By REID TUCKER
Land developer T Investments, LLC, terminated its agreement to buy the DeFuniak Springs City Hall property via a May 11 letter addressed to the city.
Though reactions to the news at the board’s June 8 regularly scheduled meeting varied from calls to stop accepting any offer to buy the property to pleas to hold out for a mother lode of an offer, one thing was clear. Nobody in the Council chambers was amused.
This marks the third time the City Hall property has been almost as good as sold, only to have the purchaser pull out of the agreement. T Investments actually made the first offer to buy the property in 2013, but competing developer Crim and Associates made a better counter-offer later that year, only for the deal to fall through during the due diligence period. City Attorney Clayton Adkinson said the city can get back the $5,000 in earnest money held in escrow since T Investments did not notify city officials of the intention not to go forward with the purchase agreement within the allotted time-frame.
Exactly what the Council would do about its plans to sell the City Hall property remained up in the air, but not for long. Councilmen Ron Kelley and Henry Ennis quickly made their stand on the matter, with Kelley putting forward a motion to stop accepting unsolicited offers made on the property, citing the costs of site evaluations and other related expenses already incurred by the city.
“We’ve spent a lot of time and money and effort and twice this has happened,” Kelley said. “I’d like to be able to put that to rest and move on until such time as the Council decides it wants to sell that property.”
Councilman Mac Carpenter disagreed, saying such a motion, if approved, would preclude the possibility of accepting any better-than-expected offers too, calling it an “injection into the free market.” He was also opposed to the notion that members of the public wouldn’t get to have a say in the matter.
“This decision is not ours personally,” Carpenter said. “This decision belongs to the people of DeFuniak Springs….For us to sit up here and think that we’re going to speak for all of them without asking them whether or not we should consider an offer to sell city hall – I just think it’s inappropriate. This isn’t about our ego when somebody turns down our sale.”
Kelley’s argument for his motion was multifaceted. He said the City Hall property would need to be sold for a sizeable sum – otherwise a new City Hall could not be built – but the topography of the property makes commercial development problematic at worst. U.S. 90 sits so much lower than the property that commercial access is hindered or would require a tremendous expense on the part of a developer, and, meanwhile, there are still options to rehab, renovate or construct a new City Hall building on the property, he said.
After some confusion on the protocols of Robert’s Rules of Order, the remaining Council members and several members of the public voiced their opinion against swearing off unsolicited offers, and, when put to the vote, Kelley’s motion failed 2-3. Carpenter, along with Councilman Kermit Wright and Councilwoman Janie Griffith cast the nay votes.
The other main item of discussion at the meeting came a few minutes later when Wright brought up the idea of purchasing some of the parking lots formerly used by Triangle Chevrolet before the business moved to its new location on U.S. 331 South. Wright proposed consideration of the property, located just off U.S. 90, to construct a new headquarters for the DeFuniak Springs Police Department rather than rehabbing the old Health Department building (as has been talked about off-and-on since 2009). Based on the most recent figures available, it would cost $780,000 at $60 per square foot for a contractor to refurbish the old Health Department building for use as police headquarters, he said.
“For the same money it would take to refurbish that Health Department we could take and buy those three parcels of land and build a building on it (of) 8,833 square feet, and that’s a pretty good-sized police department,” Wright said.
Police Chief Mark Weeks expressed his support for the idea of purchasing the property, given its flat surface area, ample parking space, easy access to the city’s main roads, and limited prep work needed before construction could begin.
Wright said the city could use the three parcels as overflow parking lots for downtown events like Lakefest, Independence Day celebrations or the annual Chautauqua Assembly.
Though no action was taken by the Council at the meeting, real estate agent and former City Councilman Mac Work told the board members that the property owners would sell the lots for $295,000, and that they were “open to negotiations.”