New life may be coming to the old Maxxim Medical building.
During his Wednesday morning press conference, Mayor Keith Gaskin said an unnamed company is looking at buying the building, located off of Yorkville Park Square in southeast Columbus.
“We recently had a local industry reach out to the city and the county about possibly purchasing that building,” he said.
The building is jointly owned by Columbus and Lowndes County. According to Lowndes County tax records, it sits on 7.8 acres, northeast of Valmet and adjacent to the old city industrial park and includes factory space, three warehouses and a truck well. The total appraised value is $580,460.
Gaskin said the building has been publicly owned since 2008.
“That building was donated to the Mississippi State University Foundation, and the city and county purchased it for $200,000,” he said. “The city and the county both paid $100,000, and that took it off the tax rolls.”
The city has since used the building mostly for storage, Gaskin said, although part of the building is also used by various county departments, including as Lowndes County Coroner Greg Merchant’s office.
“I’m proud to say that the city and the board of supervisors have voted to allow their attorneys to work with the industry interested in purchasing (the building),” Gaskin said.
Gaskin said the purchase would be great for both the industry and the city.
“It will not only bring the building back onto the tax rolls, but it will also allow this industry to grow and hire more individuals,” Gaskin said. “It has about 20 to 30 employees now, and they will add another 20 to 30 when they purchase the facility. They hope within the next three to five years they will move up to 100 employees.”
Gaskin hopes the purchase, if it goes through, will bring at least some industry back into the city limits.
“I hope having an industry come into the city like this will be a way for us to market other empty buildings,” he said. “It’s going to be hard to attract big industry into the city, but there is room for niche and entrepreneurial industry to come on board.”
Lowndes County Board of Supervisors President Trip Hairston agreed that the potential deal would be “a big benefit” for the city.
“You’ve got somebody inside the city limits, they’re creating jobs, they’re paying ad valorem taxes and they’ll be paying sales tax,” he said. “I’m all for it and I really hope it works out.”
Hairston said there isn’t a firm timeline for the sale, other than “as soon as possible.”
“We are not on our timeline,” Hairston said. “Our timeline is whenever we can get it worked out and get it on paper.”
He said he expects the city and county will ask for some time to get their stuff out. And there is quite a bit of stuff that needs moving.
“The drug task force has seized vehicles stored out there,” Hairston said. “There’s old records out there. The city has at least one old fire truck out there, and our emergency response trailer and RV are there.
“The problem with having space like that is that it’s like having an empty garage,” he added. “If you have that much space, you tend to collect a bunch of junk that needs to be thrown away.”
City Attorney Jeff Turnage said much the same thing.
“I think a lot of it is stuff that’s been put out there and forgotten about,” he said. “I think at the end of the day, whatever we get for the sale (of the building) we’ll get some more money when we sell off the stuff that’s out there.”
Coroner’s office
Hairston said one of the biggest knots that needs to be untangled is what to do with Merchant’s office, which has been out at the Maxxim building since soon after its purchase.
There are several possible options in play, he said. The city and county jointly own some land near the Columbus-Lowndes County Airport where a building could be built, and there is also land available at the shooting range, which is on property adjacent to the Maxxim building.
“Of course, we could also just purchase him a building,” Hairston said.
The coroner’s office needs a good bit of space, he said.
“He needs more space than people think,” he said. “He’s got the freezer out there he’s got to have, he’s got a couple of vehicles that need to stay covered up, and he’s got a trailer or two that need to stay covered.”
The coroner is going to need a new place sooner rather than later whether the sale goes through or not, Hairston said, because the building needs a new roof.
“You’re looking at about $75,000 to $80,000 to shore up the roof right now,” he said. “He’s having to cover up his computers and office furniture when there’s a prediction of rain, and that’s a shame. No matter what we do, we need to find a better space.”
The Dispatch could not reach Merchant by press time.
Equipment for crime lab tabled
A proposed lease of a new piece of analytical equipment for the Columbus Crime Lab was unanimously tabled Tuesday night. Chief Operations Officer Jammie Garrett made the request, on the grounds that she and Crime Lab Director Claudette Gilman were considering a lease-purchase rather than a straight lease.
Gilman, at a Dec. 1 work session, pitched leasing an approximately $130,000 gas chromatograph-mass spectrometry machine for 60 months. Chief Financial Officer James Brigham said the crime lab, which takes on drug testing work from other law enforcement agencies, would make enough money every month to cover the lease payment and still turn a profit.
“The crime lab is a real gem for the city, and we need to do whatever we can to support it,” Gaskin said.
The crime lab currently has an approximately two-year backlog in testing because its sole GC-MS machine is old and constantly breaks down. The Lowndes County Board of Supervisors recently agreed to buy a new, “Cadillac” GC-MS machine with some of its federal American Rescue Plan Act money.
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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