Council waits on PD renovation

Thu, 03/06/2008 - 8:08pm
By: The Citizen

The Peachtree City Council took no action Thursday night on resolving whether or not to proceed with spending another $593,000 to renovate the city’s police headquarters.

That money will include replacement of all exterior walls, which were deemed faulty and part of the reason for moisture entering the building and creating mold and mildew problems, according to an architectural analysis of the building.

Council was presented with several other options including the purchase of the entire building the department is currently occupying off Commerce Drive near Ga. Highway 74. It would cost around $772,000 to renovate the facility, not including the addition of a backup electrical generator and possibly a wall to surround the facility securely instead of a fence, said City Engineer David Borkowski.

Acquiring the entire building, including the space rented by several businesses on the other side, is tabbed at $4.15 million. Borkowski said the city also does not know the condition of the roof nor the air conditioning units, because when they visited the building there was no access to the roof.

Councilwoman Cyndi Plunkett noted that she only got the updated options earlier in the day. She also said she felt the city could take action to avoid having to prepay the existing loan for the police headquarters, currently at $1.56 million including breakage fees.

Another option presented to council was renovating and purchasing the current rental building for the police department and demolishing the current PD, which would be replaced with the city’s relocated recycling center.

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Robert W. Morgan's picture
Submitted by Robert W. Morgan on Fri, 03/07/2008 - 5:09am.

Above in this amazing report, we see the city taking what should have been a $500,000 project to clean up the police station to a $4million property acquisition (with a very subtle developer bailout for J.D. Holmes who has an unmarketable property). Then if that were not bad enough, there is a proposal floated to not repay the bank for the loan on the existing police station - probably assuming it was their fault that the contractor did defective work.

Can you imagine making decisions like these - or even talking about them in a normal business enviornment?


Submitted by johenry on Sat, 03/08/2008 - 7:19pm.

The police station should never have been on that spot in the first place. That was a first class sleazy deal courtesy of Bob Lenox.

If the temporary police building is not marketable, why is the entire back end leased out?

I agree with you about killing the bank loan. Plunkett will payoff the dirty Peachtree National Bank crap, but will cut off a bank who made an honest loan.

Submitted by sageadvice on Fri, 03/07/2008 - 7:41am.

Is the unmarketable property you mention the current police station?
Didn't know J.D. Holmes developed anything except exercise places!

Didn't he sell all of his gym places once he sold a bunch of memberships? Is that called development?

Surely no one will buy that old shopping center behind BofA, and pay any more for it than the land it sits on is worth. The buildings will have to be re-done.

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