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The Wake Forest commissioners had
apparently agreed to hold their closed
session almost at the beginning of
Tuesday night’s regular meeting because
they expected to reach a decision about
the town hall site and land acquisition.
Instead, they left the
meeting room for 45 minutes, giving a
large audience time for conversation and
consultation, and returned without a
decision.
“We thought we were going to
have a decision last night,” Town
Manager Mark Williams said Wednesday,
and they are close to a decision. “That
was the reason they continued the
meeting” to Tuesday, Sept. 5, at 5 p.m.
Williams said the board,
through its attorney Eric Vernon, has
been negotiating with one of the
property owners who had added “one
little additional condition” at the last
minute.
Williams would not confirm
that the property under negotiation is
along Brooks Street.
Williams did say the board
is vigorously pursuing the purchase of
the American Legion Hall which stands in
front of the current town hall along
East Owen Avenue, and the Legion is
ready to move.
And he said the town has
talked with the owners of DAB auto sales
on Elm Avenue between South White and
Brooks Street.
The three alternatives the
architects presented a month ago were in
answer to the board’s question of what
they could do without purchasing
additional land, by purchasing just the
Legion building or by purchasing the
Legion building and Wooten.
Williams said the two houses
the town recently purchased are a
temporary solution to the overcrowding
in the planning building, the gray
building at the corner of East Owen and
Brooks that was the original town hall,
courtroom, police and fire station
combined. The houses are on and near
Brooks just north of the planning
building
Once the new town hall is
built, Williams said, “We plant to move
everybody except the police department
to the new town hall.”
As for the old town hall,
“Personally, I still think it would make
an outstanding location for a town
museum.”
Once a decision is made
about the site, Williams said
construction could begin in the middle
of 2007, depending on the time it takes
to design the building. |
