Back to Square One: City-Church Parking Lot Deal Off

A property deal between the City of Plymouth and the First Church of Christ, Scientist has been called off.

The church informed City officials a few weeks ago that it will not sell its property at Ann Arbor Trail and Harvey Street for less than $1 million, since they have someone who will pay $1.5 million for it, according to the Plymouth Downtown Development Authority (DDA).

Plymouth Mayor Dan Dwyer said that is more than the city can afford.

“The city doesn’t have that kind of money,” Dwyer said. “So we’ve left it open and told them if they can’t sell it with their asking price, to please keep us in mind and contact us with a reduced price.”

The City had an outside firm develop an appraisal of the property, which came in at no more than $700,000, according to the DDA.

The original plan was for the city to buy much of the property for $775,000 and use it for approximately 100 more parking spaces. However, City officials and the First Church of Christ, Scientist mutually cancelled a pending purchase agreement to restart negotiations from scratch in April.

Dwyer said the City has a plan to make a plan.

The City’s Parking Committee, which includes a member of the DDA, City Commission and Planning Commission, will begin meeting again to start thinking of other options.

Of downtown’s 2,350 parking spots, just 40 percent are managed by the city, according to Rich and Associates, a parking firm hired by the city to analyze the city's downtown parking, which presented its findings to the city commission in August 2011.

“People will debate whether there is a parking problem right this second or not,” Dwyer said. “There is little debate that we can’t grow much at all with the parking that we have.”

Dwyer said the City’s current parking structure is about to become obsolete within the next five to six years and that part of the reason for purchasing the church property was to give the public a place to park while construction was ongoing with the deck.

“So for now, we’re okay,” Dwyer said. “We just have to get planning for the big crunch.”