Tuesday, July 7, 2015 • Supervisors approve purchase of Riverside Drive building

Publisher’s note: This story originally appeared in the Tuesday, July 7, 2015 edition of the Lassen County Times.

A purchase agreement has been approved for property on Riverside Drive, which will be used to relocate county offices.

The Lassen County Board of Supervisors approved a purchase agreement of $1.3 million for the former Bureau of Land Management facility at 2590 Riverside Drive during a special Wednesday, July 1 meeting.

The adoption of the resolution authorizes the chairman of the board to sign the purchase agreement and Lassen County Administrative Officer Richard Egan will also be able to take the necessary actions to acquire the property.

According to Egan, the county will be making an initial $10,000 deposit to escrow, which is expected to close within 60 days.

The seller will pay the property tax that has accrued on the property to date, but once the county owns the facility it becomes public property and tax-exempt.

According to Egan, it is not expected an environmental survey will be conducted the county has received disclosures from the seller as far as what has gone on with the property.

Egan said there is no indication there are environmental issues as the property has been occupied by the federal government.

In a separate agenda item, the supervisors unanimously approved authorizing $1.7 million from the lease purchase to pay for the acquisition costs such as inspection, testing and certificate or service reports as well as improvements to the facility.

Supervisor Aaron Albaugh asked what inspections were going to be conducted.

According to deputy county administrator Tony Shaw, anticipated inspections include having a professional architect go through the building for an evaluation as well as inspections on the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system and  the roof.

Because there might be questions, Egan explained how the value of the building and the purchase price were decided.

The county assessor valued the building at $2.3 million.

When negotiations began the seller had an asking price at $1.9 million.

The county contracted with another appraiser who did a nice appraisal report on the property, according to Egan.

He said the analysis shows the tradition of buildings being constructed and rented by federal agencies and then being vacated when the agency moves to another building is not unique to Susanville, but has occurred in Alturas and Eureka as well.

As a result, the buildings become derelict.

According to Egan, because of the probability a vacant building like that would be empty for a very long time or would require significant changes to make the building useable, the facility was appraised at $1.1 million by the contracted appraiser.

“We spent a lot of time negotiating with the owner of the property and arrived at the $1.3 million, which in my view, because of the purpose that we’re going to use that building for, it’s very well suits are needs, I think it’s a tremendous value,” Egan said.

The current plan is to relocate the district attorney, public defender and child support services offices to the Riverside Drive building so staff can be closer to the Hall of Justice.

Other offices and county services may also be moved to that location.

Supervisor Tom Hammond said, “What jumped out at me at about this process is the $73.38 per square foot purchase price … You can’t even come close to building something like that for $85 to $95 a square foot. And that’s on the rich side.”

Hammond said when he and Albaugh toured the facility, “I could see it launching us into the future, (it’s a) good purchase.

The Lassen County Board of Supervisors approved a purchase agreement of $1.3 million for the facility that was once used by the Bureau of Land Management.