Dearborn Mayor Jack O'Reilly made a surprising announcement during his State of the City address Wednesday night: the proposed sale price of the current Dearborn City Hall.
It's expected that arts development nonprofit Artspace—which has committed to turning the city hall building at 13615 Michigan Ave. into live-work space for artists—will pay $1.65 million for the facility.
"That's the price established by an independent appraiser," O'Reilly said in prepared remarks before local officials and community members Wednesday.
Though the sale of the building to Artspace has been discussed for nearly a year, the city had not previously released an estimated sale price.
"We both agreed on the appraiser and what the appraiser said is what the price would be," O'Reilly said after his speech in an interview with Patch. "It's about what we're keeping and what we're selling."
Artspace will buy the main City Hall building and the West Annex in as-is condition. The city estimates that over the next few years, the complex will require $8-$9 million in investments such as structural repairs and equipment replacement.
The historic facade of the building and many interior structures will be kept intact.
O'Reilly added that according to Artspace, they plan to invest $17 million in renovating the property—including turning most of it into 50 rental living units for artists.
Though Artspace has live-work artist facilities in 30 other locations across the country, Dearborn's would be the first of its kind in Michigan.
The city, O'Reilly said, would still own City Hall Park, which will likely be maintained by the East Dearborn Downtown Development Authority in the future.
O'Reilly estimates that the city will be moving into its new municipal offices—located at 16901 Michigan Ave. just west of the Henry Ford Centennial Library—in early 2014. Currently, the city has bids out for the build-out process.
That building, a former ADP office, was purchased in March 2012 for $3.2 million.
As for the sale of the old building, the city hopes to have a finalized purchase agreement within the next few months. Artspace needs that agreement to be able to apply for the largest chunk of federal grant money to fund the project.
The target for that federal grant application, according to Dearborn Community Fund Director EmmaJean Woodyard, is August of this year.
"It's a long, slow process," she said. "But they're moving forward. You don't see a lot happening, but there is a lot going on."
Woodyard shared that Artspace representatives have been to Dearborn multiple times over the past six months to work on the project, and will likely be coming more often as the deal with the city comes closer to fruition.
As for having his office turned into an artist's apartment?
"It's really cool," O'Reilly said.
"I've got a lot of emotions about city hall," he added, "but I'm excited about Artspace."
San Leandro was not content as a "poor relation" to richer Silicon Valley neighbors, so the community reached deep to offer "local businesses speeds up to 10 gigabits per second, or 2,000 times faster than the average U.S. internet connection." All variety of businesses could benefit from blinding connectivity speeds as Information Technology ("IT") migrates to the cloud. Think of medical technology where staples like X-rays take a long time to fully transmit. Houston is poised to overtake Chicago as the second largest city in the US - not for energy, but for its Texas Medical Center http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Medical_Center - the largest in the world!
Seymour's idea of high tech info transmission is a good one. High tech jobs pay good, would fill up the smaller shop locations, and may attract an Apple store or the like. Tech folk may add more on this subject, I am lucky to turn on my Iphone. Dearborn Taxpayer is right. Our city expenses with respect to perks and benefits to the employees are out of control . Time to restructure pensions, ie phase them out and adopt 401 plans where the risk and investment is controlled by employees. They need to have some skin in the game. Are the massive longevity bonuses to many city employees viable in this economy? Give them another week of vacation instead. The tax dollars saved can go toward parks, libraries, etc.
sparkle...W
Excerpt: In partnership with EDDDA and the City of Dearborn, Artspace is now in the planning stages of a mixed-use arts campus that will transform the 1922 Georgian-Revival style Dearborn City Hall into 40-plus affordable live/work spaces for artists and non-residential space for artist studios, arts organizations and creative businesses. Estimated Project Cost is $13.5 million. THE REAL QUESTION IS: How an entire city block and historical structure in a prime commercial location can be purchased for only $1.65 million? If this land grab is any measure, our residences should all be reassessed to no more than $10,000 to keep a sense of proportion.
FYI: The transformative effect of Artspace in Chicago's Garfield Park neighborhood http://www.artspace.org/our-places/switching-station-artist-lofts has been imperceptible to the human eye since coming on stream in 2003.
An article on Patch back in December 2012 stated that the school district will "revisit the issue in the future". Now that things are moving forward is there any time frame as to when the schools will announce their final decision on this matter once and for all? Are they actually looking into it now? Also, if the schools are not moving into the new city hall, has the mayor mentioned any type of back up plan for all the empty space they will have?