The city of Henderson wants $800,000 for the former Henderson Municipal Power & Light administrative office building at 100 Fifth St.
The city approved a municipal order Thursday night in a called meeting that awarded Herron Auction & Realty the job of selling the property.
The move comes after an online auction in the summer failed to produce a high enough bid for the city. Herron also conducted the online auction, which closed Aug. 8 with a high bid of $470,500.
The next day, the Henderson City Commission met for a called meeting and rejected the high bid. According to commissioners and City Manager Buzzy Newman, the bid did not reach the reserve limit, or lowest acceptable bid, that had been agreed upon before the auction.
In a contract that was a part of the agenda packet sent out before Thursday evening’s meeting, the “Asking Price” for the 5,837-square-foot building was listed as $800,000. Mayor Brad Staton said that number was what city officials had set as the lowest bid that the city would have accepted from the past summer’s online auction.
With the contract approved with Herron, City Manager Buzzy Newman said he wants the real estate company to have “a sign up in the yard Monday.”
“There’s a market demand for it,” he said.
Staton said the city commission has some discretionary ability to reject a sale if a buyer’s intended use doesn’t fit with what the commission deems appropriate for the property.
A connected piece to the property going on the market is a recent request from the Henderson Distilling Co. to reinstate a right of first refusal the company had in place on the sale of the building.
As part of the city’s sale the land adjacent to the HMP&L building to the distilling company, a right of first refusal for the distilling company on the sale of the building was agreed to in January.
The building sits adjacent to the company’s campus of the Rhythm River Distillery. A large groundbreaking ceremony occurred there Monday.
The city and the distilling company came to an agreement in June—before the start of the online auction—that would remove the distilling company’s right of first refusal.
After the city rejected the high bid coming out of the online auction, officials with the distilling company made a request that the right of first refusal be reinstated. The Henderson City Commission unanimously voted to turn down that request at its Sept. 17 meeting.
