FAYETTEVILLE -- Another developer has come forward with a plan for downtown's largest public parking lot, but this time the plan is to keep the lot as it is.
Collier Diversification Services offered $3 million Friday to buy the West Avenue parking lot, which serves the Walton Arts Center and the rest of Dickson Street. The company intends to keep using the lot for parking "in order to serve the public," according to a letter sent to city officials by lawyer Justin Eichmann.
Meeting information
Fayetteville City Council
• When: 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 5
• Where: Room 219, City Hall, 113 W. Mountain St.
"Please be advised that CDS is willing and able to close this transaction at the earliest possible time, or at the time most convenient to the City of Fayetteville," Eichmann wrote.
Interest in the 2.8-acre lot rose after the City Council voted in March to start hearing proposals to develop the lot, though the city wouldn't be obligated to pick any of them. Interest spiked this week when the council discussed developer Brian Reindl's offer to buy 0.4 acres of the lot for $424,000 to build a five-story, mixed-use building on the lot's southern end.
Reindl's plan would help meet the city's goals to encourage walkable, dense and diverse development while still leaving much of the lot open for even more ideas, Alderman Matthew Petty told his colleagues Tuesday. But several Dickson Street business owners and other residents urged the council to wait for the results of an ongoing citywide transportation and parking study.
"The question that comes to me is what's the hurry," said Carl Collier, whose family's drug store has been on Dickson since 1950. "Take your care, let's be prudent, take your time."
Collier's son, Mel Collier, is the registered agent for Collier Diversification Services and CEO of Collier Drug Stores, according to its website. Carl Collier referred questions about the newest offer to his son, who didn't return a message requesting comment Friday afternoon.
The council Tuesday tabled a proposal from Petty to put the lot's southern section up for sale, which would allow the council to consider offers from Reindl and any other developer who made one. The council would also decide what to do with an offer such as the one made Friday.
Petty's proposal is set to come up again at the council's next meeting in July.
City chief of staff Don Marr wrote in an email Friday the city plans to issue a request for proposals soon so that all offers would go through the same public process.
Petty said Friday if the council decides to keep the lot for parking, it doesn't need to sell the lot to someone else.
"If the Council agrees with me that a modest mixed-use, parking-neutral development is the right step to take in 2016, then we should pass the current resolution, announce an open selection process, and choose the proposal and team which best addresses the downtown master plan," he wrote in an email, adding he knew interest would be high. "The offer from the Colliers proves it and I expect we will get more offers in the coming weeks."
NW News on 06/25/2016