by Don Moniak
June 21, 2022

While the exact origins of Project Pascalis are unknown, the first prominent actor was local developer Weldon Wyatt.  Here is a brief update, with new information provided by Aiken County via a FOIA request, on how Wyatt burned the City of Aiken not once, but twice, which raises serious questions about the judgment behind Project Pascalis decision making. 

The “First Home Run for the Community” Lands in Foul Territory

On February 5, 2019, Mayor Rick Osbon wrote to Aiken County Council Chair Gary Bunker to endorse the sale and development of the county’s old hospital and administrative building to Wyatt Development Company (which had actually dissolved in 2013). Osbon, who had met with Weldon Wyatt and his son, Tom, four days earlier described their vision as “compelling” and urged a collaboration between county and city: 

I hope the City of Aiken and Aiken County can collaborate on this project; one that promises to create an exciting and engaging property at a critical gateway to Our Downtown.

Two months later the County and the latest Wyatt firm, WTC Investments, LLC, reached a purchase and sale agreement for $1.1 million with Aiken County. WTC then pursued a plan for the old hospital that included a 100 room hotel, conference center, 400 space parking deck/garage, and a 150-unit apartment building. 

After the City of Aiken Planning Commission approved the concept in May, 2019, WTC Manager Tom Wyatt told the Aiken Standard: “We think this is a home run for the community, for the city.”

In November, 2019, Aiken City Council approved the concept and rezoned the property. Two months later the deal was all but dead, when WTC attorney Ray Massey wrote to county attorney Jim Holley: 

After much discussion, we will not be moving forward with contract on the old hospital. We still want to move forward on old county office building with no conditions as we discussed.

The decision took county officials, who were still negotiating in good faith with WTC, off-guard. As County Attorney Holley wrote to Aiken County Council:  

We were surprised to learn late Sunday through a very brief email to me from WTC’s attorney that WTC had decided to end the Agreement.

While Massey did not divulge any rationale for the withdrawal, Holley speculated to Council that: 

We believe the factors that contributed to WTC’s decision were its failure to obtain economic incentives from the City of Aiken for its original hotel/apartments project; how the revised plan to build apartments only impacted the project; the length of time needed to remove the SCETV tower; the possibility other competing apartment projects could surface in the meantime; its desire to engage in demolition of the Hospital Building and other site improvements before the SCETV tower is removed; and the likely poor reception of Council to its proposal for the County to repurchase the Hospital Parcel, purchase the Council of Aging site, and pay most of  WTC’s costs if the SCETV Tower was not removed in the time frame of November 2020 to January 2021.

Fool Me Twice….

One year later Weldon Wyatt and Attorney/Investor Ray Massey were back in the hotel/conference center/apartments/garage business, this time in downtown Aiken.

Their second foray came just four to five months after the announcement of a $600 million Plutonium Settlement between the State of South Carolina and the U.S. Department of Energy, of which Aiken officials soon sought $30 million for Downtown and Northside redevelopment. For a man who had reportedly chased $12.5 of city funds for his old hospital misadventure, this must have been an alluring prospect. 

On March 18, 2021, the Aiken Municipal Development Commission announced Project Pascalis, describing how its chair Keith Wood and Aiken Economic Executive Director Tim O’Briant were authorized by to execute an agreement with an unnamed, “experienced and well-capitalized” private developer that had been “identified and recruited” by the AMDC. We now know that developer was a combination of Wyatt firms, GAC, LLC and WTC Investments, LLC (although the first WTC dissolved in January 2021, a second one was registered in May 2021). 

Not coincidentally, Attorney Ray Massey’s Aiken Alley Holdings also closed on a deal to purchase 200 and 210 The Alley for $2 million just three days before the Project Pascalis announcement. 

Once again, two months after a grandiose Wyatt plan to change Aiken for the better was announced or approved, Wyatt withdrew without providing a motive.  Unlike his exit during the old hospital fiasco, this departure was never announced or reported by the AMDC. 

Why did the City of Aiken pursue a major redevelopment project with Weldon Wyatt just one year after he and his associates abruptly withdrew from another major project and left Aiken County high and dry? And why did the City of Aiken and the AMDC choose to keep secret the details of his latest plan? 

Why did the Aiken Chamber of Commerce and the AMDC choose to bail out WTC Investments, which stood to lose $135,000 in nonrefundable earnest money, instead of pursuing public input while renegotiating with the Hotel Aiken and other property owners? 

Aiken officials can answer these questions, but have chosen not to, even as the decision to continue to do business with Wyatt, and now Ray Massey,has already left Aiken taxpayers indebted to the tune of $10 million plus.