EMC offers $1.6 Million to Orange Beach

If deal for 20 acres is OK'd, Orange Beach would have its first tenant of beach express business park

Published By Mobile Press Register
Sunday, October 01, 2006
By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter
ORANGE BEACH -- Baldwin EMC has offered to pay $1.6 million for 20 acres at the city's yet-to-be-developed business park on the Foley Beach Express.

The City Council is scheduled to vote on the deal Tuesday, though the body already voted unanimously in February to pursue either a long-term lease or sale with the electric cooperative and city officials said last week that council members had pre-authorized a sale to be negotiated at the $1.6 million price.

Orange Beach bought the property as part of an 80-acre, $4.85 million purchase last November with hopes of developing the property as a business park and extending the city's northern boundary to the borders of Foley and Gulf Shores.

At $4.85 million, the city wound up paying $60,625 per acre in November. By selling 20 acres to EMC for $1.6 million, or $80,000 per acre, the city will see a net profit of $387,500 on that part of the property.

Karen Moore, vice president of member services and public relations for EMC, said Friday that the cooperative has "outgrown" its Gulf Shores office, which services the southern end of the county. Obtaining the 20 acres at the business park will not only enable that expansion but, with the location on higher ground north of the Intracoastal Waterway, will also allow EMC to "improve our disaster response plan," Moore said.

City Attorney Wanda J. Cochran, who has been negotiating the deal with EMC officials, said at a council work session last week that the cooperative had expressed a desire to close on the property by the end of the year in order to start construction in January.

One of the terms of the deal, should it be approved, will be that if EMC doesn't build its facility, it would have to sell the land back to Orange Beach for the $1.6 million price, City Administrator Jeff Moon said.

"The intent was not for them to be able to flip it," Moon told council members Monday.

The EMC parcel is at the middle of the business park, with access to Roscoe Road, which forms the eastern boundary of the city's property, according to a plat provided by Orange Beach.

North of the 20 acres EMC is pursuing are 20 acres the city has set aside to be the eventual home of a medical facility.

To the south is five acres that city officials have said they would like to use as the site of a municipal emergency management facility and 10 acres that another company is considering locating upon, city officials said.

Moon said Friday that he met that morning with representatives from that company, which he cannot yet identify, and they have expressed "strong interest" in the parcel.

Should that company reach an agreement with Orange Beach, most of the usable 80 acres would be spoken for, Moon said. The property plat shows about 16 acres of wetlands at its southern end, which will be preserved, and miscellaneous acreage for roadways and other uses.

Earlier in last week's work session, the council told Business and Industrial Development Board President Allen McElroy that his appointed panel should continue its work drafting covenants that will guide the park's development.

"Ultimately, it will be the entrance to Orange Beach, so we want it to look nice," Moon said Friday, adding that it will be heavily landscaped and the appearance of the buildings will be strictly controlled by the covenants.

Council members also told McElroy that the board, which is responsible for lining up the city's purchase of the park, to go ahead and look for more property to the south or east of the 80 acres to facilitate expansion.