County shop has new home
In a matter of hours on Friday, the Jackson County Commissioners toured and then agreed to purchase a building to serve as the new home for the county shop.
On Monday morning, the commissioners – Bill Elmer, Janet Zwonitzer and Rob Ladner – signed off on paperwork to purchase a large shop building and seven acres of land currently owned by Forrester Truck Parts & Repair of Holton at a cost of $350,000.
The building and land are located at 24569 U.S. Highway 75 in Holton, north of the city at the intersection of 246th Road and U.S. 75. The property is about a mile north of Holton Community Hospital.
“We couldn’t pass up that kind of offer,” Zwonitzer said. “And we won’t have to have a bond to pay for it.”
Bob Forrester, who owns the property with his wife, Barbara, approached road and bridge supervisors last Thursday with an offer to sell his property to the county for use as a county shop, Zwonitzer said.
The commissioners, Eric Fritz and Earl Barhet, road and bridge department co-supervisors, and Terry Mick, bridge and special project manager, toured the facilities the next day. The building, which includes a mechanic shop, inventory area, office and other storage areas is 13,000-square feet.
An hour-long executive session was held from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Friday to discuss the piece of real estate with Bahret, Fritz, Mick and Jackson County Clerk Kathy Mick.
After the executive session, a motion was approved 3-0 to accept the asking price for the purchase of the building and land. The property is being sold by the Forresters, and no real estate agents were involved in the sale, it was reported.
After the motion passed, Zwonitzer, Fritz and Bahret returned to the property to inform the Forresters of the decision.
Portions of the building were built in 1962, with additional improvements made to the business in 1979, it was reported.
Paperwork was finalized Monday, and the funds for the purchase will come from the county’s capital outlay fund.
The county does not have any outstanding indebtedness, and the commissioners said this purchase will keep the county debt-free. The county has been debt-free since the end of 2013, when final payments used to purchase new heating and air conditioning systems for the Courthouse were paid off.
“This purchase gives us the acreage to expand if we need to do so in the future, and it’s a great location,” Ladner said. “It’s not landlocked, and it’s right off the highway.”
The Forresters have operated a semi truck repair business at the location for 17 years, and Bob is preparing to retire and close the business, it was reported.
Since the Forresters used the shop building to repair semis, the building is large enough for the county’s road and bridge equipment to fit into the shop bays, which is a problem at the current shop on Lowell Avenue in Holton.
The commissioners said that only minor renovations will have to be made to the new shop before the county can occupy the building.
“It’s in great shape,” Elmer said. “It’s already zoned, and the infrastructure is there. It’s a move-in ready facility. We didn’t want this offer to get away from us.”
For the past several months, the commissioners have been evaluating the county’s current shop, located at 525 Lowell Ave. in Holton. The current county shop was originally constructed in 1927, with an addition built in the 1930s.
The original building constructed in the 1920s totals 5,742 square feet. With the additions and the storage sheds, the total square footage nears 12,000 square feet.
The commissioners said that the older buildings were not designed to maintain larger, modern pieces of equipment and that about 50 percent of the county’s current fleet of road and bridge equipment cannot fit through the bay doors and must be worked on outside.
In recent weeks, the commissioners have advertised that they were accepting bids to construct a 125-foot long by 80-foot wide, all metal, pre-engineered building to serve as the new shop. Contractors were also contacted to submit bids. Preliminary bids were due the first week of December.
The commissioners said they were expecting to pay between $600,000 to $800,000 to construct a new shop.
The commissioners originally planned to construct the new shop between the county recycling center and the bridge yard on the east edge of town.
Zwonitzer said the county is expected to move into the new facility in late March or April of the next year.
After the new shop is opened, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office is expected to utilize the former shop facility as an impound yard and to store some of its larger equipment.
“They will make very good use of it,” Zwonitzer said.
According to county records, the land and building at Forrester Truck Parks & Repair has an appraised value of $222,250 for tax purposes. The property served as a John Deere dealership for many years before it was purchased by the Forresters.
Once the purchase is finalized, the property will be taken off the tax roll.
