Late last month the Mecklenburg ABC Board closed on a deal which spent $1.4m. to buy the former site of a Sonny’s Real Pit BBQ store on South Blvd., a location mere yards from CATS $525m. light rail line. The property also borders a former site of a Texas Roadhouse restaurant — which was bought by the city of Charlotte in 2009 for $2m. That property remains boarded up and festooned with no trespassing signs.

With the ABC Board purchase, the southern terminus of Charlotte’s light rail line is now surrounded by government-owned property. The other side of the tracks is the campus of CMS’ Sterling elementary school. Far from a catalyst for private sector development and an expanded tax base, the LTR station seems to be having the opposite effect. The former Rafferty’s restaurant directly across the street from Sonny’s also recently closed down.

What is going on here?

The ABC Board evidently intends to turn the old Sonny’s site into a 5800-square-foot liquor store — right smack up against a CATS Park-N-Ride lot and a half-billion dollar train headed for Uptown. Oh happy day! In fact, so intent was the Board on getting the property it paid Tricor Five Twenty One — owners of Sonny’s locations on Monroe and Tyvola — the full 2003 tax value of the 1.89 acre property. This despite what the county own property tax appraisers say is steep drop in the value of commercial property in the county in since the 2008 crash.

Moreover, because Board-owned property is exempt from local property tax it will no longer generate $18,363 dollars in tax each year — $11,800 to the county, $6,500 to the city.

It will, however, be fantastically easy to use the taxpayer-provided transit system to get to and from a county-owned liquor store.