Sep. 29—The Aiken Municipal Development Commission met one year ago today and voted to end the $75-million development effort known as Project Pascalis.
Aiken Economic Development Director Tim O'Briant announced Project Pascalis to the community on Dec. 3, 2021. Plans included demolishing the Hotel Aiken and Beckman Building and building a modern hotel, demolishing several buildings east of the hotel and replacing them with an apartment complex and parking deck. Later, plans to convert the former Municipal Building into a conference center were added.
Less than a year later, Project Pascalis was dead thanks to public dissent and multiple lawsuits.
The AMDC met Sept. 30, 2022, and voted to cancel the project. The mixed-use building that could house a Savannah River National Laboratory workforce development center was announced as a replacement project in January.
As it pursued the development project, the commission spent more than $10 million, according to city records reviewed by the Aiken Standard.
Those records do not include all expenses and costs associated with the project.
Known expenses
The Aiken Municipal Development Commission spent nearly $10 million acquiring property.
For Project Pascalis, it acquired:
—Hotel Aiken and the Holley House for $4.25 million;
—the Taj Aiken building, the Johnson Drug Store building and the Warneke Cleaners building for $2.25 million;
—the Newberry Hall building for $2 million; and
—the Beckman building for $1 million.
The commission also paid the Aiken Chamber of Commerce $135,000 for the right to purchase the Project Pascalis properties.
In total, available records indicate the Aiken Municipal Development Commission spent $9.81 million acquiring property.
The city issued general obligation bonds to fund the purchase of the Project Pascalis properties, and the city paid off those bonds using money allocated to the city from the state's settlement with the Department of Energy over plutonium stored at the Savannah River Site.
Using the plutonium settlement money to pay off the bonds comes with an opportunity cost. Namely, settlement funding used to pay off the bonds isn't available for other projects.
Also, the records of property purchase expenses may not be complete as the interest rate on the bonds is unknown and the cost of issuing the bonds is also unknown.
The city maintains detailed records of the money spent by the Municipal Development Commission from September 2021 through January.
These records are separated by month and most include a statement of the money going out (expenses) and the money coming in (nearly all rents from the Project Pascalis properties from December 2021 through January).