- November 6, 2024
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The rectangular patch of land on the southwest side of Justice Lane wouldn’t make for a great homesite, and for a real estate agent trying to show it, things might go south once a potential homebuyer asked what the neighbors were like. “Well,” the agent might say, “There’s the county jail right out back. Then just up the road is a facility for people with addiction or mental illness. There’s a training ground for firefighters and law officers across the street. Oh, and the county also plans to add a shooting range next door.”
The 9.04-acre plot of land in question is now vacant. But it’s designated in the county’s Future Land Use Map for residential use, and that has the county government concerned.
“In our opinion, it’s not a good place for us to have a large residential population,” County Administrator Craig Coffey said at a May 1 County Commission workshop. Coffey listed the surrounding government facilities — the jail, the training ground, the planned shooting range for Sheriff’s Office deputies. “All that’s fairly non-residential,” he said.
The county hopes to get ahead of that potential problem by just buying up the land itself, at a cost of about $65,000. The land is all upland, meaning that it could be built on in the future, Coffey told the commission.
“This would be a good acquisition,” Coffey said. “The price is right. ... Even as you expand later, even if you use it for nothing but parking or a stormwater pond, it would still be a usable parcel.”
The purchase of the property was not in this year’s budget, and the money will have to come from excess local option sales tax money or road fee money, Coffey said. The commissioners came to a consensus to approve the purchase.
