Without Richland County’s commitment to spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars over the next few decades for a parking deck, plans to expand the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center and surround it with a trio of luxury hotels, offices, restaurants and other businesses appear dead in the water.

Developer Ben Arnold, a Columbia native whose company owns the majority of the properties surrounding the Convention Center in downtown Columbia, said he plans to walk away from his proposal to spend more than $300 million on the new hotels and business tower. Prominent local business leaders have said the complex could be an economic catalyst for the capital city.

“It is now clear that the Vista Depot District and Convention Center expansion is not going to get the public support required to make the project happen,” Arnold said in a statement Friday.

Arnold declined to be interviewed but provided a statement to The State.

“I am incredibly disappointed as I grew up in Columbia and believed that a project like this would make a real difference and be a win all the way around,” the statement continued.

Arnold’s sweeping $511 million public-private development proposal had relied on a $75 million city commitment to expand the undersized Convention Center and a commitment from Richland County to pay back the cost of the construction of parking structures. Arnold says he would have put in the remaining investment for the hotels and tower construction.

The proposal would have seen Arnold pay the up-front $75 million for parking structures and then have Richland County lease the structures back. Arnold said the county would make $37 million over 30 years on that deal. One competing estimate suggests the county would ultimately pay between $130 million and $231 million over those 30 years.

Arnold said his private investment estimate increased 18% over the last three years, which he said he would still have absorbed had the plans gone forward.

As things stand now, Arnold says his company will instead move onto “Plan B,” which he said will be announced in a few months.

Arnold’s statement comes in response to a letter sent to him earlier this week by Richland County administrator Leonardo Brown.

As proposed, the county likely won’t subsidize parking structures needed for the complex, according to a March 23 letter from Brown to Arnold.

“If the expansion and the financial support of the development are undertaken as requested, it would represent the largest joint financial contribution by the county and the city to any single project,” Brown’s letter reads.

“The county is not confident that its execution of a lease for the parking structures is an acceptable financial risk or the best mechanism for the county to encourage private development to support the expansion,” it adds.

The county hopes to get an additional “independent analysis” on the “viability of the expansion” and to identify what private development is needed to support the larger venue, according to the letter. On March 1 in executive session, County Council decided to “authorize the County Administrator to explore, and review, all available options for the Convention Center.”

Richland County officials, including Brown, did not immediately respond to calls for information Friday.

The county’s tax-funded support for parking was a key element for Arnold’s plans. Without the public investment, Arnold says he will pursue other developments for his properties around the Convention Center.

In February, a private firm completed the second economic feasibility study in three years for the expansion proposal. That analysis concluded the would-be complex could bring nearly $8 billion in new spending to the Columbia area over the next 30 years, but only if accompanied by private development.

“The new developments and renovations would generate significant visitation, spending and new taxes that rationalize investment,” the study said, adding that without “the proposed public-private partnership, the benefits will not accrue and the (convention center) complex will stagnate.”

Arnold has previously said that without public funding support from the city and county for the parking garage and Convention Center expansion, his company would take its surrounding property and do something else, smaller, with it. He’s said apartments are one possible development, but added they wouldn’t have nearly the level of economic impact.

“I thank Ben for taking a step back,” Mayor Daniel Rickenmann said in a statement Friday afternoon.

“This project, as presented, isn’t right for us to prioritize at this time. If in the future, a plan presents itself for us to expand the convention center and still meet our obligations to every community in our city, then we will look forward to considering it,” Rickenmann said.

The Convention Center expansion has been a hot-button issue since the venue opened in 2004. Even then, local leaders anticipated it would one day need to be expanded to keep up with regional competition.

Some elected officials have vocally supported expansion, including former Mayor Steve Benjamin. But others have said now is not the time for such a large, expensive undertaking.

In October, state Rep. Kirkman Finlay, R-Richland, and Joe Taylor, who was elected to Columbia City Council in November, presented a study they commissioned with $10,000 of their own money.

The report was produced by Shefelton Associates, a firm formed in 2021 by Chris Shefelton, who now works in Mayor Daniel Rickenmann’s office.

That report found the expansion plan was risky and relied on “exceptionally optimistic” new levels of attendance.

“I support the Convention Center expansion, as long as it’s the right expansion at the right time,” Taylor said in October, before being elected to City Council. “But I also support fixing Finlay Park, putting power lines underground downtown, fixing the Columbia Canal and cleaning up the appearance of the city as a whole. (The current Convention Center proposal) just introduces a huge amount of risk.”

Columbia at-large City Councilman Howard Duvall said Friday the city and county agree on the need to reassess the initial proposal, but there are still hopes to expand the Convention Center “at the right size and the right time.”

“We need to get an accurate idea of how much the total public investment will be,” between parking and the venue expansion, Duvall added.

Editors note: The estimated cost for the parking structures has been updated from an earlier version of this story.

This story was originally published March 25, 2022 at 2:28 PM.