Cookeville City Council will vote Thursday on a property acquisition necessary to connect Oak Avenue across the railroad tracks as part of the 39 Depot project.
City Manager James Mills said the city needs the 1.15-acre AmeriGas property at 80 Depot Street to move forward with the connection. The price tag: $555,000.
“I don’t think we could have got a better deal than what we got,” Mills said. “And again, it still blows my mind what property costs, but it is what it is. We have to have this.”
Mills said the city negotiated extensively with AmeriGas before reaching the proposed $555,000 purchase price for the roughly 50,000-square-foot property. He said the agreement came in nearly $275,000 below an earlier counteroffer from the company.
“We have to have this property,” Mills said. “I’d like to go ahead and get your authorization to finalize this and sign it, and then we’ll still be several weeks away from actually closing on it.”
Mills said recent city property purchases across the street provided comparable values during negotiations and made it more difficult for Cookeville to argue for a lower price.
“We leveraged everything we could,” Mills said. “Part of our issue here is we’ve set our own cost comparisons by the property we bought just across the street from us, so it was kind of getting kind of hard to argue on this purchase price.”
Mills said the city and AmeriGas are finalizing the purchase-and-sale agreement. Thursday’s action would authorize Mills to execute the agreement and purchase the property rather than waiting for another council meeting.
Mills said the acquisition would also clear the way for additional engineering work on the 39 Depot project. Mills said he anticipates bringing an amended engineering agreement with ASA to the council as early as its next meeting.
Mills said the new engineering agreement would address at least phases two and three of the project and incorporate the AmeriGas property into the work.