The Stuart Town Council approved going forward with the sale of 5.794 acres of town property at $10,000 per acre at its Wednesday, February 21 meeting.
The property is located between Stuart Forest Products and EMI Imaging on Commerce Street. The Mayo River Rail Trail goes through the property.
Town Manager Bryce Simmons said the council had discussed disposing of the property at the last council meeting.
“I don’t think that we have a good plan for it at this point. I think that we have talked about $10,000 an acre for that property as part of what we would entertain offers to sell,” he said.
Mayor Ray Weiland said it’s a nice riverfront piece of property that was originally intended for the Stuart Volunteer Fire Department.
“We were going to build a new building there, but when we had the opportunity to put our fire department where it is now, of course we jumped at that opportunity,” he said.
Weiland said the best thing for the town to do is sell the property and get it back on the tax books.
“Hopefully a good business will come in there and utilize it to its fullest,” he said.
Deleep Paul, of Singh Brothers Investments, LLC, said he and his brother, Harjot Paul, would be interested in the property. The two have multiple successful businesses in the area.
“We actually run Friendly’s and we own some of Main Street. We’ve got Dry Pond now up in Stuart, and we’ve got this car wash that we just redid and remodeled for the town,” he said.
Paul said Singh Brothers has several ideas to build something for the property that could bring people to the community.
“That’s what we need. We need more people to make this town keep growing, you know,” he said. “Cause, we live in Stokes County and a lot of our schools are shutting down over there due to not having a lot of people. So, the more people we bring here, and the less people go to Martinsville and other areas it would help this county a lot.”
Simmons said the town will entertain multiple ideas about zoning of the property.
“We can rezone just about anything after we have an, I guess, architectural review come in who looks at these things and makes recommendations to the council,” Weiland added.
Paul said the pricing is probably in good standing due to some of it being in a flood zone.
Weiland said one can’t beat the fact the property is in town and has water and sewer.
‘Power’s right there, everything’s right there,” he said.
Councilman Davie Hoback asked the brothers if they had a defined project for the property at this point.
Harjot Paul said nothing defined, but they were leaning more towards the housing side.
“If we could close this deal, I’d be willing to close it within the week and get this thing started,” he said.
While they started in the convenience store business, Harjot Paul said they wish to get more into the commercial and apartment business.
“We own 36 units in this town, and they’re all rented out. Every week we probably get 12 calls every week, ‘do you have something to rent? Do you have somewhere to rent? And we don’t. There’s not enough places for people to rent,” Dejeep Paul said.
In other matters, the council:
*Discussed the Fiscal Year 2023-2024 proposed budget. Weiland said the budget includes a four percent raise for all town employees,
*Simmons acknowledged the town receiving an initial offer letter from Virginia Department of Housing (VDH) to prepare a lead service line in inventory project.
“This initial offer letter is for $250,000 with no match required. Assuming that council is willing to take $250,000 to have an inventory that is required by the EPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency) this year, I will send an email to the state and let them know we will gladly take their money.”
*Approved the meeting minutes.
*Discussed and tabled the noise ordinance until the March meeting.
*Paid the bills.
*Heard an update on town public works projects.
Town Attorney Chris Corbett did not attend the meeting.
