Like you can see at the 10:10 mark of this tutorial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaNMkZfm2Xs

My map is also having issues with Ambient Occlusion. So far the only way to fix the issues is to disable it entirely in the in-game settings.

Any insight on this issue would be appreciated.

From what I've experienced, this only happens on the template map, and once I start using other textures / models and working on my own map, it doesn't have this strange effect.