Featured: The City of Fort Payne recently expanded its agreement with the owner of The Crossings at Fort Payne, the redeveloped shopping center formerly K-Mart

By Joseph M. Morgan

joseph@southerntorch.com

FORT PAYNE, Ala.—The Fort Payne City council recently approved a measure to allow an amendment to the city’s agreement with Second Street Plaza, LLC, (SSP) the company that owns and is responsible for redeveloping the former K-Mart property into “The Crossings at Fort Payne,” the shopping center that now features Dunham’s Sports, Badcock Furniture, Impact Nutrition  and The Dollar Tree.

The original contract stipulated that the city pay the new owner and developer of the property a $2 million incentive to purchase the property if they agreed to refurbish the building and redevelop the property to recruit new businesses to Fort Payne. The agreement allows the city to pay the development incentive to the property owner out of future sales tax that will be generated after the property was developed and news businesses moved into the former K-mart building.

The amended contract will allow for the outright sale of an “outparcel,” one of the vacant areas of the lot adjacent to the redeveloped K-mart building, so that a third party can purchase the property outright from Second Street Plaza to construct their own building and operate a business. The amendment ensures that even though Second Street Plaza will no longer own the outparcel of property, they will still collect the sales tax generated by the new business until the city’s obligation is paid back to SSP.

“You don’t anticipate everything that you might do when you draft these agreements,” Fort Payne city attorney Rocky Watson said. “It (the agreement) was all based on Second Street either building or refurbishing the (former K-Mart) building and leasing it, and us making the payments we pledged to them for the redevelopment out of the sales tax on the new businesses. We did not contemplate a business coming in there and building itself and want to purchase the land.”

Watson said Second Street Plaza (SSP) has the business lined up, a restaurant according to the contract, to purchase the empty land and begin construction on a new building. Watson said the deal will allow the city to pay off the $2 million the city agreed to pay Second Street Plaza to develop the property much quicker, and hopefully provide capital that will allow SSP to continue to develop the rest of the property at The Crossings.