COLUMBIA — A court has denied a request from the City of Columbia to reduce a payment of more than $6 million in damages to the former owners of the Constan Car Wash in Five Points.
The city plans to appeal after arguing in court that paying the fine would divert funding from city projects.
Judge Robert Hood in July initially ordered the city to pay the owners of the former car wash $4.2 million in damages plus additional costs to account for interest. The total at the time came to $5.5 million.
Hood found the city liable for the closure of Constan Car Wash, which operated at 1950 Gervais St. in Five Points from 1949 to 2022, after decades of flooding issues at the site and a dispute with the city over a wall the owner built to keep the water out.
The city challenged the July ruling, asking the court to reduce the amount of damages it would be required to pay or to grant a new trial. Hood denied that request on Oct. 6.
With interest continuing to add up, the total damages now stands at $6.4 million, according to attorneys for the car wash.
The penalty “represents a massive expenditure of taxpayer funds, with a direct impact on the City’s budget and its ability to provide essential public services,” the city said in court documents.
The city can still appeal the July decision, which Mayor Daniel Rickenmann said it plans to do.
“We plan to appeal this judgement as this is yet another egregious example of the critical need for judicial reform in our state,” Rickenmann said in a statement.
The money would come out of the city’s Stormwater System Fund and “will not impact day to day operations, but potentially delay timing and prioritization of capital improvement projects,” according to the statement.
Attorney Dick Harpootlian, who represents former Constan owner O. Stanley “Chip” Smith, called Rickenmann’s comments about needing judicial reform a “red herring” and said the city’s continuing litigation was not “being responsible stewards of the city money.”
“I just think crying wolf about how (this judgement) is going to damage the city is not something this judge or we should be concerned about,” Harpootlian said. “They put a business that had been operating since 1949 out of business. This is supposed to be a pro-business city, and this is not the way you earn the trust of businesses.”
The dispute
After decades of flooding issues at the site, owner Smith built a small wall — with a city permit — along Gervais Street to block water from running onto the car wash property in 2018, according to court documents.
The city challenged the wall, arguing it caused water to build up on Gervais during heavy rains. The city ordered the wall be demolished, and ultimately brought crews to tear it down on March 9, 2021.
The wall’s destruction caused the flooding to resume, and ultimately led to the car wash’s closure in 2022, Smith told the court. The litigation between the city and Smith began in 2023.
The city has continued to deny it is responsible for the car wash’s closure. The city has argued the car wash stayed open for another year after the wall was torn down, and had been in business for decades before the wall was built, despite flooding concerns.
The future of the site
The car wash building was demolished in 2023, a year after its closure. The lot, at the gateway to the city’s most popular entertainment district, has sat vacant ever since. An automated car wash opened next door at 2006 Gervais St. shortly after Constan closed its doors.
Smith has no current plans for the property, due to the ongoing flooding concerns, Harpootlian previously told The Post and Courier.
The city of Columbia expressed interest in buying the car wash property to convert it into a water retention site, which could help mitigate the Five Points neighborhood’s flooding issues.