Columbia ordered to pay $5.5M after flooding closed a Five Points car wash
Columbia must pay a former car wash owner who had to shut down a 75-year-old business, a court ruled on Monday.
The owner of Constan Car Wash will receive $5.5 million from the city because Columbia ordered the business to remove a barrier that led to flooding at its Gervais Street location.
Owner O. Stanley “Chip” Smith told the court he was forced to close the business started by his grandfather after the city demolished a wall at the car wash in March 2021, leading to heavy flooding at the low-lying site near the Five Points area. He ultimately had to close the business in 2022 and demolished the building by the end of 2023.
Smith constructed the wall along Gervais Street in 2018, with a city permit, to try to preserve the property from frequent flooding in the area. The city later demolished the wall over Smith’s objections, citing the need to alleviate flooding on the roadway.
Judge Robert Hood ruled that Smith legally erected the wall on his own property, and that the city’s actions led directly to the closure of the business that had operated on the site since 1949.
“The City’s actions on March 9, 2021 were not a ‘mere failure to act,’ but were rather calculated to destroy Plaintiffs’ wall, and in fact were intended to cause flooding on the property,” the ruling said. “The City was well aware that flooding on this property would result from its demolition of the wall — the City’s stated purpose in demolishing the wall was to alleviate flooding on Gervais Street.”
This constituted “a physical taking of the property for a public use,” the judge ruled. “Plaintiffs’ business failed and the car wash building was demolished. The value of Plaintiffs’ property interests has been significantly eroded by the City’s taking, and those damages cannot now be undone.”
The judge awarded $4.2 million in damages, citing analysis that showed the old car wash property’s value dropped after the demolition of the flooding wall from $4.6 million to $400,000. The ruling also says the owners are entitled to interest earned on the amount from March 2021, the date of the “taking” of the owners’ property, at a rate of 8% per annum. That leads to an accrued interest over the last four years of $1.34 million, raising the total owed to Smith to $5.54 million.
The city didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling. It will have 20 days from Monday’s ruling to pay the full amount.
Constan was named after Smith’s mother Connie and his father, also named Stanley — hence “Con-Stan.” The car wash was long a local fixture, known for featuring a tiger cub named “Happy” on site. Happy later moved to Riverbanks Zoo when it first opened, a project the car wash tiger helped promote.
Smith was represented in the lawsuit by Dick Harpootlian, a former state senator and one of the Midlands’ most prominent attorneys.
.jpg)