Blaine city council reviews unsolicited offer to purchase old city hall

Blaine City Council decided not to pursue an unsolicited offer to purchase the old city hall, at 344 H Street, at its August 24 meeting.

City manager Michael Jones received a letter from Leonard Rivero, who expressed interest in purchasing the property to develop multifamily housing. It’s unclear what Rivero wanted to offer for the property, though he did mention several amounts in the letter.

“We are willing to refurbish and redecorate the building for multi-family housing with the highest quality at an estimate cost of up to $350,000,” he wrote. The letter, typed in a bold and italic font, continued to say that Rivero would also consider tearing down the existing structure to redevelop it. “If that be the case, the land value would be worth about $200,000 after the existing building is removed and the property is leveled ready to build on.”

In closing the letter, Rivero included a B.C. phone number. Rivero’s LinkedIn profile describes him as the president and CEO of a modular home development company with a pun name: Surelock Homes.

The old city hall closed in 2012 after the city moved its offices to the current location at 435 Martin Street. The Blaine Police Department is storing some evidence and impounded items in part of the building, but it is otherwise unused.

City council pursued selling the building in 2019, but at a February 2020 study session, decided to retain the property for future use. Before then, the city issued a request for proposals with an asking price of $400,000, but did not receive any proposals. The city is currently working toward demolishing the building and plans to keep some of the lot for expansion of the police station.

Since city council had previously decided not to sell the property, Jones brought the offer to council for its attention only.

“Unless you’ve changed your minds, I will tell him we are not interested in selling at this time,” Jones told city council. He advised the council to put the item on a future meeting agenda if it wished to revisit a sale. “If you do want to put it on the market, I suggest we do exactly that rather than just accept one unsolicited offer.”

Several councilmembers expressed renewed interest in putting the property on the market in the future, though not through a request for proposals, which places more parameters on a potential buyer.

Councilmember Charlie Hawkins remained vocal about keeping the property.

“Once again, we don’t have very much city land and the idea we’re going to give up an area in downtown Blaine, next to the police department, just doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Losing land for future city development just to sell it for a couple hundred thousand dollars just doesn’t make sense for me.”

Jones concluded the discussion by telling council that he would tell the prospective buyer that the city isn’t interested in selling at this time. “And you all know the process for agendizing an item if you want to consider marketing the property for sale in the future,” he said.