The former Churchill Junior High School appears set for an appraisal after all. Two weeks after rejecting the idea, the City Council is once again being asked to approve a bid seeking an appraisal for the now city-owned former school building on Maple Avenue.
Interim City Manager Wayne Carl tells WGIL the item is back on the agenda because several of the Council members who previously voted no have decided they would like to reconsider it and asked for it to be placed on the agenda for Monday’s meeting.
The proposal failed by a 5-2 vote at the Aug. 7 meeting, however three Council members who voted no — Wayne Dennis Bradley Hix and Heather Acerra — agreed to reconsider the appraisal tonight.
If approved, Carl said it will likely take 30 days or more to get the appraisal completed at a cost of between $1,500 to $2,000 to the city.
Dennis, Ward 2, said he requested the item be brought back before the Council at Monday’s meeting.
“For two grand, we’ll go ahead and do it,” Dennis said.
The same night the Council rejected the appraisal, it heard on first reading a bid of $100,000, by local developer Rob Benedict to purchase Churchill. The Council discussed Benedict’s bid on first reading Monday, however there was no vote taken on suspending the rules and voting on the bid. The Council was likely to vote on the bid on second reading on Monday (Aug. 21), however Benedict said the offer was contingent on the City Council expediting the process and approving his bid at Monday’s Council meeting, and he pulled his bid the next day.
“The reason we didn’t approve the appraisal was, we had a time sensitive offer from Mr. Benedict, one I thought was a fair offer,” Hix said.
Alderman: ‘I really think it will be a difficult appraisal to do’
Hix, Ward 1, is confident the Council will approve the appraisal on Monday, but is not convinced it will produce a true evaluation of how much Churchill is worth.
“For an appraisal to work, you need recent comparable sales, or comps,” Hix said. “There’s just not a lot of comps to Churchill. I really think it will be a difficult appraisal to do. It will most likely be a pretty big price range of what it’s worth.”
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Shortly after the Council rejected the appraisal on Aug. 7, former Fifth Ward Council member Jackie Smith-Esters created a GoFundMe seeking $2,000 in private donations to raise money for an appraisal.
Smith-Esters wrote: On Monday night five council members voted no to get an appraisal done for Churchill. The citizens of Galesburg own this building and we want to get it appraised. If you would like to contribute to this effort please donate. The average rate per square foot in the market today is 100 dollars. Donate what you can. Any amount helps. The cost for an appraisal would be about 2000 dollars. Let’s do what we know is right.
The GoFundMe for an appraisal reached $940 of its $2,000 goal, but has not received a donation in the past nine days. Carl said it’s unlikely city administration would have allowed a complete private appraisal of Churchill, given the Council had rejected the proposal.
Mayor: Failure to get an appraisal is ‘bad practice’
Galesburg Mayor Peter Schwartzman, who originally asked for the appraisal to be placed on the Aug. 7 agenda, said he believes its appropriate to get an estimate of Churchill’s value.
“City property is in the public domain,” Schwartzman said. “Any city property with significant value should be appraised. Failure to do so is bad practice. This building may be more difficult to appraise than a house but are there not vacated school buildings throughout the U.S.?
“I am sure there are many comparables in downstate Illinois that can be used as a basis for comparison. The community members that spoke to me were almost all in favor of an appraisal.”
