Doug Pellum, owner of Zachary’s restaurant, is in negotiations with the city to buy the old Rollins and Crigler building on Second Avenue North.
Mayor Keith Gaskin announced during his Wednesday morning press conference that the city and Pellum were trying to strike a deal for the property, which has been vacant for years.
The building, which is directly behind Zachary’s, has been largely unused since the city bought it in March 2013. It served as event parking for the Trotter Convention Center, which is across the street, and was used by the police department as a site for its haunted house fundraiser at least once.
The parcel includes a small empty area, also commonly used for parking, west of the building.
City Attorney Jeff Turnage said that an offer had been made, but the council wants to have an independent appraisal before taking any action.
“(They) didn’t feel comfortable until we had another appraisal to make sure we weren’t giving the property away for too small a value,” Turnage said.
The city purchased the building for about $135,000, Gaskin said. Pellum’s appraisal said it was worth $75,000.
Normally the city would need to get two appraisals anyway before selling property, Turnage said, but if it’s being sold for commercial or industrial purposes “the city can deviate from the normal process.”
Turnage declined to say what Pellum’s offer was.
“That defeats the purpose if there happened to be another buyer out there,” Turnage said.
Gaskin said the council was considering carving off the small area beside the building and keeping it for event parking.
Pellum “could still use it for customer parking, but people are used to using that for Trotter events and we don’t want them to get towed or anything,” Gaskin said.
Pellum declined to comment on the negotiations themselves but said he had a couple of concepts in mind if he was able to buy the building. The first is a combination of serving “prep-and-go” meals such as soups or casseroles for customers to take home, as well as using the site for a catering space.
“We have outgrown our kitchen space where we are, and we need one big enough for our catering,” he said.
The building is about 3,000 square feet, and Pellum said he would like to use about 2,000 of that as kitchen space.
The other option is a breakfast restaurant with on-site dining, he said.
“We don’t want to compete with ourselves,” he said. “It won’t be another bar and grill.”
Pellum said the building will need to be “completely gutted” before it can be used.
“Inside it’s in bad shape,” he said. “There’s mold everywhere.”
Gaskin was optimistic about the building’s future.
“It would be nice to have tax income from a business going in there,” he said. “We’re also very pleased that we have people who are interested in expanding their businesses inside the city.”
When the city bought it nine years ago, its assessed tax value was $86,400, according to Lowndes County tax records. The last tax payment made was $1,865. Since purchasing it the city has paid 25 cents in 16th Section taxes yearly.
Hiring committee to meet today
At his press conference, Gaskin also announced there would be a special-call meeting of the council today. The council members did not feel like they had enough time to review the claims docket before voting on it Tuesday, so they tabled it.
“We have to do that quickly because there are bills that need to be paid,” Gaskin said.
The hiring committee will meet immediately afterwards. Two candidates for the chief operations officer position were set to come in this week to interview in person, but one is unable to make it, Gaskin said, and will be interviewed next week instead.
“We also had someone we were going to interview for the (chief financial officer) job and they have pulled their name from consideration,” he said.
Gaskin said candidate names will not yet be made public.
“The hiring committee has voted to not put those names out just yet,” he said. “I understand the community’s interest, but we are trying to keep the privacy in place right now because they have current jobs and their employer may not know they’ve applied for these positions.”
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