The city of Chattanooga has decided it won’t lose tens of thousands of dollars on the sale of a piece of prime King Street property to a developer and then lease back the half-acre property it sold for three years at about the same price.
We think that’s wise.
In April, we said “we don’t want the city to take a big loss on the property and then have to lease back parking from the new owners of the parcel.”
The city recently decided to keep the property, which is currently being used as a parking lot for employees of the city’s Development Resource Center across King Street.
It had bought the property for $195,000 a decade before the deal that the city’s Chattanooga Downtown Redevelopment Corp. said it would negotiate last spring with developers Hiren Desai and Jimmy White. However, the developers offered the city the lot’s assessed value of $134,700 and then said it would lease it back to the city for $140,000 for three years for parking.