Whitehall City Council is expected to act at a special meeting today, May 29, to authorize the city’s purchase of a retail strip center for $1.25 million.
The Broad and Hamilton Plaza, 51-91 S. Hamilton Road, is on the west side of South Hamilton Road at Fairway Boulevard.
The current tenants are Tacos Fogoncito, the Shrimp Hut and a check-cashing center.
The city will provide each tenant $60,000 for relocating expenses, said Whitehall Development Director Zach Woodruff.
The city will purchase the strip center from Eugene Fletcher for $1.25 million and the transaction is expected to be final by the end of the week, Woodruff said May 29.
Next, the city will enter into a short-term lease with the three tenants, Woodruff said.
“We anticipate (giving the tenants) 90 to 120 days (to relocate),” Woodruff said.
Once the city owns the strip center, it will be demolished to build an access road from South Hamilton Road into Norton Crossing, a $50 million mixed-use retail development that Continental Realty is expected to begin building in the summer.
The city’s purchase ends its efforts to appropriate the parcel by eminent domain.
City Council introduced legislation in April 2017 to appropriate the parcel and since has negotiated with Fletcher for its purchase.
In June 2017, Fletcher called the city’s offer of $920,000 "insulting," adding that is represented only a 3 percent increase from the amount he paid 12 years earlier for the 1.16-acres.
“To me, this isn’t about eminent domain -- it’s the city wanting to build an access road to help a private developer,” Fletcher said in January.
Attorney Geoffrey Moul represented Fletcher during negotiations.
“We object to the city’s notice of appropriation and do not believe the eminent-domain process is being legally evoked,” Moul said last year. However, other eminent-domain experts last year indicated the city was in a good position to use eminent domain.
The $920,000 offer was based on an appraisal by the Robert Weiler Co., Woodruff said last year.
“We delivered a good-faith offer based on that appraisal (and) we will continue to have dialogue (with the owner) to reach a resolution,” Woodruff said last year.
The purchase comes on the heels of the city’s purchase, for $8.86 million earlier this month, of the Woodcliff Condominiums at the northeast corner of North Hamilton Road and East Broad Street, ending an appropriation action that can be traced to 2007 when the city first filed a nuisance-based complaint against Woodcliff’s former owners in Franklin County’s environmental court.
The city’s successful effort to purchase Woodcliff mirrors that of the Commons at Royal Landing, a former 42-building, 270-unit apartment complex at the southwest corner of South Hamilton Road and East Broad Street.
The city levied the same complaints about code violations and calls for police service against the Commons at Royal Landings before the city and its New Jersey-based owners reached an agreement for the city to purchase it for $5 million.
It has been demolished to make way for Norton Crossing.
“We are striving to build a quality community and do not want to have substandard adjacencies at the entrance to Whitehall,” Frank Kass, founder and chairman of Continental Real Estate, previously told ThisWeek Whitehall News.
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