Myers property to get tenant

The First Street location of what was formerly known as Myers Mobile Home Park may have a new tenant — and use.

At its Sept. 13 regular meeting, the Cheney City Council unanimously agreed to a resolution entering into a 10-year lease agreement with Dow Excavating for use of the property as an expansion of the local landscaping and excavating company’s business. Dow has a 5 – 10 year window with which to exercise an option to purchase the property, meaning the company can’t make the purchase in the first five years of the lease with the option expiring after 10 years.

Dow also has an option to extend the lease for another 10 years, with proper notification given to the city of its intention to do so. The lease provides the city a new income stream, with Dow paying $1,100 per month over the first two years of the lease, $1,200 a month over years three and four, and a monthly amount from year five and after that is based upon the assessed value of the property, multiplied by 8 percent and then divided by 12.

This “adjusted rate” shall be adjusted every two years, beginning in year seven of the lease. The 26-page agreement also contains clauses on payment of utilities and taxes, termination, maintenance, improvements and additional permitted uses such as a seasonal RV park.

“That would have to be permitted,” city attorney Stanley Schwartz said. “I don’t know if the zoning would allow this at this time.”

Public Works Director Todd Ableman told the council that the land is currently zoned industrial, which does not allow for RV parks currently. Another permitted use would be as a cell tower site, something Councilman Doug Nixon commented he thought they had previously discussed as not allowing, a discussion that apparently took place in a closed-door executive session.

The land was formerly the site of a mobile home park owned by Thomas Myers. In 1995, Myers and the city entered into a 12-year long conflict over code enforcement decisions on aspects of the property.

The dispute eventually went to court, where the city prevailed on several occasions, and Myers was eventually fined and ordered to prepare an estimate of improvements needed on the property. Myers claimed he could not afford the repairs, and in July 2006 closed the 44-unit park and notified the owners of the 17 existing mobile homes of the park’s closing.

In June 2010, the city and Myers finalized a settlement in which the city took ownership of the property in lieu of jail time and $840,000 in fines wracked up for dozens of city code violations.

If Dow Excavating owner Wayne Dow intends to exercise the purchase option, he must provide the city $1,000 in option money within five days of his approval of the option agreement, with the money then held and applied to the final purchase price. The final purchase price would be negotiated between the two parties, and if an agreement was not forthcoming, both would hire their own appraisers to assess the property value, with the purchase price being determined by an average of those two values.

“Kind of like a baseball arbitration agreement,” Schwartz said at the Sept 13 meeting.

Council members Teresa Overhauser and Dan Hilton expressed some concern about the possibility of the property once again being turned into some sort of mobile home park, something Ableman said wasn’t currently allowed by its zoning.

“I don’t think that’s his primary goal,” City Administrator Mark Schuller said. “He wants to operate this property for his business. He has plans (for the property), and if he can pull it off, I think it will be a great thing for this city.”

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].