An 8.5-acre dirt lot near the Tucson Convention Center could finally see some life.
The Rio Nuevo Board unanimously approved a contract for Allan Norville, manager of Nor-Generations, to purchase and develop the parcel along Granada Avenue, east of Interstate 10 and north of Cushing Street.
The vote ended about five months of arduous negotiations and opened the possibility of private development on the dormant western edge of downtown.
But Rio Nuevo Chairman Fletcher McCusker said the board didn’t just turn over the land to Norville so he could keep it an empty lot.
“With Rio Neuvo’s legacy of incomplete projects, we didn’t feel we could do that,” McCusker said. “We wanted to assure the community, but moreover the state Legislature because this is tax money, that the property will be developed.”
McCusker said the board insisted on, and received, “stringent development terms” as part of the agreement.
“We wanted him to commit to millions of dollars of additional development. We wanted him to commit to an acceptable period of time” to reach milestones, McCusker said. “We wanted him to commit to damages in the event that those benchmarks were not made.”
McCusker said it was a hard pill to swallow for a developer to agree to those terms.
“We can say that we’ve come to an agreement that we believe achieves all that,” he said.
Norville’s roughly $100 million project includes a 140-room hotel, a 96-unit apartment complex and visual arts center, housing three museums — gem and mineral, photography and art — and a theater.
In addition, Norville would build a 120,000-square-foot exhibition hall on his own property next to the 8.5-acre parcel land. Norville will pay about $5.6 million to the district for the land.
He now has up to 120 days to close on the property. After that, he has six months to submit a development plan to the city.
Once the city accepts Norville’s plans, the Greyhound bus station, which currently operates on the property, will have one year to relocate, with the city picking up the costs.
After Greyhound relocates, Norville will have 3.5 years to invest at least $10 million in hard construction costs on the property or he must pay Rio Nuevo $2.5 million in damages.
McCusker said a penalty offers more incentive for Norville to develop the property than just returning it to the district if he doesn’t perform.
“We traded the reversion clause with these stiff damages,” McCusker said. “We went with a big number there to compel him to develop it.”
Patti Norville Spector of Nor-Generations said her group was pleased a deal was struck and is looking forward to starting development on the long-vacant property.
http://tucson.com/news/local/govt-an...e6403d4af.html
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So we are looking at a completed project by 2021...That's way too long.
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