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Tag: doko depot

  • BAR approves COA’s for Zaxby’s, State Farm and alterations to Doko Depot

    BLYTHEWOOD – It was a busy night for the Blythewood Board of Architectural Review Monday evening. Board members approved Certificates of Appropriateness for construction of a Zaxby’s restaurant, construction of a State Farm Insurance Office and alteration of the Blythewood Depot Building.

    All three projects flew through the BAR with no major adjustments to the COA requests.

    Zaxby’s

    The proposed opening for the Blythewood Zaxby’s is March of 2020.

    The request for the new Zaxby’s fast food restaurant to be constructed at 221 Blythewood Road was submitted by the MRP Design Group. The restaurant will sit on a 1-1/2 acre site next to the Sharpe Shoppe BP service station.

    The restaurant is expected to open in March of 2020.

    A site development plan will be considered at a later time to include all improvements, including plantings, buffer yards, landscaping, signs, lighting, parking, garbage enclosures, curb cuts and pedestrian and vehicular circulation paths.

    State Farm

    Blythewood State Farm agent Sandy Khan, who owns the property at 152 Blythewood Road, requested and received approval of a COA for the construction of a one-story, 3,951 square-foot insurance office building on the property.

    Khan is in the process of removing her previous buildings on the same lot to make way for the new construction.

    The proposed building is comprised of three offices. Construction is expected to begin soon.

    Doko Depot

    Blythewood Depot Property, LLC requested and received approval of the BAR for a COA to permit the alteration of the Depot Building.

    The 3,800 square-foot building is currently being renovated to accommodate two businesses – Freeway Music and Doko Station Pub & Eatery.

    Don Russo, owner of Freeway Music, will occupy a larger portion of the building with 14 rooms for private music lessons and rock band classes plus other spaces. The Doko Station Pub is owned by Lexington’s Old Mill Brewpub owners John and Kelly Clinger.

    Signage will be reviewed by the BAR or in consultation with staff.

  • The deed is done – Doko Depot is sold!

    Doko Depot

    BLYTHEWOOD – Approximately seven years after council voted in August, 2012, to pursue an economic development project that was characterized as the site where a replica of the town’s original train depot would be built, it appears that the disposition of that replica, the Doko Depot spec building, which sits across from Town Hall, has been sold – finally – but not without one more hitch.

    During last week’s regular monthly meeting, council was asked to authorize an amendment to the sales ordinance to reduce the purchase price of the building.

    “I would ask that you amend the contract at the request of the purchaser to an amount of $305,000 for expenses the purchaser has incurred over the last several months due to the delay of closing,” the town’s Economic Development consultant Ed Parler said, addressing council.

    That delay was due to the discovery about two years ago that the deed to the property was not clear despite the fact that the Town had paid $34,492.80 to two legal firms – Parker Poe and Winters Law Firm – for the initial legal work on the depot project. Satisfying that deed ended up costing the town another $39,922.07 ($14,639.26 to Callison Tigh law firm and $25,000 to Margaret DuBard who previously owned a portion of the property where the Depot sits).

    The total cost of the project, $469,908.52, includes the $74,132.06 in legal fees plus $147,872.50 in miscellaneous expenses including financing costs, architectural costs and other expenses incurred by the Town in the fiscal year prior to construction.

    In an interview with The Voice on Tuesday, Mayor J. Michael Ross said he was not happy with how much the Town had to pay to satisfy the deed for the depot.

    “There’s a reason why we’re where we are,” Ross said. “I’m not sure how much of those legal expenses for the deed we can recover or if we will recover them at all,” Ross said. “But we [council] are going to discuss it in executive session at the next meeting.”

    The project was originally funded through two grants totaling $456,881 from Fairfield Electric Cooperative as part of a franchise fee credit that is awarded for economic development purposes to governments and other institutions and nonprofits. Those grants plus the reduced sale price of $305,000 will leave the town with a net profit of $144,099.98 from the project.

    “When the project began, the town committed to build a building for a specific client, a restauranteur who was going to occupy the building,” Parler told council last week. “This deal didn’t go forward, so council elected to build a spec building and put it out for purchase.”

    The building was constructed and, after myriad delays, Don Russo, owner of Freeway Music, agreed almost two years ago to purchase the building for his own business on one end and a restaurant on the other when it was discovered the deed was not clear.  

    “The town has not lost any money with this transaction,” Parler assured council. “The $456,881 used toward building the depot was grant money.”

    “I would say the end result, again, is an economic development project that started with some scars and might end with one,” Ross said. “The end result, though, is that the town benefits with close to $150,000 and the people get a great music school/performers and another local restaurant.  Not all loss!”

    After an executive session to discuss the matter, council voted unanimously to approve the reduction in sales price from $325,000 to $305,000. 

  • Doko Depot almost there

    Doko Depot

    BLYTHEWOOD – Four years and many meetings later, Doko Depot is on the cusp of being finished, purchased and open for business by sometime in September or October, according to Chris Hill of Hill Construction LLC.

    Representing Don and Sarah Russo of Freeway Music who are purchasing the building, Hill appeared before the Board of Architectural Review (BAR) Monday evening to request approval for a Certificate of Appropriateness (COA) to permit the alteration of the Doko Depot Building.

    The proposed alterations will address additional points of entry to the building to accommodate the music store on one end and a restaurant on the other.

    The proposal includes the replacing two rear windows with entry doors consistent in appearance with the doors present on the existing structure. Another alteration would provide entry to and from a music/storage room and accommodate food deliveries to the restaurant.

    Additionally, Hill is requesting a door located at the north end of the building be relocated to redirect traffic. The proposed doors will visually match the existing doors.

    The applicant also proposed the installation of two new windows on the rear of the building (side facing the railroad track). Those windows would provide additional light for classrooms in the music store. The windows will be identical to the existing windows, so that the character of the property will be maintained, Hill said.

    The board voted unanimously to approve the alterations

    Signage will be reviewed by the BAR at a later time in consultation with staff.

  • Doko Depot sale nets $163,874

    Doko Depot

    BLYTHEWOOD – During Council’s final budget workshop on May 23, Town Administrator Brian Cook reviewed the new estimate of the final net profit from the sale of the Doko Depot shell building – $163,874. That’s about $23,723 less than the $187,597 net profit council members anticipated when they initially sold the building in 2017.

    Since that time, the sale was held up for myriad reasons including the discovery last year that title restrictions on two slivers of land in the Doko Depot property had not been disclosed to the Town in prior financing efforts with Santee-Cooper.

    Financial settlements with the prior land owners along with attorney fees and other expenses added to the cost of the sale. Mayor J. Michael has said, however, that the Town expects to recoup those expenses associated with the deed hitch.

    Council built the Depot shell with a $453,881 grant from Fairfield Electric Cooperative.

    “It’s still a big pot of money that we can move forward with and use for other projects,” Cook said about the $163,874.

    The net profit from the Depot will not be included in the current budget, Ross said, since the sale has not yet closed.

    “We don’t know exactly when that will happen,” Ross said. But he said he expects it to close before the end of the summer.

    The building is being purchased by Don Russo, who owns Freeway Music. Russo will be sharing the space with an expansion of a Lexington restaurant, the Old Mill Pub, which is owned by John Clinger

  • Doko title snafu cleared, but costly

    BLYTHEWOOD – During its first budget workshop for the fiscal year 2019-20 last week, Mayor J. Michael Ross asked Town Administrator Brian Cook to confirm that the $39,000 listed under capital improvement expenditures is the year-to-date amount the Town has spent on legal and professional fees associated with the sale of the Doko Depot building in 2019.

    Cook confirmed that it is.

    “So that should be enough to carry us through to closing?” Ross asked

    Cook said an additional $2,500 is budgeted for the closing.

    The sale of the Depot has been delayed since December, 2017, for myriad reasons. In September, 2018, Ross announced a new, more serious delay – this one caused by the discovery that property title restrictions had not been disclosed to the Town in prior financing efforts with Santee-Cooper.

    At last week’s council meeting, Ross said the title is now clear, but because the process took so long, the bank is requiring the purchaser to get new financing.

    “They are in the process of doing that now,” Ross said.

    Ross said the delay in the sale has also caused extra costs for the Town, including taking insurance out again on the building.

    “Hopefully, we’ll soon be able to announce a closing,” Ross said. But he said he could not yet estimate when that would be.

    Freeway Music and a second location for a popular Lexington restaurant, the Old Mill Brew Pub, are expected to be the eventual tenants of the building.

  • Council settles Doko Depot deed hitch

    BLYTHEWOOD – The town of Blythewood took the first steps in resolving the latest of several delays in the sale of the Doko Depot building across from city hall Monday night.

    This particular delay was caused by the discovery last year that title restrictions on two slivers of land in the Doko Depot property had not been disclosed to the Town in prior financing efforts with Santee-Cooper.

    Mayor J. Michael Ross put his signature to a contract presented publicly during the town council meeting that will pay Margaret DuBard $25,000 in exchange for her release of her repurchase agreement on a sliver of land that sits under one end of the Doko Depot building. The contract will also release all use restrictions Dubard had imposed by a 2001 Indenture Deed on the property.

    The other sliver of land was originally conveyed to the Blythewood Volunteer Fire Depart ment by Charles W. Proctor in 1971.

    Proctor reserved a reversion of title if the property ceased to be used for fire department or other community uses. When a new fire station was built on Main Street, the land was donated to the Town. But the parcel was still subject to the reversion clause, documents state.

    Proctor passed away in 1976, leaving no children. His wife died shortly thereafter. The heirs, Ross said, are being contacted and a civil action will be brought to determine their interests and compensation.

    The Town received both parcels for community use only. Both parcels contained reversion or repurchase clauses that kicked in when, in 2016, the town re-designated park property that include slivers of the two parcels.

    The property the building sits on was recently appraised at $4.50 per square foot. According to town attorney Jim Meggs, in the past when Dubard had conveyed to the council that she reserved the right to repurchase the building, it had been at the cost of one half of the property’s ‘modern’ appraised value.

    In subsequent talks, Meggs said Dubard requested the $25,000, which was slightly more than half the appraised value, and Meggs stated that he then told Dubard’s lawyer that “if we are going to go to that number, then we would want to release all of the property from the use restrictions and repurchase option”.

    In an unusual move, council unanimously approved a Voice Resolution Monday night acknowledging the contract, even though the document had yet to be signed by Dubard.

    Meggs told the Mayor Monday night that despite his continuous “pestering” of Dubard, she had refused to sign the contract before the town council read and agreed to the Voice Resolution which contained a clause assuring that the Town would uphold an earlier, unrelated, pledge to restructure the town’s priority list for road improvement projects under the Richland County penny sales tax program. That restructuring involved moving the widening of Creech Road to second on the Penny Tax priority list behind the McNulty Road project and ahead of the widening and improving of Blythewood Road from I-77 to Main Street, and finally to widening and improving the east side of Blythewood Road.

    DuBard, who has an ownership interest in the Creech Road property, wanted to be sure that the Town would honor its prior approval of the Penny Tax priority list unrelated to the Doko Depot property.

    Upon the mayor’s signing of the contract immediately after the council meeting, Meggs said he would then be able to obtain Dubard’s signature soon after.

    The council had no discussion before agreeing to the resolution, with only councilman Eddie Baughman saying that he believed the council had previously “discussed this to no end” before making a motion to approve the agreement.

    Upon council’s vote, Mayor Ross called attention two business owners in the audience – Don Russo of Freeway Music and John Clinger of the Old Mill Pub in Lexington – who are purchasing the Doko Depot. He thanked them for their patience with the town throughout the more than a year of delays over the fate of the Doko Depot building.

    “They are committed to this town of Blythewood, to the economic development and to their economic development. If [these businesses] didn’t believe they were going to make money and be prosperous they wouldn’t be here,” Ross stated.

    “They know what the potential is to have their businesses in this park.”

  • Depot sale delayed by undisclosed deed limits

    BLYTHEWOOD – The sale of the Doko Depot has been delayed since December, 2017, for myriad reasons. In September, 2018, Mayor J. Michael Ross announced a new delay – this one caused by the discovery that property title restrictions had not been disclosed to the Town in prior financing efforts with Santee-Cooper.
    “We are in the process of remedying this issue,” Ross told The Voice in August.
    When asked last week about the progress of the remedy, Ross said the Town has not yet reached a resolution with the owners. The Town received both parcels for community use only. Both parcels contained reversion or repurchase clauses.
    Those clauses kicked in when in 2016 the town re-designated park property that include sections of the two parcels.
    If a resolution cannot otherwise be reached with all parties, Ross said he is looking at other options – two of them drastic – including cutting a portion of one end of the building off or moving it a few feet off the parcels in question.
    Ross said one parcel was sold on favorable terms directly to the town government for community use and could be repurchased by the owner should the parcel no longer be used for community use. Records show that parcel was owned and donated by Margaret DuBard. The other parcel was originally conveyed to the Blythewood Volunteer Fire Department by Charles W. Proctor in 1971.
    Proctor reserved a reversion of title if the property ceased to be used for fire department or other community uses. When a new fire station was built on Main Street, the land was donated to the Town. But the parcel was still subject to the reversion clause, documents state.
    Proctor passed away in 1976, leaving no children. His wife died shortly thereafter. The heirs, Ross said, are being contacted and a civil action will be brought to determine their interests and compensation.
    “According to the documents that were signed,” Ross said, “there’s not that much money involved. It’s just a percentage of the value of the land the building sits on.”
    Not knowing about the title issue at the time, Council voted in December, 2017, to authorize Ross to sign a sales contract with Columbia developer Wheeler & Wheeler to purchase the property.
    Last April, Don Russo told The Voice that his company, Freeway Music, was negotiating a contract to lease part of the building from Wheeler & Wheeler.
    It was also announced that a popular Lexington restaurant is planning to lease the other part of the building.
    Ross said on Tuesday those plans are now on hold. He further stated that the Town and Dubard have agreed to obtain an appraisal in order to get an appropriate purchase price for Dubard’s interest.
    “We’re going to lose our tenants if the sale is delayed much longer,” Ross said. “So we have to come up with a plan of how to alleviate the connection of the owners with the Depot building.
    “If the title to the properties had been clear when the building was built, we wouldn’t be in this fix right now. There are a lot of things we’re looking into,” Ross said.
    Still, Ross said he understands the previous property owners’ perspective.
    “They wanted to see the land used as a public park or other public use. The Town took the land and commercialized it in the pursuit of economic development,” Ross explained. “Now it’s a mess. We’re trying to figure out how we get around this mess.”
    While the issue was discussed in executive session Monday night, Council did not discuss or vote on it in public session.

  • Doko Depot sale held up by deed issue

    BLYTHEWOOD – After a year of planning, a year of construction, a year of searching for and finding a buyer, the Town of Blythewood has spent almost another year waiting to close the sale of the Doko Depot. And the wait is not over.

    Mayor J. Michael Ross announced at Monday night’s Town Council meeting that further delays are expected in the closing of the Town of Blythewood’s contract for the sale of the property.

    The sale has been plagued with delays since shortly after the contract was signed in January. The latest delay is the result of discovering defects in title in some of the land the Depot sits on.

    Ross said those defects related to the donation of the property to the Town years earlier.

    “We are in the process of remedying those issues,” Ross told The Voice in August.

    A portion of the land under contract was originally conveyed to the Blythewood Volunteer Fire Department by Charles W. Proctor in 1971, Ross said. In his deed, Proctor reserved a reversion of title if the property ceased to be used for fire department or other community uses.

    The same parcel was conveyed to the Town after the volunteer service was discontinued but it was still subject to the reservation by Proctor. Proctor passed away in 1976 leaving no children. His wife died shortly thereafter.

    Not knowing about the title issue at the time, Council voted last December to authorize Ross to sign a sales contract with Columbia realtor Wheeler & Wheeler to purchase the property. Last April, Don Russo told The Voice that his company, Freeway Music, was negotiating a contract to lease part of the building from Wheeler & Wheeler who was in the process of purchasing the building from the Town.

    It was also announced that a popular Lexington restaurant is planning to lease the other part of the building.

    Ross said Council learned that the Town’s sale of the former Proctor land (to Wheeler & Wheeler) for uses unrelated to fire department or other community use could cause a reversion in title.

    To keep from jeopardizing the closing while the legalities are being worked out to prevent a reversion of title, Council passed a resolution Monday evening approving the extension of inspection periods for the contract of purchase and sale of the Doko Depot property and authorizing the mayor to execute contract documents pertaining to such extensions.

    Ross said the resolution is provided as a procedural step towards a final closing on the Doko Depot property.

    “I don’t expect this last delay to last more than 60 to 90 days and then, I hope, we can close the deal,” Ross told The Voice following Monday night’s meeting.

  • Update: Doko hitch

    Doko Depot

    BLYTHEWOOD – Further de­lays are expected in the closing of the Town of Blythewood’s con­tract for the purchase of the Doko Depot facility.

    Possible defects in title in some of the underlying land have been revealed and the Town is in the process of remedying those is­sues. A portion of the land under contract was originally conveyed to the Blythewood Volunteer Fire Department by Charles W. Proc­tor in 1971. In his deed, Proctor reserved a reversion of title if the property ceased to be used for fire department or other community uses. The same parcel was con­veyed to the Town after the volun­teer service was discontinued but subject to the reservation by Proc­tor. Proctor passed away in 1976 leaving no children. His wife died shortly thereafter.

    The sale of the former Proctor land for uses unrelated to fire or other community use might cause a reversion in title. Town attor­neys are working to find a solu­tion.

    – Mayor J. Michael Ross

  • Pub-type restaurant to open in Doko Depot

    Doko Depot

    BLYTHEWOOD – In a special called Town Council meeting Monday evening, it was announced that the owners of the Old Mill Brew Pub in Lexington will be leasing half of the Doko Depot building for a similar restaurant to open under the name of Doko Station.

    “I’m very excited about the restaurant,” the Town’s economic development consultant said. “It will offer a full menu including salads, sandwiches, steaks and a number of craft beers.”

    The other half of the building will house Don Russo’s Freeway Music, Jeff Wheeler of Wheeler & Wheeler, LLC, a Columbia development company, told Council. It was also announced that Russo will now be purchasing the building, not Wheeler & Wheeler, who signed a contract with the Town last December to purchase the building for $325,000.

    By late January 2018, Wheeler asked for and was granted a more favorable earnest money arrangement and an extension on the purchase contract. At the same time, Freeway Music owner, Don Russo, told The Voice in an exclusive interview that he planned to lease the building from Wheeler and Wheeler. That extension ended last month without a closing.

    On Monday night Wheeler appeared before Council to ask for an additional 90-day extension of the contract and for Council’s approval of an assignment of Wheeler & Wheeler’s interest in the contract to Russo’s company, Blythewood Depot Property, LLC.

    Council voted unanimously to approve the assignment and to extend the inspection period of the contract for 90 days.

    “I don’t expect it to take nearly that long,” Mayor J. Michael Ross told council members. “But I don’t want to have to come back and approve another extension.”

    The Doko Station restaurant is expected to open in about three months, Wheeler said.