The Tucson Mayor and City Council have approved the sale of 6.45 acres located along the northbound Freeway Frontage Road, north of 22nd Street and received no bids for the 2.55 acres (El Campo parcel) for lease. The results of the “best and final” were as follows:
Lowell Carhart of Eons Expos LLLP won the bid for $1,602,001 proposal to build a Rob Paulus designed, year-round multi-use gem and mineral show facility. Although slightly lower in bid price, the Council agreed that this proposal represented a better long term use for the City. Eon Expos has operated a gem and mineral show on this site for the past four years.
A second bid was proposed by Daniel J Duke for $1,740,100 to purchase the 6.45 acre parcel. Duke was proposing to develop the property with a Modal Transportation Hub, a 200-unit Storage facility for gem and mineral show customers, a Suite Hotel of 100-150 units and a Building and Teaching Production Greenhouse on a nearby property.
A third proposal was from Allan Norville to ground lease the 6.45 acre parcel being offered for sale and sub-lease the 2.55 acre El Campo parcel. Norville’s proposal was determined to be inferior of the other two. There were no separate bids on the 2.55 acre El Campo parcel for lease.
In a related but separate RFP, the 2.55 acres surplus property located on the north side of 18th Street, East of the northbound Freeway Frontage Road was also awarded to Daniel J Duke for $250,427. The City used the marketing services of Tierra Right of Way to market the 2.55 acres at a minimum bid offering of $240,000.
The 6.45 acre parcel, was brought to market by Ian Stuart, Ben Becker and Adam Becker with CBRE’s Tucson office representing the City. Randy Emerson of GRE Partners in Tucson represents the buyer, Eons Expos in the acquisition of the 6.45 acre parcel. The RFP requires the deal to close within 75-days of Mayor and Council action,, which places the closing mid-to late October.
CBRE was retained by the City in March of 2012 to identify and categorize its inventory of surplus properties. That task is now complete and CBRE has been engaged to market those parcels categorized as “major sites”.
Emerson should be contacted at (520) 777-4949. The Becker and Stuart team can be reached at (520) 323-5100.
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RIO NUEVO UPDATE ON WESTERN PARCEL
The last 8.5 acre gateway parcel of vacant land along the freeway between Congress and Granada is vital to the development of Downtown Tucson and the volunteer Rio Nuevo board is being extra cautious in its decision-making.
After hearing both from Nor-Gen (Allan Norville) and Peach Properties (Ron Schwabe) oral presentations and interviews to a packed room of people in a special session Tuesday, the Rio Nuevo Board voted 3 to 2 to return cumulative score sheets on each of the bids by Monday at 5:00 PM.
Counsel for the board reminded the audience on Tuesday that the highest ranking bidder of the RFP will be invited to negotiate a development agreement with the Rio Nuevo Board and is not an automatic sale of the property.