Friday, April 8, 2011

Surprising Development

Register-Star reporter Francesca Olsen reports from the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce legislative breakfast that Board of Supervisors chair Roy Brown just announced that the county will buy the old Walmart building and sell off all the county office buildings in Hudson except 325 Columbia Street: "Brown announces plans to buy, sell county offices."

6 comments:

  1. I was at the breakfast and believe he also mentioned selling the Ockawamick School -- no doubt for a substantial loss. What a deal!

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  2. I was there too. Isn't this a bad plan? This was news? I didn't realize it at the time. Do people think this is a good idea? I don't trust these guys to do it right and don't think they can be trusted with large sums of money.

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  3. Was also there, I was disappointed at the 50 minutes of stump speech and 5 minutes for questions. No time to field mine.

    Among them:

    Are they expecting to be able to sustain quantity of services provided (not just quality) at that location?

    I heard mention of "serious consideration" regarding an express bus service to the location from downtown. Seems like it would be a requirement for both fiscal (I think they reimburse cab fare) and availability reasons -- no acknowledgement of the fact it would be a disaster without that.

    This is of course besides points John K. Friedman and Glencadia mentioned.

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  4. ps, It wasn't complete news. This possibility was inferred when they put money down (50k?) on the building to hold it while they evaluated the deal.

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  5. mfisch--This IS a surprising development. The CRC's request for a loan of $78,000 or so from the Board of Supervisors to do a further study on the Walmart building never made it out of committee; not long ago Roy Brown in a MY VIEW talked about fiscal responsibility and not committing the county to more expense than it could afford (this to justify the county's renewed interest in 25 Railroad Avenue); and this past Tuesday morning the CRC talked about getting their $50,000 deposit on the Walmart building back. You have to wonder why suddenly Roy Brown is announcing that they're buying the old Walmart building after all.

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  6. Its still not a done deal. The Reg-Star story calls this deal "Brown's plan," and rightly so, since it hasn't even gone to committee yet.

    Olsen reports: "Brown says he plans to bring the recommendation to the Board's public works committee this month [April 27], and hopes the board will pass a resolution accepting the idea, and the property's purchase, at its full meeting in May." A lot can happen between now and May 11, which I think is the date of the full Board meeting.

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