Congratulations Fayetteville Taxpayer! You’re now in the commercial real estate business! You are the proud owner of Unit “R1” in the “Stadium View Condominium” project on Hay Street. The space is located in the rear corner of the first floor of your new parking deck.

Your good Mayor and City Council quietly purchased this fine space for $550,000.00 in August while most of you were probably preoccupied with Covid-19:

Under the latest amendment, Prince Charles Holdings (PCH) gets another $550,000.00 in tax money, on top of what we paid them for the parking deck. They were several years late finishing the deck, went millions over-budget, and they haven’t built anything on top of it like they promised. I’m sure you’ll hear a lot about Covid as an excuse. Let me remind you that PCH was supposed to start building on top of the deck before we even knew what Covid was:

Bailing Out a Sinking Ship

We brokered this deal with PCH because they were the development experts. They were the ones that were supposed to attract business to downtown Fayetteville and fill up the commercial real estate that we were helping them build. This was supposed to increase property tax values in the area and finance the debt we took to build the baseball stadium.

When you look at the big picture, it’s apparent to anyone with a brain that PCH is not going to honor this deal. Whatever the reason, be it Covid or the current price of steel, the smart thing to do was to follow suit and cut our losses. Instead, our City leaders were too afraid to let this thing fall apart on their watches and dropped another $550k of your money to keep the ship afloat a little longer.

You can’t justify this anymore. It is what it is.

In closing, if you go to a Woodpecker’s game this Summer, check out your new “Retail” unit. It’ll be down the steps, to the left of the entrance to the stadium:

From the looks of R1, I think we’re going to need some Downtown Development Experts to help us find a tenant for our new space.

Know anyone good?