Recently obtained emails between City of Aiken officials further reveal bias and irregularities in the legal process for the controversial Project Pascalis. The emails to and from City of Aiken Design Review Board Chairman McDonald Law were obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (1), and are dated between March 1st and June 22, 2022. They indicate:
- a strong bias in favor of the entirety of the project, illustrated by a dismissal of dissenting viewpoints, and a disregard for public input. Most notably, Chairman Law wrote that local historic preservationist contractors Bill and Bernice McGhee “have unfortunately been activated to oppose the entire project based on misinformation about efforts to preserve the corner.”
- back channel efforts to influence the project outside of the legal process.
- a tendency to steer the process towards approval instead of conducting fair and open meetings and hearings.
Aiken’s Design Review Board
The City of Aiken’s Design Review Board (DRB or Board) reviews all applications for any architectural change and enforcing the zoning ordinances in the city’s historic districts. Essentially, it’s purview is to protect the historical integrity that makes historic district neighborhoods some of the most financially valuable in South Carolina and certainly in Aiken County.
The Board’s deliberations are described as “quasi-judicial,” meaning it functions as an administrative court of law in which fair, full, and unbiased hearings are expected. Since the Board’s decision can only be appealed in the courts, it is arguably the most city’s powerful arbiter regarding proposed changes to the historic district; making its Chairperson one of the more powerful appointed positions in the city.
This year the Design Review Board has reviewed a wide array of proposed property changes in the historic district, including the following modifications to private homes:
- construction of a stone driveway,
- removal of two chimneys,
- window and garage door replacement
- a front porch enclosure
- construction of a pool guest house
- replacement of a roof and windows
This category of seemingly minor requests dominates the Board’s proceedings, but larger projects are also heard. The two most notable this year were scheduled on March 1st and July 5th.
The final item on the Board’s March 1, 2022 agenda was “hearing for demolition of 235 Richland Avenue and 106 Laurens Street.” These are the vacant Hotel Aiken, long a subject of dispute, and the adjacent building, also of 1920 origin, to its south housing a trio of active businesses: Beyond Bijou, Vampire Penguin, and Ginger Bee.
The buildings were acquired by the Aiken Municipal Development Commission (AMDC) on November 9, 2021, following a complex and tangled web of transactions spanning eight months. (2) The AMDC is a redevelopment agency established by Aiken City Council in 2019.
The March 1, 2022 hearing proceeded as planned, and the first demolition approval was made by a 6-1 vote, further inflaming an already contentious debate about the largest redevelopment project in downtown Aiken since the 1953 gas explosion. The DRB’s approval of that demolition request was an essential first step in the City of Aiken’s downtown demolish and redevelop endeavor called Project Pascalis, an effort involving more than three acres of a city block of seven and a half acres.
The Pascalis project will displace eight small businesses (3) and place Newberry Hall, the only business hosting and catering to large downtown meetings and conferences, on hiatus during the three plus years of construction. Large outdoor events will need to be relocated from the popular Newberry Street festival area that is also threatened with demolition.
A second hearing for demolition of the remaining four buildings owned by the AMDC, as well as a former State Farm Insurance office owned by Aiken Alley Holdings, LLC, was scheduled for July 5, 2022. The hearing was cancelled after the city’s chosen developer withdrew the application on June 30th. (4) Instead of a demolition hearing, a lawsuit seeking an injunction to halt the project was filed on July 5th, and prominently features the DRB among the many allegations of legal misconduct. (5)
The four buildings owned by the AMDC and subject to the cancelled demolition request are the Holley House motel (currently vacant), Newberry Hall (6), Warneke Cleaners, and the building known as the old CC Johnson Drug Store.
The latter was built in 1920 by McGhee and McGhee general contractors to house the historic CC Johnson Drug Store. This business was an important Aiken feature in at least one edition of “The Negro Motorist Green Book.” More recently the building housed Pat’s Restaurant and lastly the Playoffs Bar.
Marginalizing A Popular Viewpoint
After the building was threatened with demolition during a previous downtown redevelopment proposal in 2017, Bill and Bernice McGhee expressed a desire to maintain the building.(7) Bill McGhee’s grandfather William McGhee, along with A.G. McGhee, owned and operated McGhee and McGhee, which also constructed the first Aiken Hospital in 1917, (no longer in existence), and notable Aiken landmarks including the Fermata Club and the iconic serpentine wall at Hopelands and Whiskey.
With a business motto of “restoring Aiken, one brick at a time,” the McGhee family remains prominently and deeply involved with historic preservation projects. The AMDC itself has proudly described them as partners in the commission’s Williamsburg Street redevelopment efforts. If you see an old house being moved on an Aiken street, it is likely to involve the McGhee family businesses.
In January 2020 Bill McGhee received The Aiken Award “for his restoration work of old residences on the city’s Northside.” After that honor, Bill and Beatrice McGhee also received the second lifetime achievement award ever bestowed by the Historic Aiken Foundation.
These efforts also made the McGhees regulars before the Design Review Board. For example, in January 2021 the Board unanimously approved their application to relocate and restore two historic homes to 222 Williamsburg, St, SE. One of the homes, at 147 Newberry Street, NW, had been previously approved for demolition, but the owner agreed to donate the structure to the McGhees.
The McGhees advocacy for preserving the CC Johnson Drug Store was not well received by Chairman Law. In a March 20, 2022 email exchange, Mr. Law wrote to Aiken Economic Development Director Tim O’Briant:
If the parking structure is rotated 90 degrees, the Richland Ave building frontage can remain its current length. Another advantage, and not a small one, is that the side of the McGhee and McGhee building can also be preserved. The McGhees have unfortunately been activated to oppose the entire project based on misinformation about efforts to preserve the corner.
This marginalization of the family’s concerns continued into April. On April 4th Mr. McGhee wrote to City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh:
Sir
We have been in contact with Brent Leggs’ office of the National Trust African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund about the Dr. C. C. Johnson Drugstore/McGhee Building. We have provided Ms. Tiffany Tolbert, Associate Director, with information about the proposed demolition and the historic significance of the property to the City of Aiken. Ms. Tolbert has offered to examine options other than demolition and guidance from NTHP. When may we arrange a conference call with Ms. Tolbert, your office and members of the Concerned Citizens group?
Mr Bedenbaugh responded:
Bill,
The property is owned by the Aiken Municipal Development Corporation, which is governed by its own board. You will need to work through Tim O’Briant [cc’d above] to schedule a meeting with their officials.
Mr. O’Briant then asked Mr. McGhee:
Can your group and the Trust folks be available for the April 12 Commission meeting at 3:30 pm? Let me know and I can set it up.
A presentation slot was set up for the April 12th meeting. Normally presentations from outside parties are placed at or near the top of city council, board, and commission agendas. For example, at its November 9, 2021 meeting the AMDC placed presentations by consultants Joseph Minicozzi of Urban3 and Chris Brewer of AECOM at the top of the agenda and before commission business.
On April 12, the “presentation regarding CC Johnson Drug Store Recognition and Proposed Facade Preservation—Bill McGhee” was sixth on the agenda. An “Economic Development Master Plan Implementation Update” by $4,000-a-month consulting program manager Tom Hallman was at the top of the agenda. It was Mr. Hallman’s second update on the same master plan in six months.
The AMDC’s meeting minutes for that day are long on detail for Mr. Hallman’s presentation and devoid of detail for Mr. McGhee’s presentation. Six pages of minutes are devoted to Mr. Hallman’s update and associated commissioner questions and comments. It was at this meeting that the issue of the Hitchcock Woods arose, with Chair Keith Wood asking:
Mr. Wood noted that the Commission had talked about working with Hitchcock Woods to make the Woods more open for public use and for marketing. It is a huge resource for the city. He asked if anything had developed there yet, and if the Commission should revisit that.
The Hitchcock Woods are a large privately owned and managed “urban forest” mostly outside the physical jurisdiction of the AMDC, and entirely outside its legal jurisdiction.
In contrast a short paragraph was devoted to the McGhee’s presentation regarding the CC Johnson Drug Store.
The minutes merely read:
Mr. Wood stated the next item is a presentation from Mr. Bill McGhee regarding recognition of the CC Johnson Drug Store property on the corner of Newberry Street and Richland Avenue which is a part of the Pascalis Project.
Mr. McGhee stated he had been talking with the National Trust for historic preservation called Saving Places . He said he planned to have someone from that group to talk to MDC today , but he had not been able to make those arrangements. He is still working with them to see what they can do to help us save as much as we can of the Johnson Drug Store. He pointed out that presently the plan is to destroy the building and to leave a wall. He said he was looking to save the whole building.
If there were any comments or questions that day from Commissioners, they were not recorded in the minutes. McDonald Law was also at the meeting and received the email exchange leading to the presentation, but no other DRB members attended the event and it does not appear any other members were notified. According to the minutes, Mr. Law’s only comment that day, just a month after describing Mr. McGhee as “activated” by “misinformation” was:
McDonald Law stated following up on the comment about DRB input on Pascalis , they had a work session and received a good many comments from the public and Commissioners. The developers responded very quickly to DRB’s comments at their last meeting.
On April 20th, Project Pascalis developers presented their latest renditions. A compromise was proposed to repurpose the existing storefront facade as the entrance to the proposed luxury apartments, with the idea to “tell the story of of the CC Johnson Drugstore and and that’s really the most important thing.” (8)
On May 3rd, the DRB held its monthly meeting. On the agenda was another demolition proposal, this time for the house at 147 Newberry St, NW which the McGhees had been methodically salvaging and preparing to move. The applicant this time was the Aiken Corporation, which had a contract to buy the property and two adjacent vacant lots. According to the application:
The Board previously gave its consent to Bill McGhee to move the house to another location. Upon information and belief, Mr. McGhee was unable move the house due to the required removal and substantial trimming of a number of trees and abandoned all efforts to move it.(9)
The Board voted unanimously to approve. Bill and Bernice McGhee were not present at the hearing. Two months later Bernice McGhee was listed as a plaintiff in the lawsuit to stop the Pascalis project; and McDonald Law was named as one of thirty defendants.
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Next: Part 2: The Chairman’s Bias: A Demolition “Home Run,” evasion of the legal process, and the steering towards approval.
References
(1) On June 23, 2022 I submitted a FOIA request asking for “All email and paper communication between Design Review Board Chair McDonald Law Economic Development Director Tim O’Briant, and/or AMDC Chair Keith Wood between March 1, 2022 and June 22, 2022.” The intent of the request was to obtain information relating to Mr. Law’s advocacy for relocating the proposed conference center location to the recently vacated city hall building at 214 Park Avenue, West.
The city responded on July 8th with 15 email exchanges and 16 attachments.
(2) See “A Project Pascalis Timeline.”
(3) The businesses being forced to relocate or even close are Warneke Cleaners, Taj Restaurant, On Board Reality, Nationwide (already moved), Security Finance, Beyond Bijou, Vampire Penguin, and Ginger Bee.
(5) The Historic Aiken Foundation is one of nine plaintiff’s in the lawsuit. A book-style presentation of the lawsuit, as well as a summary of project issues, is at:
(6) For more information on how Newberry Hall became a part of the project, see:
(7) https://apnews.com/article/f5ba48e261d44842880a421a5264297c is an Aiken Standard article featuring the McGhee family.
(8) RPM Development Partner’s project manager Jay Hamm. See transcript at:
https://pastebin.com/X7R9dkHb?fbclid=IwAR0PO4sICvolkCrEfVQdVkFCjl6Tv4sU2ArE5_VdR3qcPgOxazrmTHF18sg
(9) FOIA request for correspondence since January 1, 2022 between the AMDC and the Aiken Corporation was met with a $112 cost estimate for more than seven hours of search, retrieval, and review of records. The estimate has been appealed.
Additional Information and Resources:
Design Review Board bylaws
https://edoc.cityofaikensc.gov/WebLink/DocView.aspx?id=407760&dbid=0&repo=City-of-Aiken-LF
DRB Meeting Minutes: January 5, 2021
https://edoc.cityofaikensc.gov/WebLink/DocView.aspx?id=551455&dbid=0&repo=City-of-Aiken-LF
DRB Meeting Minutes: March 1, 2022
https://edoc.cityofaikensc.gov/WebLink/DocView.aspx?id=2735903&dbid=0&repo=City-of-Aiken-LF
