   for those of you who don’t know I’m KJ Jacobs the principal and one of the architects that will be working with you all on the SRNL Project, so Buzz (Rich, CEO Aiken Corporation) had asked me to give you all just a quick update. It might be easier in this format just to let me go through some things and then happy to answer any questions. I’ll try to talk slowly, if you all do want to interrupt it may just be a little bit easier, given the virtual format, to let me finish and then go through some Q and A. 

Just real quick, I want to start at the beginning, when we were engaged we held a public listening session back in February to allow folks,  you all know, if you remember at the time, we had really  just  started the project, uh, knew almost nothing other than we wanted to have this partnership with SRNL come together, so we had a good session  with public folks, of course everyone was very eager for more information, which we just didn’t have at the time, so that happened in February. We followed that up with a kickoff meeting and a series of programing sessions to get everybody together and moving forward on the project and to take individual stakeholders and have conversations about their perspective on the project and for SRNL in particular what their specific space needs were.  And that was, and that is, to work towards what we call a space needs program. What space needs to be in the building. So, we want to get all of that on paper and spread sheet form before everyone goes off and starts designing, so that we can make sure is kind of in alignment with what we all say that we need and of course that needs to get in alignment with the budget as well.

  So, we held those initial programming sessions with those stakeholders, I believe that was in March that we did that. The folks that we involved were the Savannah River National Lab folks, there were maybe two handfuls of folks from that group that were involved, the City folks were involved, in that we had Aiken Tech, USC Aiken and Aiken County Public Schools also in and really from those three, I want to make sure that we separate SRNL has a university consortium that is a group of universities that they work with as part of their world, in addition, separate but related, Aiken Tech, USC Aiken, and Aiken County Public Schools we view as stakeholders from a teacher ah training and pipeline and development aspect from a student pipeline aspect so we wanted to kind of hear their perspective and really the focus of that conversation was more around kind of what we envisioned as a ground floor, more public space that, you know depending on who you talk to, could kind of  be a little bit like a conference center. 

The National Lab folks have a thing that they call “postering sessions” which are where folks that are developing ideas and doing research basically summarize and present those findings. Ah, but just kind of a flexible space on the ground floor, so wanted to kind of understand, you know, did the school district think that there would be value in that? Did Aiken Tech think that? Did USC Aiken? So had all of those folks in to just to kind of get their high-level input, then we dug in with the national lab folks and went through a fairly detailed programming process. 

A preliminary early programming as happens every single time I’ve ever done this in my career, that space is, the number at the bottom the total square footage is bigger than we think the budget can possibly stand. So, we went back through and kind of just put a critical eye on it and just kind of thought it through in that context and have arrived at kind of a version two of that program and, at a high level, and before I even say what it is, the program has not yet been reconciled with the budget, that’s one of our next steps that I’ll talk about. The program as it currently sits is about 45,000 sq ft in very rough terms, it’s about  two thirds what I’ll call dedicated national lab space so their office space, their conference rooms, their support space, that are really are not for public consumption and then the remaining third, or about 15,000 sq ft, we’ve envisioned as a ground floor, you know more kind of conferencing meeting exhibit kind of space which I’ve described a second ago.  So, that that program sits at about 45,000 sq ft.  We are currently, in fact I have an email from the lab, the folks needing it from the lab side, we are currently taking another, I’ll say cut at that, just to make sure that we’re, um, just really getting it as efficient as possible.  A lot of it really hinges on how the lab, they’re really just beginning to think through how they are going to use the space.  As you might imagine many people out um you know, behind the fence, are pretty excited about being downtown so for example human resources, you know they kind of imagined everybody from HR coming downtown but they still have to have HR folks out there. So, the lab folks are working through just kind of operationally what it would mean for them to have this different than what they have done in the past. They’re working on that. We are communicating with Sharon Marra, who’s leading that process and expect to kind of refine that program another time.  I don’t know that it’s going to go down in square footage, but I think we’ll have a better understanding of what the group collectively thinks what those needs are. I should probably pause there and see if you all have questions about that.

Board Member:  Does the 45,000 include common area percentage, elevator, stairs and all of that?

KJ:  Yes sir, great question, the sq footage I’ll talk about are what we call grossed up and yes, that includes essentially how big the building will need to be, so if we could just go build it today the total sq footage would be about 45,000 sq ft.

Board Member: Thank you.

KJ: Yup, that’s a great question thank you for clarifying that.  And I’ll talk in a minute about what the next steps are for that, so if we’re clear on that, I’ll just keep moving.  A little bit of a side bar, but I think probably related and of interest to this group, if you all aren’t aware the Design Review Board for the City of Aiken, so part of our initial engagement with you all was to bring Glenn Keyes, the historical preservation architect out of Charleston to kind of have him on our team, to kind of help make sure that we’re being, ah, contextually as sensitive as we can be with this building, the building that we’re here to talk about.

Related to that of course in everyone’s mind, although separate for us, is the Hotel Aiken itself.  The DRB, itself, asked that we help put together a proposal to help them understand what it would take to stabilize that building.  And again, that’s a completely separate engagement but I think just for this groups understanding information, and I don’t want to put words in the City’s mouth, but I think… make some good faith efforts to keep the hotel from deteriorating further while the whole process of what happens next on that sight was to take place, so we can put together a stabilization plan. I’ll skip the details of it, it is essentially a series of short term, relatively minimal investments to keep the building from decaying further.  It is not structurally unsound, it is not structurally unsound, there have, I think there’ve been shingles and a few random things that might be on the ground that alarmed people.  The structural engineer has reviewed it and we’ve got a plan in place to do that so if there’s time, if you’re interested, I’m happy to talk more about that but it really is a separate occasion from what we’re talking about. 

Also, related but separate, as I think you all know, Cranston Engineering was engaged to work on the design of the parking deck next to the municipal building. I think the initial pass at that had a bit of a hiccup.   We have now been engaged by Cranston to help with that design process. We have the proposal for our whole team including Cranston, we would be working for the city and that proposal I think is in being reviewed.  Of course, that parking need is related to this project but again separate project, but I just wanted you all to know all of the relationships and that that was happening. So, we anticipate moving forward on that and helping with that design process, again we’ll have Glenn Keyes involved, so that we kind of have belt and suspenders in trying to design something that is as contextually appropriate, you know, as a two hundred person, um, you know, two hundred car parking garage can be.  Any thoughts, questions there?

Board Member: …the retail strip between Bee Lane and Newberry

KJ:  Yep, good question, my next point was going to be, part of the, hotel stabilization process was to do a laser scan of the existing conditions of both the hotel and those retail buildings, and the purpose of that was twofold. One for the city, when that RFQ is issued for the city to have good documentation of what, and when I say good documentation, I mean just drawings of what’s there, floor plans and elevations to share that with developers, so that you can eliminate some of the unknowns in battle. It’s pretty valuable, so we’ve done a laser scan of the Hotel Aiken, so we’ve got that documented. We also scanned all of the retail buildings, Warneke, around, and have those now documented, what the existing conditions are, floor plans, reflected ceiling plans and exterior elevations.  So, we now have that in hand so that we know, when we get to look at the site, again, I’m going to say even to you all, in a smaller group, to us it is not a foregone conclusion that almost anything gets torn down as a part of this process. I think, the motel, we all agree is probably going to go, but beyond that we don’t yet know what our opinion is as far as which buildings or portions of buildings, but we now have that information scanned and, in the computer, and assessable to us, so that we, now know what we’re dealing with.

Tim O’Briant: And to that end, just, a, we, we got that information last week, um, on both the hotel and the retail strip, and, having worked on these buildings and these projects for the last, forever, um, this process was not inexpensive but to have actual almost blueprint quality, um, drawings, ah, after a two day visit and process of lasering those drawings, it’s pretty powerful data, so it’s gonna be helpful.

KJ:  And you all make a very good investment in that.  I looked at it last night and its very good information both for the hotel and the retail.  The question about the retail building reminds me, the building program, the 45,000sq ft that I referred to a minute ago, that does not currently include any new, any space in a new building for any retail of any kind.  We’ve all said that if we displace anyone with demolition its understood that that will be, of course they will be relocated appropriately but the building program does not include space currently for any kind of shell retail space or space for the cleaners or Taj Aiken, which are the two that we all talk about

Board Member:  KJ, that scan, is it like Manafort, is that the company for like 3D or 2D?

KJ: Um, I’m gonna be honest, I don’t know who did it. We’ve done a bunch of laser scans in the past, it’s better than anything I’ve ever seen.

Board Member:

KJ:  um, ya, happy to share, I think you already have it, but there are PDFs of floor plans and elevations, but I don’t know who the software company was.

Tim O’Briant:  Um, not to split hairs, but KJ, what you just said is true the new program space needs doesn’t include any retail footprint, but the overall site that we’re studying does include, um, the retail aspects, specifically that’s why we had laser scans of the retail strip, to, to, ah, examine how best to accommodate the displaced retail within those existing buildings and it’s important because there are some things that have been out there, ah, for the Aiken Corporation and the public to know that there is currently no intent to incorporate the new and the old together as one building, we think that whatever is there will likely remain as separate edifices.

KJ: Based on what I know today, I would agree that that’s the likely outcome of it, yes. Just a couple of other things before I throw out what’s next, and I know we are all interested in money, costs, we are developing, um, we’ve got a tool, that we’ve developed over the years, what I call a total project cost model which is a frightening long list of things that cost money on a project.  What we’ve found is it’s really best in an environment like this, this is a complex project, its best to identify all of the things that might cost money.  We’ve already assigned an essential value that we need to validate over time, for each of those, the other piece of that is, of course, that we all understand who’s responsible for what.  Some things are more obvious than others, the core and shell of the new building is part of the $20,000,000 grant. If we were need to, get, for example, natural gas from across the street over to the site, who pays for that?  Those are the kinds of interfaces and interactions that we need to make sure we’ve got on paper and are beginning to talk to.  So, we’ve actually got two cost scenarios we’re running at the moment, and then we’ll be sharing back with your leadership, what those look like. 

Again, the goal there is to start to reconcile space needs program with budget and then once we think we’re aligned there, we are quickly going to move to site planning and beginning to study the actual site, so that initial site planning exercise with all of those laser scans is going to be tremendously useful. So, we’ll start to site plan, create a few options for where the building might go and to do some rudimentary blocking and stacking, we call it, to begin to show how the program might stack up on the site. Literally four by four, and of course we’re all interested in the massing of that building, where it sits on the site and what it looks like relative to its neighbors. So, those are sort of the immediate next steps that we’re all incredibly anxious to get to. We just need to get some of this stuff behind us before that….(once) we understand the massing of the building downtown, we believe, we would be comfortable and ready to go before the public, give them an update, show them what we’ve done, um, and, and, you know, of course, have folks kind of poke holes in it and ask questions and present their ideas.

Board Member:  KJ, will the retail be done first on Richland Ave or is it all together all at once?

KJ:  I don’t think we know enough to answer that question.  I think the way I’d answer it is that however we do it we will not disrupt the business operations of any retail persons that are affected, and I just don’t know yet, I mean I’ve been the one wanting to look at it, I mean I just don’t know yet who might be impacted, what that might look like.  I think it’s appropriate to have said out loud Warneke could be affected, Taj could be affected. You know, I think we’d probably love to affect fewer people than more, so that’s kind of one of our internal goals, but we need to look at, you know, if the building needs to be in a certain spot and somebody needs to move then that’s just part of that design option.  So, I think when we get to site planning options, you all, we’ll be able to talk as a group about what are the pros and cons of each.

Board Member:  Well, it seems to me Warnekes, ah, when we put a……. keep Warneke’s where it’s at and Warnekes supposed to move into the retail from what I understand, so seems to me like that needs to be thought out….

KJ: Ah, I do understand your question, um, we have not been working under the assumption that Warnekes, that Warneke, would definitely have a new space and that it would definitely be within the footprint of the building.  If that is the direction then we can certainly incorporate that, but we have not yet. We do not have to demolish Warneke to put a 45,000 sq ft building on that site, I can say that. Now, it may not be where we want it to be or look like we want it to be, but that is not an absolute given, from my perspective.  But I think we need to be clear about what you just said.

Board Member:   KJ, is that possible given the height restrictions, to build a 45,000 sq ft building on that site without touching Warneke?

KJ:  We’ve got a very rudimentary, some boxes that are 15,000 sq ft, which is 45,000 divided by three, and, yes, I mean it’s an urban site, um, but, ya, I think it’s possible to, to not, again, I don’t think its 100% foregone that we have to get rid of Warneke.

Tim O’Briant:  Ha, Ha, KJ’s not going to be nailed down until he’s ready to be nailed down.

KJ:  You all this is, I, Tim you’re right, I mean really, I’m not trying to be evasive, I want to be very careful we don’t want to make any commitments to anybody that we can’t keep, right, and we just, we’ve not drawn it up. I think, you know, once we’ve got some site plan options I think we can all look at it and go, you know what, Warneke just needs to be relocated or you know what, we don’t have to, it’s just still a little bit too early in that to tell and I just don’t want to make commitments to you all that we can’t keep.

Tim O’Briant: Well that’s part of the professional wisdom that we asked you to bring to the process, because us non-architects can make some assumptions based on what we think the measurements, um, on a computer screen, with Google, um, but you know a bit more about it, so, no, I don’t want you to commit to any course until, like you say, there are a lot of questions and, ah, so far we’re developing very slowly answers, so.

KJ:  OK, you all, I’ll give you a great example, we now have a site survey, that shows all of the utilities, or what we think are all of the utilities, even just the locations of existing utilities and trying to be moving, you all know, moving transformers, moving electrical services is incredibly expensive. The existing utilities that are in the ground are a huge constraint that we need to make sure that we’re working around so, you can plop a 15,000sq ft box somewhere but if there are six transformers sitting there you might want to look somewhere else.  So, we just aren’t there yet, but again that’s top of mind for us as we start to study the site now.

Tim O’Briant: And, to, just to, it pays to remind ourselves where the process is here once in a while and before the Aiken Corporation is undertaking predevelopment exploration, they’ve engage, you’ve engaged, a, McMillian Pazdan Smith and KJ, much like the AMENTUM model the Aiken Corporation will present, the results of the predevelopment to the City, because this would be a City project, not the Aiken Corporation, won’t be building a building, just to make that clear, uh, you will do all of this further exploration and ask the tough questions, with your advisors and then bring some recommendations back to City Council.   City Council would then undertake that project, get it out, get it completed, and then if we did follow the AMENTUM model, there could be a role for the Aiken Corporation in managing that facility after it is constructed.  So, just kind of, history can be instructive there as a successful former example of the AMENTUM building.

KJ: Any other questions for me? I’m afraid I’ve gone over your time I’m sorry… We’re all ears, um, yes ma’am.

Board Member, Martha Lockhart: I wonder if it, can you give us a rough idea of how high a three-story building would end up being?

KJ:  Yes, we’re working with a height restriction, we would, I forget what that number is, but we would have to be within that height restriction

Tim O’Briant: It’s 55’

KJ: So, let me do some quick math, I’m sorry I wasn’t ready for that question with the answer.  I mean, I think, 50ish feet is a three story, I mean a typical three-story building, again, for efficiency and economy you want that to be rectangular in form. The more the rectangle turns into a crazy shape, the more expensive it gets, but it, were not assuming that it is a three-story rectangular prism on the site, I mean, I think there are site opportunities and constraints. There’s the pedestrian view and experience of right of way that may alter what that looks like, but the bulk of the building, as far as we know, is going to be a three story, kind of a traditional office building scale. 

Board Member:  Question on the lobby area which we had for USC Aiken, Schools and Aiken Tech um, that, that…. what about security required by the lab? Will security have a boundary space or separate, just a question for you.

KJ:  Great question, we are already thinking about that. I think the ideal scenario, the way that I described it where 2/3 or two floors would be the National Lab space and 1/3 the ground floor would be what we’re just calling public, which isn’t necessarily wide open to the public seven days a week.  The Lab obviously has a need to segregate themselves from, a lot of the work that they do, behind access control, it could be on the first floor, some of that could be on the first floor, more ideally and naturally it will be on an upper floor so that you can, sort of, take an elevator bank and restrict access there, sort of leisure controlled access, um, they would still be using spaces downstairs, for their public engagements. Their university consortium, their outreach to students, their postering sessions, their recruiting for their own employees. They would still be using that space, it would just be less secure things that they will be doing down there, so any, you know, the computational, the computer folks HR folks would likely be upstairs, and so we’ll handle access control that way.

Tim O’Briant: Um, so, wherever…is for USC Aiken, Aiken Tech and the school district to have some physical space set aside for their programs within the building in cooperation with the Lab.

Board Member: From a practical standpoint heat and air will be zoned…I guess I’m wondering if you have separate space, heat and air, who will be paying the utility bills if it’s used by somebody else other than the lab?  That’s getting it down in the weeds, but, if you’re managing the building, you really got to…

KJ: That’s a great question, I’ll leave the lease negotiations terms to you all.  I think we’ll be approaching it as if it’s a multi-tenant building, with the ability to have the Lab, it wouldn’t be, you know, the HVAC systems would all be integrated but there would be no difference than an office building with separate tenants. You’d be able to meter or control and understand those costs and allocate them appropriately. We’re of course not a part of the whole structure of the deal and how costs are being appropriated between folks, but the building would be treated like a multi-tenant….

We’d like, in the next 4-6 weeks to be in a position where, internally, meaning internal to those of us in the room, that we’ve got that study kind of wrapped up. What we told the public is that we would share that with them and then kind of have a meeting with them to allow folks to provide feedback.  I would think that would probably be beyond that 6 week so, you know, maybe in the next month or so we might be able to set a date for that public meeting, that might then be another month or six weeks out. We’ve probably got 4-6 weeks’ worth of work collectively to try to finalize the program, make sure we’re good understanding costs and then, do some quick site studying, so we’ve got some good graphics. I think, everyone (chuckle) you all included all are really hungry for understanding what the physical building is going to be like downtown.  There’s just some leg work we’ve got to do to get to a point where we’re comfortable with all of that.

Tim O’Briant:  KJ, not, not intended as a trip to the woodshed, or anywhere else, but, ah, we are behind, I say we. The initial schedule that MPS put up on the screen at the initial meeting and I just want to acknowledge that we, understand that we’re behind the schedule and, and we’re updating that schedule.

KJ:  Yes, sir, and we, I, acknowledge that as well. I think what we want to talk about is, what I don’t want to do is set a date a month or six weeks out for the public before we know we can collectively commit to it. So, what I’d like to do is just, is let’s help manage that expectation and communication so that here in the next few weeks we can establish that kind of end date for it.  Again, I think finalizing the program and getting a little more comfort on how the budgets going to shape out will go a long way.  We’ve got some work to do but once we think we’re good on program and budget.

Tim O’Briant: So, the best way to say it, or one of the best ways to say it is we need to take the time to – all together now- Do it Right. (All of the board chuckles)

KJ:  Yes, but, Tim, I appreciate you pointing out that we’re late. What we don’t want to do is set expectations with the public and, in a way, we’ve done that, where we’ve said we’ll be back here soon and we’re not yet back.  So, we can talk about what that communication looks like, I’m comfortable with us communicating, you know that some …..End of video recording.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact:

Mr. KJ Jacobs, Principal and Director, McMillan Pazdan Smith PKJJacobs@mcmillanpazdansmith.com 864-978-4399 or 864-242-2033

Ms. Sharon Marra, Deputy Director of Operations SRNL, no email address available, snail mail address: SRNL SRS, Aiken, SC 29808, 803-725-6211

Mr. Tim O’Briant, City of Aiken Economic Development Director tobriant@cityofaikensc.gov 803-502-4997

Mr. Glenn Keyes, Glenn Keyes Architects gk@glennkeyesarchitects.com 843-722-4100

Other related Aiken Chronicle articles:

Three Missing Pages covers the Aiken Corporation contract with the City of Aiken

Project Labscalis Annual Operating Costs covers the total estimated costs for demolition and site prep, construction, and annual maintenance costs for the proposed SRNL building.

Off-Site Infrastructure provides the history of the lab project.

There’s a Joke in There Somewhere is about the State of the City Address where the lab announcement was made.

Structured Parking Solution for the Lab is about the connection between a proposed parking garage and the lab project.

Other related articles:

Aiken Standard 3/16/23 by M. Christian, Aiken City Council Approves Aiken Corporation Agreement Moving New Downtown Project Forward

Aiken Standard; 5/29/23; by M. Christian. Savannah River National Lab considered two other downtown Aiken sites for workforce center

The video of the February 6, 2023 Public Forum, or ‘listening session’ is available on the City’s You Tube channel. .