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Land deal faltering
The city is seeking a new buyer for its 66-acre property in West Brandywine, known as the Conti farm, because a $1.27 million deal to sell it to the township has fallen apart, Assistant City Manager Kirby Hudson said this week. From Friday's story:
Revenue from the sale of the Conti property was factored into this year’s $10.3 million budget passed by City Council in January.
In 2007, when the city adopted a budget balanced in part with a plan to sell real estate assets, it found itself facing a $1.9 million deficit in the middle of the year when officials were unable to complete those deals quickly enough.
The city fixed the shortage by laying off eight full-time employees and switching two other full-timers to part-time work. There was talk of additional cuts to the police department, but that never happened.
Hudson said he does not expect a repeat of last year’s financial woes.
Labels: money, real estate
posted by Daily Local at
12:36 PM
12 Comments:
Here is a question? Why doesn't the City of Coatesville sell the 66 acres of land in West Brandywine to either of the two power plants that want to build the natural gas plant.
To put this plany in downtown coatesville is nothing less than negligent. Look at every blighted area in the country that has one of these plants and you will see the same thing ITS A GHOST TOWN!!! Further, the smokestacks are a pollution spewing blight. I know people will say that it is cleaner, but I say simply look online and google a 300 foot smoke stack.
Finally, this plant will spew its pollution directly over the minority community in Coatesville and affect its children and elderely in an adverse way.
As for Harry Walker's claim that this plant will bring in $100 million in revenue from the contstruction. That is a piper dream. People no longer live in the area where they work. Construction workers will not move to Coatesville for a short term construction project. Ask Walker if the construction workers building the Marriott and Millview moved to Coatesville and generated millions in revenue. The answer will be NO.
If this deal goes through I can promise that the last remaining decent wage earners in the City will flee leaving Coatesville a ghost town with no future and deficient wage taxes.
The construction workers probably won't even be spending any money for lunch in Coatesville, that white food truck from Lancaster county will probably stop at the construction site and gobble up all the lunch money revenue. They will just be outsiders working in Coatesville for a year or so and then be gone.
According to my father, who was a Lukens employee for 37 years, the natural gas lines terminate somewhere near the flats. He said they used to use them for powering the open hearth and they shared the line with Baltimore and other parts south. In cold winters, since Lukens was as the end of the line, they would be cut off as the gas would be used to heat residences in Baltimore. So that would preclude moving the power plant northward to the West Brandywine without running additional lines to that location.
Although I hate the idea of building a power plant in the middle of what was once to be the heart of revitalization, Coatesville has had a factory at that location since it's inception. The Tube mill was located there going back a century. And the attendent pollution in the ground would probably blow the deal for the Penguin owner's idea plus it is less money for an already anemic budget. So maybe the power plant is a best use given the nature of the land and would not be so out of place in Coatesville given its history.
March 3 5:45
The statement " given it's history" is the thing that Coatesville must change. The city must look to it's future and learn from the past. Coatesville could be a great place to live, but it must be able to attract new upper and middle class people. In order to do that we need revitalization not more industry. Quick fixes of today could become the great mistakes of the past.
A very good friend of mine has a mother who once told him - "If you always do what you always did you'll always get what you always got." And it's so true.
Regarding the budget - how many years is Walker (and who ever else does the budget) going to count the real estate chicken before it hatches. When they were planning for the past fiscal year’s budget - when all the industry analysts were cautioning about the Real Estate bubble bursting - they put significant line items into the budget that were linked to the sale of real estate. This brings up two thoughts. First, fool me once...and second, if the fiscal group within the city truly wants to rely on money raised from the sale of property - then why can't they see that a power-plant (or any other dirty-type factory) would only be a short-term financial windfall that would ultimately decrease the property values and slow the sale of property by scaring people off?
To respond to the first posting here, a natural gas plant has to be near a water way with enough water to pull in to cool the engines I believe - if you google how these plants work - the water exchange (coming in and being dumped back out) is staggering. Is the farm near enough to a water supply big enough to do it? I’m not that familiar with the site of the farm.
As for lunches - must construction sites I see - everyone is carrying their own coolers.
I just want to throw out one final observation. . . steel and gas. It is a sad reality (but a reality nonetheless) that America’s future isn't in steel – look at the nation’s steel mill towns in general. So - I wonder...if the city knew over a 100 years ago the future of steel - would they have made the same choice? Hind-sight is 20-20 so doesn't really matter. But we don't need hind-sight at this point in our city's history to see that investing in a fossil fuel plant is not sustainable for any number of reasons.
I was wondering - with the ever present breeze in this city - if there's enough terrain to put in a windmill farm? Generates clean energy, and I personally find them fascinating. Plus - they could probably be done in such a way that the space around them on the ground could be used for horses/walking/dirt-bike trails, dog parks, things like that – kind of a blend of open space and revenue. It just doesn't seem to me that investing in a dying energy source like fossil fuels is the smartest thing to do if taking a generational approach to the city's well-being.
to 5:45:
"Coatesville could be a great place to live, but it must be able to attract new upper and middle class people."
Interestly enough, Coatesville was a great place to live and did have lots of upper and middle class people....when Lukens was running at full production. And it was Lukens that made those people upper and middle class. Many, many men and women went to work at Lukens with a high school (or less education)and earned enough to send their children to college, buy vacation homes and generally live the American Dream. Of course, those days are long gone.
Bringing a power plant to Coatesville that only employs 25 people won't add much to the economy. The local proposal is only in the $2 million range with a buyback if the ground is too expensive to clean up (which is very well could be). Most would have preferred to see the revitalization move forward, excluding of course the golf course. But all of the developers have been run off by the prospect of dealing with this council and administration. The real estate and credit crunch sweeping the nation has left even the optimistic developers of the Chetty Towers and the Famous Building without buyers. And $10 million looks good when faced with a note of some $7 million due soon.
I don't have the answers to fix any of the City's problems but we should never forget that, at one time Coatesville was a vibrant and thriving city, mostly because of Lukens Steel Company and the Huston family.
OK, Now that some of you folks have given your opinion, what or how do you propose that the city pay off the RDA loan?? They can't keep taking the money out of the trust fund. What will happen when that is all gone? Then how does the city bail itself out of a jam?
Another thing, why does the city always wait until someone approaches THEM about a property? Didn't they ever hear of the word ADVERTISE? There is a commercial on KYW that goes like this: A man wears an advertised watch, wears an advertised suit, drives an advertised car, and drinks an advertised beverage, but refuses to advertise his business, because he says it doesn't pay, finally when the business goes under he will advertise an going out of business sale and wonder why he didn't do so well as a business man. Let's not wait until Coatesville has to have a going out of business sale. If you folks have any ideas on how to pay the RDA loan off or have an idea of what should go on the flats PLEASE come to a city council meeting and make your points known.
And the spiral continues....
To the anonymous poster who posted March 3, 2008 5:57 PM - - Well Said!
March 3 12:05
I agree that Coatesville at one time was a great place to live and Lukens Steel had a lot to do with that. But the steel industry in the U.S. is dead. An electric generating plant that will only employ 20 to 25 people will not bring Coatesville back to the place it once was. The two residential developers have said that if council approves the gas plant for the flats site, redevelopment is dead. I believe they will cut their losses and leave Coatesville.
Harry Walker in a recent article praised the city of Chester for what they are doing and said it is what Coatesville wants to do. Does anyone know who is writing Chester's grants? I heard it is a man named Jean Krack. I believe Harry replaced him because the bloc of 4 said redevelopment wasn't moving fast enough in Coatesville.
Mr. Krack goes to Chester and now we want to follow their lead. HA HA HA
Jean was good at writing the grants, he never got full credit for that. They will never admit it but they made a mistake (along with many others) of getting rid of Jean so fast.
http://www.chesteryes.com/CONTACT_Main.shtml
here you go people look what the gentlemen these retards said was not moving fast enough is up to these days. Makes you wander who is laughing now
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