By JAMES MITCHELL
Sunday Times Newspapers
SOUTHGATE — City officials said optimism for the new year’s business prospects include hopes of working with new Wayne County administrators to resolve a longstanding source of frustration.
City Administrator Brandon Fournier said that he and Mayor Joseph Kuspa have reached out to the office of newly-elected Wayne County Executive Warren Evans to revive a nearly 10-year-old project to upgrade a county-owned building and lot.
During last month’s State of the City address Kuspa – while listing the numerous business and commercial gains made in 2014 – said that the former Home Quarters warehouse at I-75 and North Line Road is long overdue for improvements and a plan for the sizeable, mostly empty parking lot.
“We can all agree that one building continues to cast a shadow on our progress,” Kuspa said. “After five years of continued decline and failed attempts to renovate or repurpose the site, the city simply cannot wait on the county any longer.”
Fournier said Wayne County had acquired the property for $5 million in 2001 – it had sat vacant since the departure of Home Quarters the year before – with plans to relocate its Public Works Department headquarters. Renovation plans for that use proved too costly and the building was instead designated as a storage facility for court records and government equipment.
Ten years ago city officials approved a county project to make façade improvements to the 115,000-square-foot building and also to sublet the large parking lot, an ideal location for restaurants and gas stations.
Those plans stalled during the recession, although Fournier said he’s received frequent interest over the years from developers of chain restaurants, movie theaters and other interested businesses, but that no progress had been made in the county’s plan.
The city has requested the new county administration to make a priority of reviving the plan.
“One solution would be for them to appropriately renovate the building while also subletting the lot as they’d agreed to,” Fournier said. “The other alternative would be for them to realize that perhaps prime commercial space is not where they need to have records stored. It would be a greater benefit to be a tax-producing property.”
(James Mitchell can be reached at [email protected].)