NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON — Hutchinson City Manager Jeff Cantrell explained Friday that the cost of the asbestos abatement at the Atrium Hotel has caused the city to ask for concessions from the owner, Joshua Joseph, who closed the hotel two years ago.
"We did discover that there was an extensive amount of asbestos in the building," Cantrell said Friday. "That, of course, has to be abated before we can run a bulldozer through it, to the tune of $540,000 to $550,000. You know, it wasn't a cheap acquisition to start with as proposed and that just added to it. It upped the ante to the point where we felt that concessions were due on the part of the seller. We did communicate that. We have not heard back. I think that's a pretty strong signal to us that he's probably not willing to negotiate."
The city does not own the property at this time. The asbestos was found during the due diligence before anything was signed.
"We really don't have any contractual obligation," Cantrell said. "As a community obligation, we have a building out there that's blighted and at some point, we're going to have to deal with that, one way or another."
The city wants control of the building so they can see that it's renovated. They don't want the convention center to go away.
"The price point for demolition on that building is obviously a huge factor in that," Cantrell said. "A lot of our historic incentives for economic development, economic activity for the community has stemmed from activity that building supports. We're continuing to hear from large event promoters and people that utilize our city for those annual activities that put retail dollars back into the community, they need that resource to accommodate their events."
The issue is that the problem needs a more immediate fix and the city wants to be sure that whatever replaces what is there now is at least as nice as the original hotel was in its heyday.
"What we don't want to do is invest public money into something that's going to be a low rate operation, something that divests quickly," Cantrell said. "We want it to be of quality. We want it to serve a purpose in promoting those type of businesses and that activity to our community and region. It gives us an element of control that we and other cities have to have when they are doing these kind of projects."
Cantrell said the council wants this deal done, soon.
"They gave me my marching orders," Cantrell said. "They said have it figured out in two weeks before the next council meeting. Give proper notice to the seller. Of course, we've done that. This will finalize. Hopefully, we'll see where we're going to go from there. There comes a point where, if the city doesn't engage in a purchase, the seller can't come to terms with us, at some point, we shift gears and we treat that as a blighted property. We're then able to take other action. Of course, we don't want to do that, but that's likely what the community would expect of us, as public servants, to resolve it."
There has been some discussion previously about changes to the guest tax and that is an option on the table for the council to make a deal work, if that becomes necessary.