ROCKLAND, Maine — After a local developer made an offer to buy the city-owned land where the public services garage is located, the City Council agreed to seek bids on the property.
The council voted unanimously Monday night to solicit bids for the 4.4-acre lot at 9 Burrows St. adjacent to City Hall.
City Manager James Chaousis told councilors that he expects to bring back the bids to the council at its March 14 meeting. The city reserves the right to reject any and all bids.
Rufus Williams Jr. of Rockport contacted the city in December about the availability of the property, on which he would like to build a complex for industrial production, warehousing and offices. He plans to build a complex of more than 100,000 square feet that could employ about 30 people.
The type of production has not been disclosed. Assistant City Manager Audra Caler-Bell said last week that Williams also would acquire some adjacent private properties for the project to move forward.
Williams also is looking at sites in Thomaston and Warren, but has said that the Rockland site is his top priority, Caler-Bell said last week.
Chaousis told councilors in a memo issued Friday that if the council was interested in selling the land, the city could build a modern garage next to the dump at far less cost than proposed in past referendums. He said the garage would further the life of public services vehicles by having space to keep them all inside.
“Previous estimates stated that the building would cost $3 million, but I feel these plans were overengineered,” Chaousis wrote in the memo. “If the city were to obtain $250,000 from the sale of the 9 Burrows property and reauthorize the $500,000 bond, previously approved by the voters for the sand/salt shed, this would be sufficient funds to put up a steel building, such as a Morton building and the sand/salt shed. The city could do our own site work. This concept project would have no additional tax burden.”
The development on the Burrows Street property, which currently is tax exempt, could add about $3 million in taxable value to the city, the city manager said.
Williams said he would either want the city to remove the garage before he purchased it or have the cost of removal and remediation of the land deducted from any sale price.
Williams, through his company Park St. LLC, undertook a 37,000-square-foot expansion of a warehouse on Park Street in Rockland in 2013 that served FMC.
Last year, Rockland Energy Center acquired an option to buy from the city both the public services land and the adjacent City Hall property. Following some public opposition to the firm’s proposal to build a natural gas plant on the site, the option agreement was terminated.
The public services garage is a 7,200-square-foot 1950s metal building, which city officials have repeatedly said has significant deficiencies. The city twice placed a bond referendum before voters to build a new facility but residents rejected it — the first time in 2007 and the second time in 2012. The most recent time, residents voted 895-881 against borrowing $2.9 million. The council mulled going back to voters with a scaled-back project in 2013 but decided against it.