Keep an Eye on Renaissance Square
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 2/20/09 @ 2:56 pm - Filed Under Featured, Local Politics
Some things never change. The city has been looking to consolidate their personnel, including police and fire, into one building for years now. For example here’s a post from Tracy Warner’s blog ( via Fort Wayne Observed) back in 2005:
The city’s goals became clearer at the meeting. Richard wants to get the city police out of the inadequate, aging building on Creighton Ave.; get the fire department out of the old garage near Lafayette Street; and get neighborhood code out of the its small Washington Boulevard office. He wants to get them all together, and is looking at the Renaissance Square building as the new home. Richard made it clear he’d like to see the county Sheriff’s Department there too, but the commissioners shut him down because the sheriff doesn’t want to be downtown and because the department needs new offices yesterday.
And what do we have now?
Six years after the idea was first proposed and four months after it supposedly died, the city is again considering a move out of the City-County Building
[...]
it appeared the two governments would continue to share the City-County Building indefinitely. But with the city’s $1.2 million-a-year lease scheduled to expire in 2010, officials are again considering moving into the Renaissance building at 202 E. Berry St. - a move first proposed by then-Mayor Graham in 2004.
In general this doesn’t sound too bad but you have to start to peel the onion back to see what might be going on.
The Renaissance Square building has had no commercial tenants for years. It previously held the Lincoln museum and was also the temporary library during the library’s renovation. It is for sale but there are no interested parties - the building, in this market, is essentially worthless.
The county has assessed the value around $1.1 million but now that local government is showing an interest the latest appraisal came in at $7 million. That is just a complete joke. There isn’t anyone who would pay $7 million for that building when downtown continues to hollow out. To his credit Deputy Mayor Purcell has said the $7 million mark is a non-starter but is this where the bamboozle begins?
If the city looks to purchase this property somewhere in the $2-3 million range and declare it a “good value” for the taxpayer then you’ll know what’s going down. They will justify this via some bogus appraisals and they will also need to spend millions on renovations, parking, etc.
Purchasing that property would certainly put a vast amount of money into George Huber’s pocket. He’ll be able to dump a building that he’s been stuck with for years and remember Huber is also part of the Downtown Improvement District.
Nobody can be sure where this is headed but consider this fair warning. For whatever reason the city has been trying to find ways to use/buy this property for years. The cynic in me wonders why. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
But I cannot imagine what will happen to the already-anemic Renaissance Pointe neighborhood if the police station pulls out of there and moves downtown. They might as well bulldoze the whole thing. Hell, people are getting shot right across the street from the station, so can you imagine how bad it will become without the police presence?
H/T: Mark & What’s Going Down(town)
Comments
6 Responses to “Keep an Eye on Renaissance Square”
Leave a Reply
I am wondering if the city has considered expropriation of the building under eminent domain laws. Perhaps that might spur resolution of the disparity between the appraisals…
Thank, Jeff! I’ve been paying attention to this location since it was Wolf & Dessauer and have wondered what the plan for the locations “post-library” might be even before they moved in.
Thank, Jeff! I’ve been paying attention to this location since it was Wolf & Dessauer and have wondered what the plan for it “post-library” might be even before they moved in.
[...] in February I had a post entitled Keep an Eye On Renaissance Square and the gist of it was that the city was likely going to vastly overpay George Huber for a piece of [...]
[...] on the take. The county’s appraisal came in just over $1 million and the deputy mayor himself said that the $7 million figure was a non-starter. So what’s changed? That building has been empty for years with no private tenants. In this [...]
maybe someone should look into who is invested in the building close to the mayor to see a reason for the city to buy it.