The Henderson City Commission gave a nod of approval Tuesday to a plan to convert the former Henderson Municipal Power & Light administrative building on the corner of Fifth and Water streets to office space for three different city departments.
The plan calls for moving the city Parks, Recreation and Cemeteries Department, occupational license department and codes department into the building.
Renovations to the building’s interior are estimated at $125,000-$150,000, with additional minor exterior repair, said Assistant City Manager Buzzy Newman.
Henderson City Commissioners commented that constructing a similar building for office space would cost significantly more.
Codes Administrator Steve Davis said the interior office space will be divided—one half for codes and occupational license offices and the other half for the parks department.
Davis said his department has been in the building since summer, when several departments that had offices in the Peabody Building were given the opportunity to move after that building’s air conditioning system broke.
Davis said bringing together the occupational license and codes departments into the same building makes sense because it allows businesses that may need to work with both departments the opportunity to complete both under one roof instead of having to go back and forth between the Municipal Center and Peabody Building, as has been done in the past.
Additionally, utilizing the building in this manner allows the parks department to move out of its old office building which sits in Fernwood Cemetery, said City Manager Dylan Ward, adding that the parks offices need a new home.
The building sits in the corner of a city block—bound by Water Street, Fifth Street, Main Street and the L&N railroad bridge—that the city sold to Henderson Distilling Company several years ago at a bargain $500,000. City officials said then that the deal would be good for the community, bringing a new business (now Rhythm River Distillery), new jobs and tourists to Henderson once it is up and running.
The city kept the former HMP&L building with the idea that it would sell it and recoup some of the money lost from the bargain price of the connected land, according to a past Hendersonian article.
But thus far, the city has not had luck in finding a buyer for the price officials want. In the summer of 2024, an online auction for the property was conducted by Herron Auction & Realty. It closed the evening of Aug. 8, 2024, and the next afternoon at a special called meeting, the city commission rejected the high bid of $470,500.
Then-City Manager Buzzy Newman told the commission at the special called meeting that the bid was lower than what the city wanted to accept, or the reserve limit, and he recommended that the commission reject it. He said the high bid was “significantly below that reserve limit.”
Since then, the building has been on the market. A look at the property on the Herron Auction & Realty website, where it was still listed Thursday, shows an asking price of $800,000.
Newman said that the building will be coming off the market.
Newman said there were two interested parties, one from out of town that sent feelers, and another that ended up choosing to purchase another property in town.
