The Victors

They are in a budget hole due to “deferred maintenance” coming due. Sidebar, is deferred maintenance a fancy way of saying “neglect” on a balance sheet?

Anyway, there is a 60 spot surface parking lot in a key location downtown. A developer has made an offer on it of $6 million to buy this lot and build a hotel with zero parking spaces. The City did away with mandatory minimums for parking last year, even for a new hotel development. The post vote backslapping after they passed that rule could be heard in Kansas.

They are now facing major blowback by the folks and businesses that live around the lot because of the loss of 60 parking spaces and the obvious new parking the hotel (110 rooms) will generate. But that’s not the chef’s kiss.

It was announced that this was a “no bid” sale meaning the city did not solicit competitive bids from other parties. The stated reason: the offer we got from the developer far exceeded our own market evaluation of that property. 🤔

I am but a simple country lawyer, a real ham-and-egger just trying to eke out a semi-honest living against appalling odds. But, wouldn’t your first reaction to an offer by a for profit business that greatly exceeded your own in-house market evaluation suggest that your own evaluation was too low? Wouldn’t your spidey senses compel you to open the bidding for other offers for 30 days?