Boerne City Council members are continuing the search for a firm to sell the old city hall building at 402 E. Blanco Road, expanding the criteria to seek candidates who have “national experience and marketing reach.”
The city council rejected all bids for qualification late last month to add the new criteria to the request for qualifications, noting any firms which previously had bid can resubmit under the new criteria requirements.
“We’ve had discussions in here before about potentially selling that building,” Boerne Mayor Tim Handren said after an executive session. “We made an attempt at that prior. We did recently do an RFQ and we had a couple of responses, but in our discussion during executive session we wanted to see just a little bit more information in these responses for RFQ. Where we got to is we’d like to see a little more of how the property will be marketed and sold in the market space, and for that reason we want to reject the RFQ responses and reissue the RFQ with a couple of changes to it.”
The original request from the qualifications, which was opened for sealed bids March 18 and closed April 15, only required respondents to include their local experience managing projects or subcontracting. However, the newest RFQ, which opened June 3 and will close July 1, asks respondents to outline their “experience and methods, if any, to market and sell properties at a national level, including marketing techniques and resources.”
The sale of the old city hall building has been a long time coming as the sale was marketed as a means to help pay for the new city hall building in which construction began in 2018. In October of last year, the city council approved a resolution allowing City Manager Ben Thatcher to begin the process of finding a firm to advertise the sale.
The former city hall building was replaced by the new building, which houses Boerne’s city hall and utilities, after city officials approved a $22 million seven-year tax note after residents petitioned and successfully stopped a certificate of obligation bond to fund the construction. While the building was criticized for its size and cost, city officials spoke publicly about the building meeting future needs of the city rather than building for immediate demand.
During that October meeting, the city manager’s assistant, Nick Montagno, appraised the structure at a current market value of $2.538 million. Boerne Communications Director Chris Shadrock said the old city hall, which used to be a schoolhouse, has been fully vacated, and the three trailers on the campus have been removed, completely readying the property for sale.
This isn’t the first time the city hall has hit the market as it was put up for sale in 2020 after council members approved an agreement with Cushman & Wakefield U.S. Inc. to sell the property. However, this go around the city is seeking sealed bids rather than working with a commercial Realtor to locate potential buyers.
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