Clarkesville leaders seem weary of waiting for renovations to begin on the fire-damaged portion of the downtown square. They spent much of their regular work session on Thursday pushing City Manager Barbara Kesler to get things moving quickly, “We need to make some progress and show some activity,” says Councilmember Franklin Brown. Barrie Aycock agrees, “I think it would really be good for us to tell the citizens that we are moving forward.”
To that end, they’ve all agreed to focus on just two buildings for immediate action – the old Sharky’s location and the former martial arts studio next door (the two single-floor buildings pictured above). The plan currently is to move ahead with Request for Proposals on those two. “We can send the RFP out to those companies we’ve already qualified,” Kesler explains. “I can’t see the process taking more than 8 weeks.”
Councilmember Aycock pushed to shrink that even more, asking if they could have something moving just after the Mountain Laurel Festival in mid-May. “We just want to get the property back in use as soon as possible to pay back the investment that the taxpayers have already made,” says Mayor Terry Green.
To that end, Kesler says the funding picture for the project is looking better. Earlier estimates apparently didn’t take into account all the low interest loans potentially available to the city for the renovations. The funding scenario that got the most agreement at Thursday’s meeting combined Historic Tax Credits with borrowing from the Downtown Development Revolving Loan Fund and the Georgia Cities Fund. Both of those state funds offer loans well below market rates.
With all those funding sources in place, Kesler says the buildings owned by the city (fully restored and fully leased) could bring in $180,336 annually. She says that estimate is conservative and, if it holds, the city could make the annual payments on their $2 million+ renovation debt and still see a yearly profit of $44,843.
Kesler is less definitive when it comes to how soon the renovations will actually start, , “I feel confident that construction can begin on those two end buildings sometime later this year.”
