Education

State regulators elected Thursday not to approve a lease agreement between New Hanover County and Project Grace’s private developer.

The agreement is the result of a public-private partnership in which New Hanover County and Zimmer Development Company planned to join forces to redevelop the downtown branch of the county’s public library and the Cape Fear Museum on a three-acre lot in downtown Wilmington. stipulated the conditions. In order for these plans to move forward, the state’s local government committee had to give them their stamp of approval.

The board did not approve the agreement on Thursday after the item was removed from the meeting’s consent agenda for further discussion. We spoke with Coudriet and Julia Olson Boseman, chairman of the New Hanover County Commission.

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Olson-Boseman asked the commission to vote on the lease agreement regardless of the outcome so the county could move forward with the project.

“If you vote yes, we’ll go with Zimmer. If you vote no, we’ll go with someone else,” she said. We plan to advance the

The Local Government Commission also spoke with Diana Hill, a Wilmington resident who leads Save Our Main Library, a group that advocates retrofitting rather than redeveloping existing library structures.

Members of the local government committee have expressed concerns about the funding and terms of the project contained in the memorandum of understanding between the county and Zimmer Development.

Ahead of Thursday’s meeting, North Carolina Treasurer Dale Folwell sent a letter to New Hanover County asking for three updates to the county’s memorandum of understanding on the project. has chosen not to change the sales process for the library’s current site.

Folwell asked the county to use an open bidding or unfair bidding process instead of the county negotiating a sale to Zimmer Development. Coudriet told the commission on Thursday that the negotiated sale would allow New Hanover County to control development schedules and condition projects.

Zimmer Development planned to build approximately 10,000 square feet of retail space, a 150-room hotel and 100 residential units. This includes at least 5% employee housing units.

As it stands, Project Grace was expected to cost New Hanover County more than $80 million over the next 20 years under a public-private partnership. The county expected to bring in about $11.6 million from property taxes, parking lot revenues, and the sale of the library’s current land for private development.

If New Hanover County used a more traditional development model and built the project without private development partnerships, Project Grace would cost just over $66.8 million. It is unclear how much revenue or other taxes another project would bring in this model without explicit agreement with the developer.

Shortly after Folwell said Thursday he would not vote in favor of approving the lease, another member of the committee put out a motion to approve it. . In other words, the lease was not approved.

In a news release after the meeting, Coudriet wrote that county officials were “disappointed” by the decision but planned to move forward with the project.

“At this time, based on the commission’s actions to date, the county is still planning to move forward with a new state-of-the-art museum and library. No change. Not the full block we wanted,” he wrote in the release.

Reporter Emma Dill can be reached at 910-343-2096 or edill@gannett.com.