Wonderful. At a minimum city taxpayers are going to be out $250K due the city of Charlotte’s latest attempt to play estate mogul. The deal which sold developer Robert Drakeford seven acres Uptown for $460,000 less than its market value of $790,000 has completely blown up. Now city staff wants to buy back the land for $580,000.
You are doing it wrong.
Once again the city tried to get cute and get something city staff wanted — in this case, “affordable housing” — for nothing. City council, as usual, rubber-stamped the scheme.
For those playing at home, that is the third questionable “economic development” outcome for the city in recent months. First, we had the still unexplained $550,000 bailout of Uptown wheeler-dealer Afshin Ghazi in his hour of need, then the sweetheart option to buy the Parkwood Food Mart for $472,000 from an owner who owed back taxes to the city and county.
Update: Ha! I see that someone ran over and paid the $3400 owed on the food mart immediately after I started asking questions about the taxes due. In fact, the paid date is back-dated because the taxes had not been paid as of Aug. 27th, and payment is dated the 26th.