Stein Construction President Doug Stein stands on the job site at Memorial Hospital in 2012 where his company was making room for more parking. Stein Construction says it plans to auction 275 acres next Tuesday.LAND AUCTION• Property 1: 60 acres on Youngstown Road in Chattanooga• Property 2: Five acres at 1400 Hamilton Ave., Chattanooga• Property 3: 15 acres on Chickamauga Avenue in Rossville, Ga.• Property 4: 38 acres at 8013 Standifer Gap Rd., Chattanooga• Property 5: 52 acres on Browntown Road, Chattanooga• Property 6: Five acres and commercial building at 5924 Quintas Loop, Chattanooga• Property 7: 55 acres on Sunnyside Drive, Chattanooga• Property 8: 31 acres on Highway 11 and Wauhatchie Pike, Hamilton County• Property 9: 14 acres and 26 undeveloped building lots, ChattanoogaCONTACT• For more information or to place a bid on Stein Construction's auction properties, visit www.pottsbrothers.com and search "Stein."
One of Chattanooga's biggest industrial and road builders is paving a new path to prosperity by trying to sell 275 acres through an online auction that ends next Tuesday.
Stein Construction Co. is liquidating nine parcels through Potts Brothers Land and Auction website to help the company raise cash from land holdings Stein has had, in many instances, for decades.
Doug Stein, the fourth generation CEO of the 102-year-old building firm, said he is willing to let a few of them go for whatever he gets.
"Some of them, I think, are very compelling pieces of land," he said. "We've acquired them over the last 40 or 50 years."
Stein said getting rid of the land is part of the reorganization going on inside Stein Construction, which employs around 60 people normally, more if there's a need.
"Those properties were pieces of property that I was not using, that weren't helping my construction business thrive," Stein said. "And so I've had them on the market for about two years, and I've had a few looks at them. Noboby ever came to a contract, so I said I'm going to have an auction."
The properties sat on the market for two years, with some receiving serious offers and even getting to the closing process before things fell through. So Stein opted for the auction.
"If you auction it, you stop all the due diligence, or 'I couldn't arrange the financing' or 'I had a hangnail, wasn't able to close,'" he said.
The auction does present the risk that Stein will not get market value for his properties. He has a minimum sale price in mind for a few of them, though he didn't specify which.
The others are up for grabs.
"Some of them are absolute auction," he said. "If it sells for a dollar, I'm going to sell it for a dollar."
Stein said sale of the properties "won't impact my business at all, other than to help me pay off debt."
Councilman Chris Anderson, Chattanooga District 7, on Tuesday said that he's interested in Stein's Hawkside Ridge property and its 55 acres sandwiched between St. Elmo and Alton Park.
Anderson said he learned about the property over the weekend and is now working with a group of private investors who would like to buy the property at auction and turn it into green space and maybe add single-family residences.
He said the city of Chattanooga has not and is not expected to buy the land. But he hopes that if the investors buy the St. Elmo site, the city can help with maintenance on any park portion.
Some St. Elmo residents hope Anderson's dream becomes reality.
A St. Elmo neighborhood email last week said there's "a history of dispute about this parcel of land" and that the partial low-density manufacturing zoning on the 55 acres"does not sound good for their quiet neighborhood [in Alton Park] adjoining the ridge property." The email continues that the property "would be a beautiful site for homes, if one can build anything on solid rock. Can we fight the M-1 zoning?"
Anderson couldn't say Tuesday how much money the potential Hawkside Ridge investors are willing to spend, but he said he hopes it's enough.
"In the urban core, you don't find park land like that," he said.
Contact staff writer Alex Green at agreen@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6480.