County Commission Votes to Purchase Town and Country Shopping Center Buildings

The former Town and Country Shopping Center may soon belong to DeKalb County.
By a vote of 10 to 0 Monday night, the county commission voted to purchase the 62,000 square foot complex. The property covers 5.21 acres and includes a large paved parking lot. A resolution authorizing funding for the purchase will be officially acted upon at the next meeting in November.
County Mayor Mike Foster says the shopping center buildings can be used for a variety of purposes. Some of the public officials in the courthouse could relocate their offices to the shopping center, creating more room at the courthouse for the Circuit, Juvenile, and Chancery Courts. An archives room would also be built in the complex to store important county records.
Foster says the shopping center would still offer plenty of space for rooms or buildings that the county could lease to non-profit organizations or have available for civic functions and recreation. According to Foster, some of the uses that the buildings could potentially be used for include, adult education classes by the school system, night classes by Motlow State Community College, senior citizen events, meeting rooms, an exercise room, and recreation, including possibly a bowling alley. The Farmers Market might also be relocated to the shopping center property.
The purchase price for the shopping center is approximately $750,000 but some renovation and remodeling would be required, which would add to the costs.
Foster says all this can be done without a property tax increase. “We could help pay for it out of cash that we have in fund balance. There is currently a note that is paying off this year that has been costing us $85,000 a year. It funds that much debt service. It’s already built into the budget. That (money) would go toward it (shopping center purchase). We’re thinking fees that are put on some things recorded and an archives grant too could probably generate $40,000 to $50,000 to build a place to store these papers (records). Another part of it would be where we would rent some of it (shopping center) to some non-profit organizations. We think that could generate about $40,000 a year. So all those things (sources of revenue) together could service the $1.5 million debt without doing any kind of a tax increase.”
Next month, the county commission is expected to authorize a note or bond issue for up to $1.5 million that would not only cover the cost of purchase and renovations to the complex, but also to fund other projects, including the purchase of a fire truck, the lease purchase of another fire truck, and to make roof repairs to a county owned shirt factory building downtown, where Omega hopes to add 112 jobs.