JC – Railroad Depot Foreclosed, To Be Sold (Johnson City, Kingsport: apartments, loans)

[jabogitlu]

The “SOS” call in 2002 was for Johnson City to “Save Our Station,” and that’s what Dorian Jones ended up doing with the former Carolina, Clinchfield and Ohio railroad depot at the corner of Buffalo and Cherry streets.

But if the century-old building is going to move from its still-threatened condition to a renovated, usable state, someone other than Jones will oversee it – the property is being foreclosed on and will be sold at auction June 23.

JohnsonCityPress.com - Local News - Johnson City, TN (http://www.johnsoncitypress.com/09/News/article.php?ID=69400 - broken link)

I enjoyed one line in this article, from Jones: "The corruption here is rampant," he said. "The people here don’t give a (darn)... there are cities that are enlightened. This is not one." I think that might just sum up the majority of the JC government!

[mbmouse]

SO sad. Here is a couple that stepped up to help and ended up getting stepped on.

[Beretta]

This article outlines why Kingsport will continue to grow its' downtown and investors won't touch JC. Too bad we are losing such a visionary.

[DiderotsGhost]

Johnson City's downtown has so much potential and the city just refuses to recognize it.

[rccrain]

Hope we get a good buyer with a good vision.

[Josh Woods]

A buyer with good vision will not help anything.....we need leadership with good vision, then the buyer's will come.

[TN.RidgerunninGal]

Good Morning:
I totally agree with all of you. I really hate to see the folks who bought the train station to save it now lose it. Having grown up in Johnson City and living here now again for nearly 20 years, I've seen the changes. The biggest need is to change the goverment. The apathy in Johnson City is terrible. Just like the train station, the new Senior Citizens Center and the Passive Park in North JC has gone by the wayside and no one cares. No One is JC has ever asked the Hard questions WHO has the authority to make and break deals, just because. The land the city agreed to buy for the new Sr. Center and Park is perfect, but just like the train station, their foresight is so short they (City) will cut their nose off to spite their face.

[jabogitlu]

Another shining example was their plan to close down the park on Market Street (I forget its name at the moment, lol) to put in the veterans monument. Now I'm all for a veterans monument, but why close down what is possibly the busiest park, and one of the ones located in the most dense, core part of the city, when the VA campus is literally half a mile away with hundreds of acres of OPEN LAND!?

[SarahSal]

[quote=Josh Woods;9314588]A buyer with good vision will not help anything.....we need leadership with good vision, then the buyer's will come.[/quote]

There is a whole lot of truth in that statement!

Fact is, there have been plenty of folks with "vision" who bought downtown. But the forces of change (from the upper levels) just didn't match up with the folks who were requesting the necessary changes to make things coalesce. We lost a real advocate for downtown when City Manager Mike West was essentially driven out by a commissioner who opposed him every step of the way. Mike was a strong and vocal supporter of downtown - much more so than anyone before or after him. His leadership and progressive approaches to revitalizing downtown are what's needed now. A few part-time commissioner/advocates are great and very, very welcome but it's the top leadership that drives the desired outcome.

[NorthernLights]

Being new to the area all I can do is ask a lot of questions and I don't know any of the players. I asked three different people about Mr. Jones and got three very different answers. I ask different people about Johnson City government and it's history of redevelopment projects and usually get negative responses but I've never lived anywhere in my life where when you asked people about their local government that you got very many positive responses so I don't know how much the downtown council deserves or not. I wasn't here, I couldn't attend the meetings and see what all the issues and regulations were that all parties had to compromise on, etc. But again, I don't know the history or the players so all I can do is ask questions and read old newspaper articles etc. and guess. It's puzzling to an outsider and I find myself remembering the words of my great-grandmother who used to say there are three stories behind everything, "His, theirs, and the truth", I suspect all parties bare some responsibility in this sad event and hope lessons were learned and mistakes won't be repeated, and that the train station will be bought by someone with the money to restore it tastefully and that downtown JC will continue to grow and renew and try and do what it can to facilitate investor's projects and goals.
I love that train station [being a train fan I love all old train stations] I also really like the Honey Krust bakery building nearby that I believe the article said Mr. Jones will also be walking away from. I'd love to have the where-with-all to make a bid on the bakery building. But I wouldn't because of my experiences working on old building restoration projects [figure up your best construction estimates, multiply the cost of the most expensive estimates by three and then...throw that figure away because it will cost half again as much to complete it.] I knew a man who successfully restored several buildings back in MD and once when I learned he was taking on a new crumbling old hulk his response to me was the same as my brother's when he got re-married they both said it was "Hope triumphing over experience."
The article said Mr. Jones obtained the train station for free and then was able to borrow 500,000 dollars against it last year, [it also stated he had taken on other buildings downtown to renovate so I didn't think it was clear as whether he obtained the 500,000 dollar loan in 2008 solely against the train station property or other properties. Where they separate projects or all part of one corporation? Did the other projects distract and divert funds from the station project? There is much you just can't get from the newspaper story. Those projects can really eat you alive as I observed back in my little MD hometown over the years. It seems to me, even if you get a property for "free", old buildings, with their decrepitude and in some cases hazardous materials that need to be remediated can make the budget soar far beyond your wildest dreams.
Those government restoration loans look attractive but I have read and seen the results of the strings they come with. I lived in an old farmers market building in Martinsburg WV many years ago that was restored and converted into apartments and they could do virtually nothing to the exterior of the building because of the stipulations in the loans which they might otherwise have been able to add some things that could have made the building a little more pleasing to look at. A re-developer back home restored a beautiful old Queen Anne/Victorian Styled Hotel down in the center of town many years ago. He had some very tasteful color ideas and some other restoration ideas but he was not allowed to do any of them because it had to be restored to the original paint choices that differed sharply from modern sensibilities and many people were dismayed with the results but since it was done with a government loan it had to stay painted those colors for at least certain number of years and indeed still is to this day.
I hope some corporation with deep pockets can see the beauty in the old station and complete the work Mr. Jones started. It would sure be a shame for the building to sit and deteriorate.