Developer says it terminated Project Pascalis agreement on Sept. 14

Matthew Christian, Aiken Standard, S.C.
·2 min read

Oct. 3—Project Pascalis may have been stopped two weeks before the Aiken Municipal Development Commission voted to stop the project on Thursday.

An affidavit filed Friday indicates that the project was stopped by the developer, RPM Development Partners, on Sept. 14, 15 days before the Commission voted to stop the project.

RPM is a limited liability company formed on Oct. 27, 2021. On Dec. 3, 2021, Aiken Municipal Development Chairman Keith Wood signed a conditional purchase and sale agreement with the company for several properties in the block surrounded by Laurens Street, Richland Avenue, Newberry Street and Park Avenue in downtown Aiken.

The agreement called for the Municipal Development Commission to sell the properties — likely at a discount from the nearly $10 million the commission paid for the properties — to RPM if the company and the commission reached a final agreement, known as a master development agreement, for the redevelopment of the properties.

The redevelopment effort was known as Project Pascalis. It was named after one of the engineers who designed the city of Aiken's streetscape.

Preliminary redevelopment plans announced included the demolition of the vacant Hotel Aiken and a building next to it on Laurens Street and the construction of a 100-room hotel in their place. The Holley House and several buildings located between it and Newberry Street, including most of the former C.C. Johnson Drug Store, would be demolished to make way for an apartment complex and parking garage. The city's former municipal building would be expanded into a conference center.

But no final agreement between the commission and RPM was ever reached.

And on Sept. 14, the company terminated the agreement, according to member David Tart.

"On Sept. 14, 2022, attorney James D. Myrick, on behalf of RPM, provided notice of termination of the agreement by letter ... to the City of Aiken Municipal Development Commission," Tart said in the affidavit.

Tart added that Gary Pope, the attorney for the Municipal Development Commission, acknowledged that RPM had terminated the agreement on Sept. 22.

Keith Wood, chairman of the Aiken Municipal Development Commission, said Monday evening that the commission had known since it met in early September that the agreement with RPM was null and void due to improprieties in the process of selecting a potential developer for the project.

The affidavit was included in a motion to dismiss filed by RPM and Raines company in a lawsuit filed by David W. Blake, Luis Rinaldini, the Historic Aiken Foundation and others challenging the legality of Project Pascalis on several technical grounds.

RPM, Raines, the Municipal Development Commission, the city of Aiken and its Design Review Board were the defendants named in the suit.

RPM and Raines argue in the motion that the suit should be dismissed as moot because the agreement between RPM and the Commission has been terminated and the project cannot move forward.