|
right now by the church members. And the membership, in spite of the increasing membership
<br />those who are, you know, like have the talent and the desire and the time to maintain all of these
<br />facilities are kind of like getting up there in age, and so they’re looking at alternative ways to
<br />help generate funds off this property. You know, we looked at the possibility of having the land
<br />subdivided and sold and then, you know, maybe putting it in an interest bearing account; and
<br />we’re glad that didn’t happen in light of what’s happening today. Then along, you know, we
<br />were looking at also some other potential uses for the property that would be very compatible
<br />with the community and the surrounding areas.
<br />One of the uses we looked at included possibly like an elderly care facility, and more recently the
<br />possibility of the student housing. We were approached by representatives of Place Properties
<br />to consider like student housing. And what I shared with you was initially a couple of things.
<br />One was a background report in terms of like who Place Properties actually is. And the Place
<br />Properties actually is, the person, his name is Cecil Place; and Place Properties comes after Cecil
<br />Place. It’s an Atlanta-based company. And what it is is like their company specializes in
<br />developing, and renting, and maintaining student housing. They have, at this point in time,
<br />according to the brochure that I passed out, 405 employees and their primary headquarters is
<br />based in Atlanta. They own over 2300 beds and they manage over 19,000 as of the year 2005.
<br />What Place Properties does is they develop on a turn-key basis and they try to privatize student
<br />housing as opposed to going before a Board of Regents and trying to get State or government
<br />funds to kind of, you know, develop a student housing program along that line. So they
<br />specialize in privatize housing, you know, for students. Their local representatives had a
<br />meeting with the Planning Director like just about a year ago; and what I did was also passed,
<br />shared with you, because it’s kind of buried in an environmental assessment, I kind of shared
<br />with you the letter that was generated, you know, from Place Properties representatives to the
<br />Planning Department, and likewise a response from the Planning Director. And because of the
<br />favorable response received by the Planning Director on this project in concept, that basically
<br />encouraged Place Properties to enter into a memorandum of understanding with the church.
<br />As Place had indicated in the letter to the Planning Department and also like as they reviewed the
<br />proposed conditions, what was of concern to Place Properties, of course, is like, you know, when
<br />you do a privatized student housing it’s almost like doing an affordable housing project, so your
<br />margin is very, very, very narrow. And so every time you add on conditions then it makes the
<br />project even more questionable, you know, particularly in light of this time to get financing.
<br />They have asked us to see whether they can, you know, when the Commission or the County
<br />Council ultimately considers this application whether they can get relief from certain things.
<br />They wanted certain relief that when we had reviewed it, we being the members of the church
<br />had reviewed some of the things that Place Properties wanted to have relief, we didn’t feel
<br />comfortable. For example, in getting relief from putting in curbs, gutters and sidewalks, we felt
<br />that that was like a very important safety measure, largely because there’s a heavy school traffic
<br />in that area and this project is predicated upon a lot of foot traffic between the facility and the
<br />University. So, you know, we felt that was something that we didn’t feel comfortable about
<br />gaining relief.
<br />However, there were like two areas that we thought that possibly, you know, we could ask this
<br />Commission and ultimately ask the County Council that they could consider. And one was to
<br />gain relief from the fair share requirement. The fair share right now calls for like approximately
<br />$10,000 per unit, and that translates to giving them $160,000, or whatever it comes out to. So,
<br /> EXHIBIT D
<br />3
<br />
<br />
|