A high-profile riverfront tract of land on Chattanooga's North Shore, on the block for $5.9 million, may be bought by a local development group.
The 6.6-acre parcel that's part of Chattanooga businessman Allen Casey's bankruptcy case was to have been purchased by a North Carolina firm, but the company has backed out of the deal, officials said Thursday.
Jerrold Farinash, the trustee in Casey's case, said in U.S. Bankruptcy Court that a local company now wants to buy the vacant site that sits across the Tennessee River from Ross's Landing.
Farinash identified the company as KCB Operations GP. He said he didn't know the principals behind the company, but that they weren't adjacent property owners.
Judge Shelley Rucker asked during a hearing if the new group had previously bid on the property located just off Manufacturers Road. Farinash said the potential buyer is "local and entirely new to the transaction."
He said the interested buyer will do its due diligence on the site, and he was hopeful the deal would close this summer.
If sold for $5.9 million, it would be one of the most expensive vacant parcels ever sold in Chattanooga at nearly $894,000 per acre, according to a real estate expert.
CW Development Co., located outside Charlotte, N.C., was interested in building commercial ground-floor space and either apartments or condominiums on upper levels for a project on the site.
But Farinash said that a hurricane had damaged some other properties belonging to the company and it couldn't move forward with the Chattanooga deal.
Late last year, a proposed settlement was reached in the bankruptcy of Casey, who had originally developed the Chattanooga Choo Choo into a top Tennessee attraction decades ago.
The Casey riverfront property is part of an 11-acre tract that sits in a key spot across from the Tennessee Aquarium, the city's so-called "front porch."
In 2009, Casey brought a barge to the city to put in a floating restaurant and bar, but that project fizzled and the vessel deteriorated over the years. In the summer of 2015, the removal of the rundown barge, long a point of criticism for its derelict state, was seen as making the land easier to sell.
Casey and one of his companies filed for bankruptcy a few years ago as he faced a civil trial related to a lawsuit brought by former investors.
Farinash has said he sees the highest future value of the land by combining the 11 acres with an adjacent industrial site containing propane storage tanks and a steel processing center. The entire tract could extend from the One North Shore condominiums to the Olgiati Bridge.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318.