MOUNT VERNON—Knox County Transit will have a new home after county commissioners approved a purchase agreement this morning to buy a warehouse on West Chestnut Street.
The warehouse is formally known as Lot 3 in Heartland Commerce Park.
The Board of Commissioners will pay $740,000 in cash to the Knox County Land Reutilization Corporation. The reutilization corp is more commonly known as the Knox County Land Bank.
The purchase price is $1.1 million. However, the Land Bank will credit the county $360,000 for lots the county previously bought from the organization.
In 2022, the Board of Commissioners paid $200,000 for parcels on West High and Norton streets. The county planned to build a new transit operations center on the lots.
In 2023, the board paid $110,000 for a West Chestnut Street parcel to build a maintenance garage.
Commissioner Drenda Keesee is on vacation and was absent for this morning’s vote.
However, county administrator Jason Booth said Keesee had seen the warehouse and agreed to the purchase.
“We were down there again this morning, and we had multiple visits and are excited about this possibility for us,” Commissioner Bill Pursel said.
Financing plans for the transit facility
The commissioners authorized Booth to start the process of issuing a $2.5 million, 12-month note to buy and rehab the building.
Booth said he has no rehab costs because the county has not finalized plans. He previously said the plans call for a drivers’ area, conference room, and offices.
“We really don’t have all of that laid out, so we have kind of a loose budget for that now until we really get plans in place,” he said.
Booth said a 12-month note gives the county time to examine federal and state budgets and analyze how they affect other county departments.
“We can come back in 12 months and determine at that point do we want to pay off the note, do we want to pay part of the note, or do we want to roll the note into a bond,” he told the commissioners.
“We have all of those options at our disposal, so it really lets us just kind of pause for 12 months, get the financing, get the building in place, and then we can really work on the financing.”
Warehouse deal five years in the making
The county started looking for a new transit site in 2020.
“We’ve looked at lots of places and thought we had some things and then had to backtrack. I think this is a really great option for the county and transit,” Booth said.
The initial cost to build a new transit operations center was around $10 million. A $6 million Federal Transportation Administration grant would offset that, leaving the county’s share around $4 to $5 million.
“This gives us the ability to not only have transit there but have space for county operations as needed and county storage as needed. So I think this is a win-win.”
jason booth, knox county administrator
With the projected cost now closer to $12 million, it is not feasible for the county to spend $6 million on a building smaller than the warehouse.
Additionally, the vehicles would have to sit outside.
Booth said the Land Bank agreement allows the county to buy the warehouse for a reasonable cost, move the vehicles inside, consolidate all operations into one building, and create space for future county operations.
“Up to $2.5 million is still a lot of money, but it’s a lot less,” Booth said.
The current transit facility on Columbus Road was appraised at $422,000 several years ago. Booth said the county can sell the building after Knox County Transit moves to Heartland Commerce Park and apply the proceeds toward the note.