[Durham INC] Durham County will buy Hope Valley shopping center and slice of land in Hayti Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article264290756.html#storylink=cpy

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*REAL ESTATE NEWS *
Durham County will buy Hope Valley shopping center and a slice of land in
Hayti BY MARY HELEN MOORE UPDATED AUGUST 09, 2022 at 8:30 AM
<https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article264290756.html>

Durham County negotiated a $12.1 million price for the Shoppes of Hope
Valley, where it intends to move the Board of Elections. The strip mall is
on Martin Luther King, Jr. Parkway at Roxboro Street. BC Wood Properties
DURHAM Durham County will spend $20 million on a strip mall, the former
home of the Boys & Girls Club, and several acres next to Durham Technical
Community College.

The Durham County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously Monday night to
approve the three purchases. “We cannot continue to put everything
downtown,” Commissioner Nimasheena Burns said at the meeting. “We have to
put things in the community.” TOP VIDEOS × “We’re being proactive,” said
Chair Brenda Howerton. DURHAM BOARD OF ELECTIONS TO CONSOLIDATE LOCATIONS
The strip mall was the priciest purchase. It sits on over 17 acres and
contains an empty grocery store location intended as a new home for the
Durham County Board of Elections.

The Shoppes of Hope Valley was built in 2002 on Martin Luther King Jr.
Parkway at Roxboro Street, anchored by a long-vacant Kroger with 25
additional storefronts and a 590-space parking lot.

Kroger closed all 14 of its Triangle locations in 2018, selling some to its
North Carolina-based subsidiary Harris Teeter. Kentucky-based real estate
developer BC Wood Properties bought the shopping center in 2015 for $15.6
million but was never able to re-lease the 54,436-square-foot anchor store.

A $12.1 million contract was negotiated with the county, records show, with
BC Wood agreeing to first replace the roof and HVAC systems and seal coat
the parking lot.

Director of Elections Derek Bowens said the Board of Elections is currently
split between two locations: the main office downtown and a warehouse on
South Alston Avenue. “What this will do is consolidate our spaces into one
facility and also give us the additional space we need for our
ever-expanding operations,” Bowens told The News & Observer. Sixteen units
in the strip mall are leased to tenants that include Family Dollar, N.C.
Division of Motor Vehicles, and a variety of restaurants, cellphone
companies, and other shops. “There’s no decision that’s been made on what
to do with those at this point. The current leases will remain unchanged,”
said Peri Manns, assistant general manager of administration.

Bowens said the move — five years in the making — could happen as early as
2023. The county is considering a limited obligation bond or bank
financing. “That’s right down from Hillside and that is right across the
street from the new John Avery Boys & Girls Club and there’s a new
elementary school going there, so we already know that this is going to be
a center for community activity and we want to make sure that we have a
place there,” Burns said.
BULL CITY UNITED COULD MOVE INTO FORMER BOYS & GIRLS CLUB The county will
spend another $6 million to buy a vacant building that for five decades
held the Boys & Girls Club, in a move commissioners said was at least in
part about protecting a bit of real estate in a historic Black neighborhood
from development pressure. “It is smack dab in the center of Hayti. Hayti
has been purchased by folks who are not from this community and not from
this state,” Burns said. “We did it so people could not continue to tear up
Hayti.” Pictured is a mural on the exterior of the now abandoned old Boys
and Girls Club of Greater Durham building along East Pettigrew Street in
Durham, in the Hayti neighborhood. Laura Brache lbrache at newsobserver.com
The two parcels there total 2.61 acres and were last sold in 2019 to an LLC
registered to private investor Pablo Reiter for just over $2 million. “This
is a very strategic, valuable piece of property,” Vice Chair Wendy Jacobs
said. “We don’t just want Durham County government to be in office
buildings downtown. We need to be accessible.” Bull City United, a violent
crime and gang intervention program funded by the county and city, had
initially hoped to lease the empty building, which is sandwiched between
East Pettigrew Street and the Durham Freeway. The Boys & Girls Club called
it home for most of its history — from 1972 until it relocated to Martin
Luther King, Jr. Parkway in 2020. “Before a lease could be negotiated, the
owner made the decision to sell the property rather than enter a long-term
lease,” county staff wrote in an agenda item. “It was just a perfect
location,” Joanne Pierce, the county’s general manager of health and
well-being, told commissioners Monday. The public health department
launched Bull City United in 2016 to send trusted community members called
“violence interrupters” into certain neighborhoods to help resolve
conflicts, identify people at high risk of violent behavior, and reshape
social norms around gun violence. Pierce said the space also will be used
by My Brother’s Keeper and Project BUILD, other programs in the Department
of Public Health’s department of community intervention. The county is
similarly considering a limited obligation bond or bank financing. DURHAM
TECH BUYS NEIGHBORING LAND The commissioners also agreed to buy land next
to Durham Tech For the past two decades, the nearly 6 acres were privately
owned by Randal and Leslie Brame, who gave the college the first option to
buy and negotiated a $2.3 million prize. “This is an important piece to get
right for our community, but it’s also an important piece for the future
expansion opportunities of the college,” said J.B. Buxton, Durham Tech’s
president. The money will be drawn from the fund the county uses to pay its
debts. THE DURHAM REPORT Calling Bull City readers! We've launched The
Durham Report, a free weekly digest of some of the top stories for and
about Durham published in The News & Observer and The Herald-Sun. Get your
newsletter delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday at 11 a.m.
featuring links to stories by our local journalists. Sign up for our
newsletter here. For even more Durham-focused news and conversation, join
our Facebook group "The Story of my Street." This story was originally
published August 8, 2022 5:43 PM. RELATED STORIES FROM RALEIGH NEWS &
OBSERVER REAL ESTATE NEWS Durham City Council still doesn’t know what to do
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pay $62.5 million to turn Durham shopping center into life sciences campus
JULY 06, 2022 9:05 AM MARY HELEN MOORE Mary Helen Moore covers Durham for
The News & Observer. She grew up in Eastern North Carolina and attended
UNC-Chapel Hill before spending several years working in newspapers in
Florida. Outside of work, you might find her biking, reading, or fawning
over plants.

Read more at:
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article264290756.html#storylink=cpy
be a kind human
Bonita Green
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