PLU president, Allan Belton, recently agreed to meet via with a small panel of community members. Here are the highlights of the conversation from July 12th.
2022-07-12 — Recap of Meeting with PLU President, Allan Belton:
The overall tone of the meeting was positive, and there are two potential paths forward for our efforts. Mr. Belton listened to proposals to preserve, repurpose, and adaptively reuse the Parkland School Facility as the new Franklin Pierce School District Office and a Community Center.
He shared several clarifications about how we ended up on this path, while expressing support for what our coalition is pursuing.
Below are some key bullet points from the meeting:
● PLU is selling the site because they no longer have any university-related use for the property and building.
● Mr. Belton indicated that this was the first group of community members to request a meeting with him. (This was initiated via a phone call on Tuesday, July 5, and confirmed by Wednesday, July 6 )
● For the past eight years, PLU has attempted to find a viable long-term tenant or owner for the site that would serve Parkland. Because of the building’s condition, its lack of accessibility, and the numerous major repairs and renovations required (early estimates place costs at $28.5 million and more), PLU made the decision to sell the property.
● PLU has engaged a local buyer that approached them, and are insistent that any plans for the site serve the long-term health and vitality of the Parkland community. (For instance, they’ve passed on offers from fast food restaurants that inquired into buying the site.)
● PLU is open to partnering with community coalition and other community partners, such as Franklin Pierce Schools, the Boys & Girls Club, and the YMCA. With our pursuit of county, state, and federal funds to rehabilitate the facility. It was suggested that it's highly likely that other community partners would come back to the table to make this a reality.
● The main issue is the current legally binding purchase and sale agreement.
● Mr. Belton indicated that PLU’s goal all along has been to find a purchaser who would preserve as much of the physical building as possible and adaptively reuse the facility for public use.
● Eight years ago, PLU started the process to repurpose the space, seeking to involve the greater Parkland Community via community surveys. The surveying was conducted by Daxko consulting, a long-term partner with the YMCA. At that time, the Parkland Community and PLU both indicated that a YMCA was desirable for the space. Mr. Belton indicated that after the initial study, gathering this community input via a community forum had yielded very few participants. The community input from eight years ago was shared among the sponsoring partners (FPSD, PLU, YMCA and MultiCare) but not more broadly.
● During this process, the YMCA indicated that it was not in a position to move forward with the project because of other, more immediate priorities, financing and the complexity of the site.
● Last year PLU engaged Heartland, an urban planning group, to seek community input for future potential projects to bring community infrastructure to Parkland. That work is ongoing, and outreach to community constituents has begun and will continue through the end of this year.
● A sale to a different purchaser was pursued. The current purchase and sale agreement was not the highest offer of interest PLU has received for this property, but rather the most palatable use of the property (for housing, versus a drive through restaurant, casino, and other non-community-oriented uses).
● PLU continued to emphasize the importance of preserving and reusing the existing building as part of the redevelopment of the space with the current purchaser, and advised the purchaser to reach out to the community and the county to find out what the process might be for de-listing the facility. Instead of the Pierce County Landmarks and Historic Preservation Commission explaining the de-listing process, the commission simply de-listed the property.
● Mr. Belton clarified what was entailed by the letter with the 30-day pause on the sale closing, and what was possible:o According to the university’s attorney, the 30-day pause did not allow PLU or the developer to cancel the sale, as the purchase and sale agreement did not provide any language for canceling the purchase. Rather, the pause was intended for PLU and the purchaser to negotiate a different arrangement or option under the existing purchase and sale agreement.
The pause was not an opportunity for the community to negotiate for a different purchase and sale option for the property.
PLU is actively trying to re-negotiate with the purchaser to only sell the developer the undeveloped portion of the property and retain the school building and the property it sits on, for the community or community group to be able to purchase for six months. Each property would be sold to its respective purchaser for its relative portion of the total value.
After a few conversations with the developer, PLU is optimistic that the developer will accept this option, if they feel confident that the community group will proceed with a viable adaptive-reuse option. We will know if this will happen after their negotiations with the developer' and potentially as soon as July 27th .
A potential scenario is that a community coalition would have six months to fully develop a plan and partners to purchase the property for the adaptive reuse of the facility, and 12 months to implement/renovate.o If the developer does not accept this option, PLU is still legally obligated to sell the property to the developer under the terms of the purchase and sale agreement. The panel asked about legal and financial penalties for the sale not closing, but details were not forthcoming.
• If the developer does not accept this option, PLU is still legally obligated to sell the property to the developer under the terms of the purchase and sale agreement. We did ask about legal and financial penalties for the sale not closing, but details were not forthcoming.
Our coalition would need to pursue more pressure on the county-permitting process to deny permits and force the developer into reconsidering, and ultimately abandoning, their development of the site. Then we would need to come up with more money for a higher purchase price (potentially from the developer).