RINGGOLD, Ga. -- There was no mention of Project Hilltop during Tuesday night's Catoosa County Board of Commissioners meeting, but the chairman said afterward that the deal might be final by Monday night.
Chairman Keith Greene said ongoing legal negotiations are moving forward with a final contract document possibly coming back to Catoosa by Friday.
City and county officials said they had hoped to vote on project contracts Tuesday night.
"Essentially, the holdup is final legal documents," Mr. Greene said after the meeting. "Our lawyer's in discussion with them. It's essentially on the business' lawyers right now to finalize the documents."
"If we get the final contact and approve it (in a called meeting) on Monday, we'll go through the whole process and let everyone know what this entails, who's coming, the whole picture," Mr. Greene said.
Fort Oglethorpe Mayor Ronnie Cobb said he's "very optimistic" about the next few days.
"We're within reach of the finish line, but at the same time, there's a whole lot of procedural matters," he said.
Officials have wooed big-box retailers for the site for more than a year and a half.
The 62-acre plot at the Cloud Springs Road exit on Interstate 75, dubbed Project Hilltop until Issaquah, Wash.-based Costco's name was revealed last week, was annexed by the city of Fort Oglethorpe in December to allow planning for utilities.
ABOUT COSTCO
* Annual revenue: $71.4 billion (fiscal year 2009)
* Number of locations: 566 (as of Nov. 24, 2009)
* Memberships: 56 million carholders (as of Aug. 30, 2009)
* Number of U.S. employees: 104,900
Source: Costco Web site
Officials navigated around right-of-way issues near the Interstate 75-Cloud Springs Road improvement project leading to the Jan. 7 bid opening for moving 800,000 to 1 million cubic yards of dirt at the site.
Bids ranged between $3 million and $6.6 million to ready the site for development, records show. Wright Brothers, a firm with an office in Charleston, Tenn., was the low bidder by $1 million.
A new Costco could bring as much as $4 million in annual local sales tax revenue for Catoosa County's governments and schools, and the state's cut could total $5.4 million, projections show.
Costco is No. 24 on Fortune 500 rankings and is known for having good benefits and pay on the top end of the retail wage scale, according to Warehouse Club Focus trade magazine editor Michael G. Clayman, a former Costco employee.
Ben Benton is a news reporter at the Chattanooga Times Free Press. He covers Southeast Tennessee and previously covered North Georgia education. Ben has worked at the Times Free Press since November 2005, first covering Bledsoe and Sequatchie counties and later adding Marion, Grundy and other counties in the northern and western edges of the region to his coverage. He was born and raised in Cleveland, Tenn., a graduate of Bradley Central High School. Benton ...
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