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It is fair to speculate that Wheeling officials and thoughtful taxpayers share one desire regarding city-owned buildings in the 1400 block of Market Street. Everyone just wants the city to get out from under the burden of owning the four dilapidated structures at the least expense possible.
City Council members last Tuesday approved a plan to divest themselves of the buildings at 1425, 1429, 1433 and 1437 Market Street -- but it could cost taxpayers $360,000.
An Arizona couple, Nikki and Ryan Stoker, are proposing to take the buildings off the city's hands, repair and renovate them, and reopen them for business. That certainly would be desirable, if it can be made to work.
The Stokers hope to complete the project in about five years. The first two-year phase, preparing space for two businesses and five residential unit, would cost more than $2.5 million, the Stokers estimate. Of that total, they would pay $1.35 million and $854,964 would come, somehow, in the form of "historic tax credit equity."
But Wheeling taxpayers would play a part, too, in the form of $300,000 to repair two roofs and $60,000 to improve facades on the buildings.
City officials already have a substantial investment in the buildings -- $295,000 to buy them in 2015 and 2016, $25,000 for demolition after the rear of one of the structures collapsed in 2017, and $49,000 earlier this year to stabilize one of the buildings.
If the city can get out from under the block for $360,000, it may be a good deal. Unless something is done soon, there will be no alternative but to raze the buildings. The price tag for that could run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But -- and this question has to be asked -- what if the city plows another $360,000 into the buildings and the Stokers fail in their project, having sunk so much of their own money into it that they cannot afford to demolish the buildings? Would they then go on the long list of privately owned structures that neither the owners nor the city can afford to raze?
The Stokers seem like nice, serious, capable people. But if their plans go awry, it would not be the first time nice, serious, capable people have failed on an expensive venture.
Now that they've agreed to transfer the 1400 block buildings to the Stokers for a nominal sum, and before they plow more money into the structures, city officials simply must build effective safeguards into the deal.