The vote came at the motion of Palmetto City Commissioner Tamra Varnadore and was approved unanimously moments after Palmetto Mayor Shirley Groover Bryant urged commissioners to select one of the two proposals during the city’s June 7 meeting.
Varnadore said that if the city decided not to sell, it would need to repay an estimated $2 million to the Palmetto Community Redevelopment Board for funds used to purchase and rehabilitate the property, which is a former Brownfield site that once held a gas station. The CRA has long planned to sell the land to reinvest the funds for future projects. I was hoping maybe the county would offer up some funds to work with us, and that is the hard place that the commission and the CRA board is in, Varnadore said. That is something that is going to have to be reconciled before any solutions come up.