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Fort Wayne’s option to buy 29 acres north of the St. Marys River expired today without a deal, yet city officials insist negotiations will continue.
The city spent $25,000 for an 18-month option – it was extended from 12 months – to buy the land near OmniSource for $4.3 million, but the option lasted only through Monday.
John Urbahns, city development director, said a deal would not be reached Monday, but he said the city hoped to meet with the landowners as early as this week to discuss a sale.
“We’re going to keep working on it whether we have an option or not,” Urbahns said.
Danny Rifkin, who previously was president and CEO of OmniSource, could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon. His family owns the property west of Clinton Street, south of the former YWCA property and east of Harrison Street.
While the option and the money the city spent are both gone, Urbahns said it wasn’t a waste. Having a purchase option provided the city access to the site and an ability to study its environmental condition. The environmental studies are complete, and Urbahns said nothing surprising was found, but the city has refused to release the reports.
Mayor Tom Henry said both sides moved as quickly as they could to reach a deal, but things happened during negotiations that caused delays – one being the transition from former Mayor Graham Richard to Henry.
Urbahns said the first year was mostly spent by the city determining whether it should move ahead with the purchase. The city hired a consultant and conducted a number of community meetings last year to determine how to best use the land along the river. The group’s top recommendation in August 2007 was to buy the site.
Henry said he wasn’t concerned about another buyer taking the land with the option expiring, although Urbahns said it is the city’s ultimate goal to have a private developer buy the land. Urbahns said the property is too important for the city to ever simply drop all attempts at development.
But he added that the state legislature’s property tax cuts have forced the city to look at the property differently, as the city will be faced with multimillion-dollar shortfalls in the next two years.
He said the talks with the Rifkin family have been positive and he expects that to continue even without a purchase option.
“We all have the same interest,” he said. “We want to see the land developed.”
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