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Mountain Home News

WECRD purchases Railroad Park, faces public criticism

Wednesday, August 2, 2017
by Erin Burden

The Western Elmore County Recreation District board faced public criticism when they passed a resolution to purchase Railroad Park from the Union Pacific Railroad during a meeting last week.

After decades of the city leasing the land, the railroad decided to put the property up for sale after labeling it a surplus property.

The city was unable to come up with the $65,000 to purchase the strip of land. The land is zoned for commercial or industrial, which opens it up for any developer to come in and build on the property.

Reporter's update: purchase price is $165,000.

For the full story, pick up a copy of the Mountain Home News or click on this link to subscribe to the newspaper's online edition.

Comments
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  • People in this town would complain if a cure for cancer were found..............

    -- Posted by joe_smoe on Wed, Aug 2, 2017, at 5:41 AM
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    I wonder how this will affect the concepts that the City is looking at for revitalizing downtown. The 3 concepts are centered around Railroad Park. I think all three actually involve the acquisition of more property than the park as in the building next to Taco John's is demolished.

    -- Posted by B Mullen on Wed, Aug 2, 2017, at 8:35 AM
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    I don't think they have actually finalized the purchase. They are in the due diligence process at this time. And I agree, there are people who complain just to complain.

    -- Posted by LostInParadise on Wed, Aug 2, 2017, at 10:03 AM

  • I was not at the meeting last week when all this went down, so please bare with me while I pose this question. Why does the WECRD need this land? What are their plans? Why did the city not purchase it? I think paying 165K for that little of land is crazy. But hey that is just me...Any answers to my questions would be greatly appreciated...

    -- Posted by robinhood1 on Wed, Aug 2, 2017, at 3:04 PM

  • They may have to move quickly for the purchase now. I few citizens filed for an injunction yesterday.

    -- Posted by lifetimemthomey on Wed, Aug 2, 2017, at 4:03 PM

  • The city should buy this land using a Bond issue and/or Urban renewal. The mayor NEVER presented the purchase of this land to the city council. He went straight (under cover of darkness)to the piggy bank.

    -- Posted by bob8492 on Thu, Aug 3, 2017, at 8:37 AM
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    Wow I was just saying to myself "Self, I said; you should buy the RR Park for $65K", now the reporters error shows that it's really $165K? Quite an error, but I guess you get what you pay for. Double entendre was intentional.

    -- Posted by ??ReallyPeople on Thu, Aug 3, 2017, at 9:12 AM
    Response by Brenda Fincher, Publisher, Mountain Home News:
    I said to myself when I realized the possible error Wednesday eve after going to press "self, remember how hard it is sometimes to understand the audio recordings during transcribes when so many people are talking and room noise is picked up".

    We confirmed the $ amount first thing Thursday morning and we acknowledged our error along with the digital story. All I can do is apologize for the error. I am sorry for your displeasure and as always we will continue to do our very best. Have a very nice evening. Thank you.

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