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Show RDA board working on post office deal By PAUL CHALLIS News Editor BOUNTIFUL The Bountiful Redevelopment Agency Board (RDA) members will meet with U.S. Postal Service officials today to hammer out a deal for the purchase pur-chase of Block 29 downtown property prop-erty for a new post office. Bountiful Mayor Bob Linnell announced an-nounced the meeting at Wednesday's RDA budget hearing. "We will be meeting with post office of-fice officials on Friday to negotiate a deal." Linnell said that Postal Service officials, one from New York, would be in the meeting to help finalize the deal for the new post office of-fice facility. "A deal has not yet been consummated for the new post office." . Bountiful officials are trying to 5 get Main Street frontage for com- mercial ventures and have the post office stay off Main Street and ; locate on two other portions of Block 29. i ' So far in the negotiations with 'i the Postal Service, they (officials) have been very receptive to our needs and easy to work with," Linnell Lin-nell said. "We are hoping to finalize a deal soon " The acceptance of the Postal Service Ser-vice deal took the RDA board by surprise, as on April 15 the board had turned up its nose at the post office of-fice proposal by not granting "exclusive rights" to the option for purchase of the property as stipulated in the contract. Several of the board members had decided the post office proposal was not the best option for the RDA land, as it would remove it from the tax rolls and would be tax exempt as a governmental property. The board claimed the Postal Service would not be willing to purchase the land if the "exclusive rights" had been withdrawn and ; that it would take several months to -choose a site. The RDA board made j an offer to sell the property to the j Postal Service in a last ditch effort 1 to get the land off the books in January. At the time no other developers de-velopers were interested in the downtown RDA land on Block 29. In March the two other developers de-velopers had entered the game for the prime Main Street property. City attorneys reviewed the April ; 22 deal with the Postal Service and ruled that the contract "was irrevocable" ir-revocable" and that Bountiful was bound to accept the purchase price ! for the RDA land. " The RDA received its most recent re-cent shot in the arm on April 22, when the U.S. Postal Service accepted ac-cepted the offer to purchase 3.5 acres on Block 29 on Main Street from Center to 100 South in downtown Bountiful. The purchase price of $853,000 will go to the RDA and is hoped to help rejuvenate the downtown area, bringing in more business to Bountiful Boun-tiful ' s commercial center. In April, the RDA board had been leaning toward two other commercial developments, one from Johansen-Thackeray and Co. and the other from Clark Jenkins and Landform Development. On April 22, the two developers had planned to offer the RDA a merger of developments helping to secure the project's feasibility. A deal was in the works with Ream's to move to the Main Street location. In May Gregory R. Jones, ' postmaster of the Bountiful Post Office, was miffed by the initial j; reaction from the RDA, saying it i, didn't expect the Postal Service to I make an offer so quickly. "We simply accepted the offer," . Jones said. "The offer was valid for f a year and the RDA board knew the . deal was on the table." The RDA board had just the ' week before voted unanimously to ''! reject "exclusive rights" to the ij Postal Service. The RDA officials i had expressed surprise and shock when the post office accepted the offer for $853,000. ; Jones said the Postal Service had told Bountiful officials it was still interested in the property. Jones also added that the plan is to move the post office from the 750 South Main Street location to downtown by September 1993. h |