Councilwomen left in the dark?

Emails recently acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that some council members were left out of multiple conversations and meetings pertaining to Keowee Trail LLC’s lawsuit against the city and the events leading up to council’s final approval of Hub Clemson. 

Despite hundreds of opposed residents showing up to city hall throughout the course of public hearings, workshops and meetings, Hub Clemson was passed through with a 4-3 vote on both April 1 and April 15. 

Both times, Clemson City Councilmen Bob Brookover, John Ducworth and John Fulmer joined Mayor Robert Halfacre in approval of Hub Clemson. Councilwomen Lillian Boatwright, Alesia Smith and Catherine Watt all voted against the development. 

The development will bring 1,325 beds between apartments and townhomes, 75 new public parking spaces, 674 parking spaces for residents and 10,000 square feet of retail space to the area of Keowee Trail and Abernathy Park. 

 ‘Negotiations are in a delicate stage’

Boatwright, who was elected in November 2022 and sworn in January 2023, said Hub Clemson’s discussions — including the pending lawsuit from Keowee Trail LLC — revolved around handling the lawsuit while also “reaching the city’s goals.” 

“The last discussion that I was part of was choosing and allowing a couple members of council to liaise, essentially, with the Keowee Trail property owners and developers in order to, I believe the way we framed it, was find a resolution to the lawsuit and the property and to make everybody happy,” Boatwright told The Journal. 

In an email sent to city administrator Andy Blondeau and others on May 5, 2023, on behalf of Jim Logan, an appointed attorney for the city, Logan said, “at the recent executive session of the Clemson City Council which I attended regarding the above captioned matter, the Council approved the following procedure regarding attempts to resolve the matters which are associated with the pending litigation brought by Keowee Trail, LLC against the City of Clemson. As we have discussed, it is my opinion that these negotiations are in a delicate stage going forward and that the best chance of success is to follow the procedure approved by City Council in executive session following the recent City Council meeting last week.

“At that executive session, the City Council designated you, John Duckworth (sic), Robert Halfacre, and Nathan Woods, along with City attorneys, Mary McCormac and myself, to be involved in the negotiations with the Keowee Trail representatives to determine if a resolution to this matter is possible,” he later added. “Accordingly, as a result of that executive session, the persons identified above were chosen by counsel to represent them in this negotiation process. Naturally, any proposal regarding a final resolution resulting from those negotiations will then be presented to the full City Council for a vote, i.e. there will be no final resolution of this matter unless it is approved by a vote of the Clemson City Council.”

Watt said she remembers meeting with Logan, only to set up one meeting. 

‘Received zero of that information’

Boatwright said the committee appointed did report back once, but no action was taken. She never heard anything else about the meetings. 

“My understanding of what is in the FOIA’d documents (the emails) is that there has been ongoing conversations, meetings, emails between staff, some of those council members and developers and lawyers for every side,” Boatwright told The Journal. “I received zero of that information before we were expected to cast a vote on whether we should be approving this project or not.” 

Boatwright added that all along, she told Watt and other people she was close to that “it feels like I’m missing something.”

She said even when she asked others on council, she was told that she had the “whole story” and that “everything’s been laid out.”

“And so all along, I cast a vote, still feeling like I didn’t know something — like there was some sort of detail that was missing that would justify the votes that were being cast in favor of allowing this project,” she said. 

Watt agreed with Boatwright. 

“I think what you’ll see among the three of us (those who voted no) is that we spent some of January, February, March, trying to figure out … being told that we hadn’t missed anything and still feeling like we had missed something,” Watt said. 

“So from May ’23 forward, I don’t know how many times Lillian or Alesia (Smith), or I would say, ‘Is there an update on the lawsuit?’” Watt said. “It was always, ‘We can’t get them back to the table. They’re not negotiating.’ ... There was no discussion of any meeting that had already happened or already settled. But no, you’re going to court soon, and you’re going to have to settle and you have less than a 50 percent chance of winning.” 

Watt and Boatwright said Blondeau recently reforwarded the aforementioned email from Jim Logan to council. 

“I sent back a note to him saying, ‘To be clear, I was not under the impression that we were giving the go ahead for 18 months of communication. I was under the impression we were giving the okay to a meeting,’” Boatwright said. “His response was, ‘I’m sorry you feel that way.’”