Category Archives: September 2025

City Government, Project Pascalis 2025, September 2025

The City Manager’s Contract and the Sale of the Project Pascalis Properties

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by Don Moniak
September 22, 2025
(Update September 27, 2025: Mr. Bedenbaugh’s contract extension and amendment was approved by a vote of 5-0. The sale of the Pascalis properties to the Oliver Group was also approved, on first reading, by a vote of 5-0. The second and final vote is tentatively scheduled for October 13, 2025).

The City Manager’s Contract

Stuart Bedenbaugh has served as Aiken City Manager since 2018. His current three-year contract does not expire until August of 2026.

Aiken City Council is now poised to extend that contract for another three years, through August 2029. The new contract provides a 6% raise to a $178,984 annual salary, and a one-year severance package in the event of being terminated without cause (figure 1).

Essentially, Council will consider a four-year contract during the Petitions and Requests portion of its regular meeting tonight, just two months before three new Council members will take office. The agenda item is open to citizen comments.

Figure 1. CIty Manager’s memorandum to City Council regarding extension of City Manager’s contract.


Bedenbaugh was promoted from Assistant City Manager to Interim City Manager in February 2018 following the departure of former City Manager John Klimm; and was promoted to the position in June 2018 when City Council approved a one-year contract. At the time, the contract included a two-month severance package if City Council dismissed him without cause.

Two years later, his year-to-year status ended, and a three-year contract was approved in June 2020 at an annual salary of $146,224, with a provision for $20,000 in “unused sick leave” if he were terminated without cause. That particular vote came after a closed-door Executive Session—it was not an agenda item subject to public input. (Pages 13-14)

Another three-year contract running from July 29, 2023 to August 7, 2026 was approved in June 2023, when his annual salary was raised to $162,840. (By comparison, North Augusta City Manager James Clifford’s salary was $185,891 as of early 2024). The June 2023 decision occurred during the Petitions and Requests portion of the agenda and was open to public input. One citizen spoke in favor of the contract, nobody spoke against. (Pages 11-12)

This will be the second time for the contract to be on the agenda. It was pulled from the August 25th agenda for unexplained reasons. In the leadup to the August 25th meeting, Council discussed the contract in closed-door Executive Session on both July 14th and August 11th.

The Pascalis Properties Sale.

The vote on Bedenbaugh’s longer-term contract will occur tonight following four public hearings, one of which includes the proposed sale of the six remaining downtown “Pascalis Properties” to the Oliver Group of Tennessee for $2.5 million—one-third the price paid by the City’s Municipal Development Commission (AMDC) in November 2021. Oliver Group was chosen on the basis of their overall bid–even though one other bidder made an offer of $5 million (Page 128). They have 150 days to conduct due diligence before sale closure.

The six properties at issue tonight, commonly known as the “Shah property,” were obtained for $7.5 million. Another $2 million was spent purchasing the Newberry Hall property; bringing the total sales price in 2021 to $9.5 million.

According to an April 2025 appraisal, these high prices were offered because “the city wanted control of how the property was to be redeveloped based on a much longer view and in the public’s best interest.” (Page 127)

The main problem with that Collier’s statement is that the public was never consulted in May 2021 about that “longer view” and its interests. The decision to gain control of the contracts was made behind closed doors at an unofficial and unannounced meeting of city officials; the public hearings for the $9.6 million bond issuance made no mention of specific properties; the AMDC held no formal public hearing prior to purchasing the properties in November 2021; .

Combined with the $0.85 million loss incurred through the sale of the Newberry Hall property in 2024, the total loss from the property sales is $5.85 million.

However, the sales contract with the Oliver Group includes two provisions that will further lower sale revenues.

First, a yet-to-be-determined amount will be deducted from the $2.5 million to facilitate the transfer of property housing a future parking garage; meaning the City plans to own and operate a public/private parking garage:

“The Purchase Price shall be reduced on a pro rata basis for any portion of the property excluded from the purchase and sale in this Agreement (such portion of the Property to be determined by Buyer and Seller) and retained by Seller at Closing for the purpose of the development, maintenance, and operation of an integrated public/private parking deck structure….” (Pages 100-101).

Second, the City has agreed to pay up to $200,000 for project design costs:

“From and after the Effective Date until the Closing Date, Seller shall pay all architectural and design fees incurred in connection with preparing the property for Buyer’s proposed, Intended Use…up to a maximum aggregate amount of…$200,000.”

Add to this the $100,000 cost in 2021 of securing the bond and paying closing costs, and the approximately $100,000 brokerage fee to be paid to Collier’s, and the total loss from these downtown real estate transactions easily exceeds $6 million.

The City Manager’s Role in Project Pascalis.

The public hearing for the sale proposal is being held just one week after Plaintiffs in the Blake et al vs City of Aiken et al lawsuit released depositions that revealed more of the role Mr. Bedenbaugh played in the failed Pascalis project.

His pivotal role should come as no surprise. He is the City Manager and is expected to closely monitor, if not oversee, major projects in addition to the daily operations of city government. He was also an ex-officio member of the AMDC.

Bedenbaugh was reportedly involved in the fateful and secret decision made in May 2021 for the Aiken Chamber of Commerce to act as a holding company and take assignment of the properties while the City sought financing; a decision attributed to “city staff.” (Keith Wood Deposition, Page 64).

Once the City and AMDC began to pursue a modified Project Pascalis in the wake of the Chamber of Commerce contract assignment, he participated to an unknown extent in negotiations, would weigh in on important issues, and lead the effort towards project financing.

For example, in early June 2021, after former AMDC Chair Keith Wood raised an ethical question involving City Attorney Gary Smith’s role in the process and requested a “firewall,” Bedenbaugh subsequently dismissed the concern by writing that these issues had arisen before and Smith was obligated to honor attorney-client privilege—but failed to address the issue of a recusal.

Then, in August 2021, Bedenbaugh shepherded City Council approval of a $10 million bond package (later reduced to $9.6 million) to purchase unidentified properties in the “Parkway District;” even though it was internally well known which downtown properties were under contract with the Chamber of Commerce. Ultimately, a bond issuance of $9.6 million would pay for the AMDC’s purchase of the seven properties.

Just one week after the AMDC bought the properties on November 9, 2021, Bedenbaugh threatened to directly intervene in the AMDC’s negotiation process with RPM Development Partners (figure 2), following hesitation by Chairman Wood to meet with RPM prior to having a meeting with the entire AMDC.

Figure 2: Email from Stuart Bedenbaugh threatening to intervene in negotiations between the AMDC and Pascalis project developer RPM Development Partners. At the time, RPM was not yet an official “preferred developer,” but had been in various degrees of negotiations under several different names since June 2021. For more background information see A Hotel in the Alley.


Five days later was the now controversial Prime Steakhouse meeting where the decision was made to forestall a formal and legal Request for Proposals; a process that had been neglected until that point. According to Wood’s sworn deposition, Bedenbaugh was not at that meeting but he did learn about it and “regretted” not doing anything about it (figure 3). Actions taken at that meeting ultimately led to the failure of the project, which today, some four years down the road, continues to cost the city.

Figure 3. Keith Wood deposition transcript. (click to enlarge) . Both his and former AMDC Vice-Chair Chris Verenes’ sworn depositions are available through The Project Pascalis Depositions.

City Government, Freedom of Information, Project Pascalis 2025, September 2025

The Project Pascalis Depositions

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by Don Moniak
September 13, 2025

Yesterday the Plaintiffs in the Blake et al vs City of Aiken et al lawsuit, aka the “Pascalis Lawsuit,” released a media advisory, a summary of two depositions from former Aiken Municipal Development Commission (AMDC) Chairman Keith Wood and Vice Chair Chris Verenes, and the depositions themselves.

The Media Advisory read as follows:

“Today the Plaintiffs in the Blake et al vs City of Aiken et al lawsuit, also known as “The Pascalis Project Lawsuit,” are releasing the sworn depositions of former Aiken Municipal Development Commission officers–specifically former Chairman Keith Wood and Vice-Chairman Chris Verenes. In addition, Plaintiffs are also releasing a six-page memo summarizing the findings from the deposition and other discovery documents. 

The revelations from the Wood and Verenes depositions include the following: 

  • Some City officials knowingly failed to comply with state law and standard ethical guidelines for procurement practices by “steering” the contract for the $75 million Pascalis Project towards a preferred developer who was not selected via an open, official procurement process. 
  • The procurement aspect of Community Development Law was knowingly violated when an official, open procurement process was knowingly delayed in November of 2021 until AFTER a contract was signed with a preferred developer in December of 2021. The depositions reveal that the AMDC was not made aware of this irregular, unethical, and illegal process by City staff and their attorney until seven months later, at a closed-door meeting on June 23, 2022. Shortly thereafter, the AMDC took the position to restart the project with a new redevelopment plan and a legal, open, official procurement process. This restart, however, was derailed by this litigation. 
  • After being informed of the transgressions, at least two Aiken City Council members advocated a no action approach, declining to pursue an investigation as to the cause of the debacle.”

    More details are contained in a September 5, 2025 Memorandum and Summary.

    The full depositions are available here: 

  • KeithWood
  • Chris Verenes

    Supporting documentation.

    While the Plaintiffs have yet to release their volume of exhibits, some key documents cited in the depositions were obtained from the City of Aiken via a Freedom of Information Act request that yielded approximately 120 formerly “privileged” emails (spread out in redundant fashion in more than 1200 pages) and that provides additional supporting documentation to the summary.

    The key documents include a June 29, 2022 email from Keith Wood in which he described “knowing violations” of state Community Development Law; and a three-page memo from Woods outlining a timeline of key Pascalis project events in which he highlighted “facts associated with what transpired that is potentially unethical and potentially in violation of SC statute.” These documents are available at Privileged Records of the Pascalis Project.

    The depositions, coupled with pertinent records, indicate that some city officials did knowingly violate the law, and were reportedly advised by legal counsel not to delay a Request for Proposals. The Defense, which did cross examine both Wood and Verenes, failed to provide any documentation to challenge the assertions of at least one serious willful violation. No evidence was presented that indicated the delay of an official Request for Proposals in order to benefit a preferred developer was an “honest mistake.”

    ——————————————————————————————

    Coming soon: The Steering” of the Project Pascalis Contract: May 2021 to June 2022.

Related Aiken Chronicles articles

The Project Pascalis RFP.
A Hotel in the Alley…
The Pascalis Attorneys
The AECOM Plan

Development Issues, Planning, September 2025, Traffic & Safety

The Parker’s Kitchen Variance Request

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This Thursday, September 11th, the Aiken County Board of Appeals will hold a public hearing regarding an application for an exemption, or variance, to the legal requirement that driveways be 300 feet apart on a major thoroughfare—in this case Whiskey Road.

The applicant is the Drayton-Parker Company, from Savannah, Georgia, who plans to build a Parker’s Kitchen convenience store and gas station at the junction of Chukker Creek Road and Whiskey Road. In doing so, the company is proposing to build a driveway that is only 170 feet from the existing driveway at the South on Whiskey Event and Entertainment Venue and JC’s Seafood. It also proposes a deceleration lane on Whiskey Road that will begin only 30 feet from South on Whiskey’s driveway, creating a new safety concern on an already hazardous road.

by Don Moniak
September 10, 2025

Three months ago, the Drayton-Parker Company, owner of the Parker’s Kitchen convenience store and gas station chain, bought a pair of properties totaling 3.67 acres at the junction of Whiskey and Chukker Creek Roads. The company did so with the intention of building its fourth establishment in Aiken County. The plan is for an eight-pump (16 filling stations) gas station and a 5,700 square foot convenience store similar to its existing locations in northwest Aiken and North Augusta.

This is the second location on Whiskey Road sought by Parker’s. The first was at the junction of Stratford Drive and Whiskey Road. That plan did not move forward following Aiken City Council’s decision in June 2023 to let the proposal die by not voting on the matter. After that, the company moved a half a mile south to its newly planned location.

The latest rendition of a Parker’s Kitchen on Whiskey Road appears to be a done deal. The appropriate zoning, Urban Development (UD), is already in place; meaning that the planned use does not have to endure a public hearing before the Planning Commission. Aiken City Council approved sewer and water services at its September 23, 2024 meeting. (Pages 171-185) At that meeting, there was some discussion of traffic concerns and close proximity to nearby residences, but the concerns paled compared to the failed effort to build at Whiskey and Stratford.

There is one stumbling block for this Parker’s on Whiskey Road, and that is access from Whiskey Road. At issue is Section 24-2.12.9.(1) of Aiken County Code, which states:

“No more than one driveway shall be allowed for every 300 feet of street frontage on major thoroughfares.”

Parker’s plan is for a driveway on Whiskey Road that will only be 170 feet from the nearest existing driveway.

That nearest existing driveway is owned by the South on Whiskey Event and Entertainment Venue at 3197 Whiskey Road, an activity center that has operated since 1998 and includes a miniature golf course, an event center, JC’s Seafood restaurant, and The Classic Cone ice cream stand.

Parker’s Kitchen proposes a deceleration lane that begins only 30 feet south of the JC Seafood’s driveway. While the deceleration lane is planned for the right of way and does not encroach directly upon South on Whiskey’s property, the move is nonetheless an infringement upon the businesses—it greatly reduces the buffer between the roadway and the miniature golf course, and it negatively impacts the ability of customers to safely turn either way onto Whiskey Road. (see Figures 1-3)

Figure 1: “X” is approximate location of the start of the deceleration lane. South on Whiskey is outlined in red, Drayton-Parker’s property is outlined in blue.

Figure 2: Approximate location of the deceleration lane. South on Whiskey’s driveway is in the foreground. Chukker Creek intersection is in the far background.

Figure 3: Parker’s Kitchen site plan. South on Whiskey is to the north/left. The deceleration lane is in the far upper left. On the upper right is a right hand turn lane that Drayton-Parker also proposes. The right-in, right-out driveway in the upper left is 300 feet from the Chukker Creek Road intersection, and 170 feet from the South on Whiskey driveway, which is not shown in the drawing.



The deceleration lane will lead to a right turn access into Parker’s Kitchen. The reason for that proposed access point is to keep a sufficient distance (300 feet) from the intersection of Chukker Creek Road. But in the process, Parker’s proposes its driveway be only 170 feet from the South on Whiskey entrance—-nearly half the required 300 feet between driveways required by the County regulations; and thus the need for a variance from the regulation.

The criteria for a variance, as defined by Section 24-9.3.4 of the County Code, are four-fold:

1. “There must be extraordinary and exceptional conditions pertaining to the particular piece of property.”

Drayton-Parker argued, in their application, only that “sub-standard spacing exists,” a known condition when it applied for utilities services and when it bought the property. The circumstances are only exceptional because Parkers anticipates traffic levels that would dwarf another use; i.e. a medical office or a Dollar Store.

2. “These conditions do not generally apply to other property in the vicinity.”

Drayton-Parker has argued that “‘There are properties to the northwest that do not meet the 300’ driveway space.”

This is true for much of Whiskey Road, but not necessarily true for businesses that were established after the 2006-2007 time frame when the Highway Corridor Overlay (HCO) Ordinance was put into effect. The establishments that had to follow the driveway rules include Dollar General, Circle K, Mi Rancho, Lowe’s Foods, Fortress Storage, and Holiday Inn Express. In fact, Parker’s was prepared to adhere to this safety rule at its failed Stratford Drive location, and has adhered to the rule at every one of its other locations in Aiken County.

The driveway rule exists because too many driveways in close proximity were a contributing cause, if not a root cause, for the unsafe and congested conditions that characterized Whiskey Road twenty years ago. The safety regulation was put into place to avoid exacerbating that aspect of the problem.

3. Because of these conditions, the application of the rule in question “would effectively prohibit or unreasonably restrict the utilization of the property.”

Drayton-Parker argued that “The application of the ordinance to this property would prohibit access on S.C. Hwy 19 (Whiskey Road).” This appears to be the only criteria that the application meets in a clearcut manner.

4. The authorization of a variance will not be of substantial detriment to adjacent property or to the public good, and the character of the district will not be harmed by the granting of the variance.

Drayton-Parker claimed that a Traffic Impact Analysis showed that the project will “not have a negative impact on the adjacent properties.”

John Hyder, the owner of South on Whiskey and JC’s, disagrees, and is challenging the variance. He believes the deceleration lane is both dangerously located too close to his driveway, and that the increased difficulty of right hand turns from his driveway will deter business.

As he puts it:

“I am not against growth and development. I feel the codes and regulations were put in place to guide development in a safe and consistent manner. I just want developers to follow these rules.”

It appears that Drayton-Parker Company bought its property with the knowledge that it had to obtain an exemption to a traffic safety regulation in order to have access from Whiskey Road.

There is little question that its plans will have a detrimental impact on the adjacent business, South on Whiskey’s operations; the question is whether that detriment will be “substantial” and whether Drayton-Parker is deserving of an exemption that has not been granted to other entities on the Whiskey Road Highway Overlay.

(The Board of Appeals meeting is at 6:30 p.m. in the Sandlapper Room on the first floor of the County Administration Building at 1930 University Parkway. The application for the variance can be found on pages 38 to 46 in the agenda documents. )


Development Issues, Editorials, Nature News, September 2025

The Pond

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By Laura Lance
September 7, 2025

For anyone who might have traveled within a mile of USCA in late August on either Trolley Line Road or the Robert M. Bell Parkway and was hit with an unbearable, foul odor of something rotten, that was the smell of a pond and wetland habitat behind the Convocation Center. The pond and nearby vegetation had recently been plowed under and covered over by massive earth-moving equipment.  The myriad frogs, toads, turtles, snakes and wetland plants that called the pond home were smothered into an anaerobic stew of death, creating a stench so powerful that it could be smelled a mile away. 

So what kind of pond was this? Why was it there? How long had it been there?

Long enough to draw a diverse community of flora and fauna. My granddaughter spent many hours this summer visiting the pond and the nearby longleaf forest, whose paths she’s been exploring since she was eight.

ABOVE: A familiar path through the nearby longleaf forest in 2017.
BELOW: A patch of woods destroyed above the pond earlier this summer.

Over the summer, she watched as the cattails emerged from the boggy margin on the north end of the pond. She watched as the tadpoles grew into toads and into the large frogs who poked their heads above the water and watched her as she explored along the shore. She observed the day-to-day economies of the numerous birds, reptiles, amphibians, wetland plants, spiders and insects that relied on this serendipitous little ecosystem — an incidental pond formed, perhaps, during an earlier phase of development on this landscape.

My granddaughter’s primary interest was in studying the harvester ants who have likely always occupied this land, and have occupied her interest since the age of four. She already understood their days were numbered. She’d already witnessed acre after acre of longleaf forest and its native inhabitants destroyed along the Trolleyline corridor in recent years. All the more urgency to study them and appreciate these native communities before the developer’s maw rolled in to consume them.

ABOVE: The harvester ants carrying a few of the seeds (millet, sunflower and staghorn sumac) that were brought to them to learn more about their preferences.

From a legal standpoint, there were probably no laws broken — or, at least, no laws that anyone would be inclined to enforce. It is illegal, for instance, to kill snakes on public property in South Carolina without a permit. Perhaps the killing was permitted, but even if it weren’t, it’d take a team of lawyers and activists to produce the evidence and enforce the $200 fine for breaking that law.

It would have been likewise illegal for the driver of the earth-moving machinery to hop into a car and transport one of those frogs across the state line for sale in Augusta — but not against the law to plow under and bury alive an entire community of snakes, turtles, frogs, toads, lizards, ants, catails and numerous other wetland plants.

A sampling of the daily animal tracks left in the sandy path near the pond.

My point here is not about laws, but about the ethics. My granddaughter well understands the pragmatics of land use; she understands how most of Aiken County’s “undeveloped” lands are but a breath away from becoming “developed” lands, their trees and sometimes extraordinary understory habitats destroyed by one fell swoop after another. She was well aware that the clock was ticking for this pond and its inhabitants. What she wasn’t prepared for was the violent end they’d meet. 

From an ethical standpoint, this was wrong. It was just as wrong as it would be to toss gunny sacks full of puppies or box turtles into a pond. I am not here to say how the situation at the pond off Trolleyline should have been handled; only to state that it was grossly wrong and to hope that —- since there are apparently no laws against displacing and sometimes killing wildlife in the course of development — by putting these words to paper, it might foster a greater consciousness toward the ethics of our relationships with the natural world.

The pond, before and after.

Correction: The last paragraph has been edited to say “displacing and sometimes killing wildlife in the course of development.”