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Colleagues remember local restaurateur’s impact on city
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
The local business community remains in shock over the death of Tom Parsell, a former Charleston automobile dealer who successfully changed careers more than a decade ago and became one of the area’s great restaurateurs.
Parsell, 63, died Monday evening in an automobile accident on U.S. Highway 17 in Mount Pleasant.
Parsell and his business partner, chef Donald Barickman, opened Magnolia’s on East Bay Street in 1990 and subsequently established a restaurant row of sorts. Magnolia’s was followed by the opening of Blossom Café in 1993 and Cypress Lowcountry Grill in 2001, all on East Bay Street.
The restaurants have thrived for years in an increasingly competitive restaurant environment. Parsell and Barickman, partners in Hospitality Management Group, Inc., have been credited with helping Charleston to achieve its reputation as a culinary destination and their restaurants were among the first in the area to win praise from national food critics.
Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. said the opening of Magnolia’s less than a year after Hurricane Hugo devastated the Charleston area was a great boost to the local economy and helped re-establish the area’s confidence. Parsell recently was involved in helping the city to recruit a campus of the Art Institutes.
“He was a big part of Charleston’s meteoric rise as a national culinary center,” Riley said. I remember when he first came here as a younger man from Detroit…you knew that he was a very good businessman, but what you didn’t know was that he was going to be such a nice person and make such a huge contribution to our community. Then, for him to remarkably change professions and to excel a completely different type of business was amazing.”
Prior to launching his trio of restaurants, Parsell owned Tom Parsell Chevrolet from 1975 to 1989. After selling the dealership to Rick Hendrick he opened a Honda and Toyota dealership, which he sold in 2003.
Parsell was also a founder of the Bank of Charleston, now merged with Carolina First.
Restaurateur Dick Elliott, who owns High Cotton and Slightly North of Broad near Parsell’s restaurants on East Bay Street, said Parsell laid a cornerstone in the Charleston restaurant community when he opened Magnolia’s.
“Tom Parsell’s business acumen produced a team of exceptional chefs and restaurant managers, all of whom have earned our respect as industry colleagues and friendly competitors,” Elliott said. “We will miss our neighbor on East Bay Street.”
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