Property is adjacent to county admin building

The Covington County Commission on Tuesday agreed to buy five acres of land “for a future economic development project,” but declined to say what the project is. The property is adjacent to the current County Administration Building on Hillcrest Drive in Andalusia.

At its last meeting, the commission met in closed session to discuss the purchase of the land.

“After continuous discussion between the commission, we decided to act on the first step of this project, which is acquiring this piece of land,” Chairman Greg White said. “It is adjacent to where we sit now, so it might have a little more value to us than another buyer.”

White said that the county had an appraisal of the land prepared by Capital Real Estate Services.

“John Price is the appraiser, along with Ken Wallace,” White said. “We were told an appraisal dated October 15, and the appraised value came in at $20,000.”

The asking price for the land was not close to the appraised value, White said.

“The asking price that was settled on was $60,000,” White said. “However, we did a cost comparison utilizing property we already own, and the necessary work that we need to do to that property for it to be ready to construct a building. When you calculate the cost of preparing the property to be ready, plus the additional value that we received, then this property became desirable.”

 

White said that there will be a formal announcement on the economic development project as soon as the partners in the deal are ready.

“We should be able to announce the project soon,” White said. “I would say within the next 10 days. One of the people that we are working with on it is sick and we don’t want to announce anything before they give the go ahead.”