AIKEN, S.C. (WJBF) — The building used to be a medical facility and Aiken County government’s headquarters for a while — the old Aiken hospital — is back on the market for sale for the third time.
“It’s been, it’s been a long time. It’s just been dead weight for us,” Aiken County Council Vice Chairman Andrew Siders told NewsChannel 6’s Aiken Bureau Chief Shawn Cabbagestalk.
Tuesday night, County Council unanimously voted to sell the former medical facility as it is. “We had a group that wanted to do certain things and it just wasn’t going to fly with the city, so they decided to disengage. So there’s a lot of things you must go through to make sure that what you want to do with the property will actually happen.”
Last year, a deal to sell the old hospital for more than 2 million dollars fell through. Aiken Lofts Manager LLC had 30 days to close the deal, but they didn’t. “With economic conditions the way they are, his financing didn’t materialize the way he had wanted it to. As a group, we just decided to move on and put it back on the open market,” Siders said.
That company will have first dibs for bidding on the property this time. “We would love to see a really nice housing there. I think it would be good for that neighborhood with some mixed retail,” he said.
It’s owned by the County but is within the city limits. “Any sort of zoning or anything like that would have to go through them. So the buyer will be working through the city of Aiken,” Siders added.
County leaders say other developers are interested in the 9-arce property. “We haven’t put a timeline out there for the sale of it. We’re, we’re gonna see what happens and, and then we haven’t put anything as far as we were gonna sell it by this date. That’s, that’s not out there,” he shared.
County leaders will have to approve any agreement before the sale is finalized.
