Commission to city: Take your time selling Meta Rose

PALMER — What should the city of Wasilla do with the Meta Rose Square commercial building it owns?

The city council wants to sell it, and the planning commission weighed in on Tuesday.

“I like the thought of having a lot of control of how that’s sold and how that’s used,” planning commissioner Jessica Dean said. “I agree that it needs to probably be looked at being sold since we no longer need it for the intended purpose.”

The commission’s recommendation — that selling the property is in the city’s best interest, but that the city should proceed deliberately — was the one that won the day. City staff suggested something like a bidding process, a request for proposals from interested buyers for what to do with the property.

The Meta Rose Square, the blue building with the clock tower in it near the Carrs Mall downtown, has long been viewed as possibly Wasilla’s most iconic building. The city purchased it in 2009 with the idea of turning it into a library.

Eventually, the city realized it wouldn’t work for a library. In March, the city council voted to sell the building and get out of the property management business. City code requires the city to seek guidance from the commission before selling a property.

Before giving recommendations, the commission heard from Wasilla City Planner Tina Crawford and Public Works Director Archie Giddings.

Crawford said the building has averaged 80 percent to 90 percent occupancy since the city purchased it, has 17,000 square feet of leasable space and brings in $80,000 in revenue each year.

Giddings said lease payments actually come in at $180,000, but $100,000 is eaten up with expenses for maintaining the building. He said that as leases come up for renewal, the city has been raising its lease rates to avoid undercutting other commercial properties downtown.

“The goal was to get it to market value,” Gidding said. “I want to say that $1.25 per square foot is what we were trying to get to.”

Dean, who runs a business downtown and does taxes for clients who own and lease space there, said that in her experience that’s pretty comparable to surrounding properties.

“I don’t think it’s undercutting a lot of private interests in the area,” she said.

Crawford said that the property is really only going to get more noticeable. Plans to construct a pair of one-way streets through downtown are expected to increase traffic around the building.

The city’s downtown area management plan, she said, envisions buying up properties in need of rehabilitation and getting them primed for development.

“It’s a planning tool to ensure that the appropriate type of development does come into our downtown,” she said.

Revenues from Meta Rose and elsewhere could potentially be used to fund things like grants to help businesses construct matching facades or install streetlights or implement other things called for in the plan.

The commissioners and staff seemed to be more or less on the same page.

“One mistake, trying to make it a library and then finding it doesn’t meet that criteria doesn’t mean we have to make a second mistake,” said commissioner Pat Brown. “We should suggest to the city council that we maintain ownership of it and use it to help guide the development of that downtown area plan.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.