City of Columbia Under Fire for Shady Hotel Deal

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by WILL FOLKS

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Officials in Columbia, South Carolina are facing scrutiny after hastily fast-tracking a backroom deal to build a new hotel on a pair of downtown city-owned properties.

Kessler Enterprise Inc. – an Orlando-based development company – is set to purchase a pair of properties from the city for $2.9 million this week. Actually, the price tag will drop to $2.5 million after city taxpayers are compelled to cough up $400,000 to the developer as part of the agreement – which is scheduled to receive a vote on Tuesday (December 16, 2025).

Wait… government offloading properties to the private sector is a good thing, right?

Sure… assuming the process is fair, transparent and devoid from corrupt self-dealing. Oh, and assuming taxpayers get the best possible return on their investment.

But this is the capital city of South Carolina we are talking about… where literally everything is corrupt.

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Listed for sale in early October, these properties were originally intended to be sold to another developer for a much higher price – $5 million, which is twice the dollar amount of the proposed Kessler deal. Also worth considering? The properties are currently listed on the Richland County tax assessor’s website as having a combined value of $13.37 million – nearly five times the dollar amount of the proposed Kessler deal.

Does that sound like the “best possible return on investment” to you?

Rick Patel – the developer who submitted the highest known bid on the properties – called on the city to publicly disclose all of the offers it received on the property (and to explain its decision to choose Kessler).

Patel’s firm has experience in precisely these sorts of renovation projects. In fact, his company initiated Columbia’s Main Street revival with its redevelopment of the Downtown Sheraton – which is located across the intersection from the site of the proposed Kessler project. More recently, his firm developed the Moxy Columbia Downtown – a hotel located across the street from the S.C. State House.

According to Patel, city leaders told him they were going to announce a formal request for proposals on the property in January 2026 – and conduct a public review of the bids.

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RELATED | COLUMBIA OWES MILLIONS IN DOWNTOWN WALL DEBACLE

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Instead, Patel said he was “sideswiped by someone from out-of-state.”

“It was all secret, all behind closed doors – all done in the dark,” Patel said of the deal to sell the Washington Street properties. “City taxpayers are losing millions of dollars they don’t have to lose.”

FITSNews has spoken with several city sources who hinted the decision to choose Kessler was pushed by mayor Daniel Rickenmann following an “inspirational” economic development “mini retreat” to Savannah, Georgia earlier this month.

Details of the December 7-8, 2025 trip – including who paid for what – were not immediately available, but city officials were reportedly wined and dined by Kessler executives while touring the Plant Riverside redevelopment project, which includes a JW Marriott hotel as its centerpiece.

Given the city’s apparent eschewal of established protocol in green-lighting the Kessler deal, Rickenmann and the other leaders who traveled to Savannah must have been particularly “inspired.”

“They made this deal purposely outside of the committee structure,” a source familiar with the Savannah negotiations confirmed.

FITSNews has deployed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the city seeking all documents and communications relevant to these negotiations. Stay tuned for much more as we continue to dig into this questionable sale.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.

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