Columbus Municipal School District’s board of trustees unanimously approved the sale of the former Lee Middle School property during a special-call meeting on Wednesday.
Columbus Redevelopment Authority announced Saturday Military Lee LLC agreed to purchase the 15-acre property with the shuttered school for a redevelopment project. CMSD trustees OK’d the $1 sale of Lee Middle School property to CRA after a 20-minute executive session, which was the final hurdle CRA needed to clear before it could execute a $450,000 sale of the property to Military Lee.
CRA will meet in the coming weeks to finalize the deal with Military Lee, according to CRA board member Mark Castleberry, who attended Wednesday’s CMSD meeting.
“We are extremely excited,” Castleberry said. “We’ve worked for over two years on this. I believe it’s the right developer.”
CRA purchased a $1 option on the property in July 2016, and then extended the option for another $1 a year later. The option from CMSD allowed CRA to market the property to potential developers.
In November, CRA announced there was a developer interested in the property who had purchased an option on it from CRA, but it did not release the developer’s identity until this month.
Military Lee was formed and registered with the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office in May with attorney Steve McEwen as the registered agent. CRA representatives have since confirmed local businessman Scott Berry is the lead developer for a proposed project at the Lee site — where he plans to convert the main building into 24 one- and two-bedroom apartments, converting the cafeteria into a restaurant, converting the gymnasium into grocery store space and constructing more retail spaces and apartments.
Originally built as Lee High School in the early 1950s, the original campus housed white students during the final years of segregation in Columbus — a fact that ostensibly earned the property state landmark status from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in May. It later became Lee Middle School, which shut its doors in 2011 after Columbus Middle School was built on Highway 373.
Military Lee plans to leverage the site’s landmark status for historic preservation tax credits for the redevelopment. It also is applying for the Brownfield program, which could reimburse through sales tax 2-1/2 times the amount developers spend removing contaminants (like asbestos and lead paint) at the site.
Spears confident in the plan
CMSD board president Jason Spears previously told The Dispatch the school district’s priority is to benefit from property taxes from whatever development comes to the site, rather than from the sale price of the property itself.
Though CRA has kept some aspects of the planned development out of the public square for months, Spears said the authority provided the school board the information it needed during Wednesday’s executive session to feel confident in both the development group and the project.
“School board members and the school district are actively working to get old school sites back on the tax roll to benefit the citizens of Columbus and (give) money back to the school district to benefit our students,” Spears said. “… We know that they have connections with people who have done these types of projects in Jackson and Starkville. Military Lee has worked to assemble a team with people … to help manage the tax incentives, the overall development and restoration guidelines, as well as the overall construction of the property going forward.”
While Spears did not release specific identities of other developers, he told The Dispatch at least one individual involved worked with the revitalization of the Fondren district in Jackson, which was converted to a thriving art and mixed-use district.
Castleberry said he is confident in the redevelopment plan.
“I’ve had the pleasure of walking through the project with Mr. Berry,” he said. “He showed me how they’re going to be redeveloped. It’s the right type of development for the property. He’s an alumnus of that school. He owns a lot of adjoining land. He has a very personal desire to see it turned around.”
Jeff Turnage, attorney for both CRA and the city, attended the CMSD board meeting with Mayor Robert Smith. Turnage says he knows Berry and “if he says he’s gonna do it, he’s gonna do it.”
“I’m just very relieved,” Turnage said. “The CRA has spent untold hours working on this and I think it’s really going to be a boost in that area.”
The Dispatch could not reach Berry for comment by press time.
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