The Phenix City Council's approval of a financing plan to complete the $2.97 million purchase of The Triangle has key stakeholders in the development of the city's Chattahoochee Riverfront guardedly optimistic.

"Guardedly" because the recent effort to develop the riverfront has had as many starts, stops and delays as traffic on Broad Street during the streetscapes construction during the past year.

The Triangle is a group of six buildings in the southernmost section of the Riverview Courts Apartments, a public housing development bounded by Third Avenue on the west, First Avenue on the east (the river side) and 15th and 16th streets to the south and north, respectively.

The property is crucial to the riverfront development because it will buffer between the public housing from anticipated multimillion-dollar developments, once the city obtains the deed and passes the property along to Troy University to build a $6 million riverfront campus.

"We all want it to come along. It's taken a long time -- too long," said Kellon Shepard, chairman of the Phenix City Housing Authority Board of Directors. "We're excited about what the city has done, but the last word we had was that the attorneys are still working on the contract. We've been disappointed so many times."

Replacement housing upped the price

The city and the housing authority originally agreed to a purchase price of $965,000, but that price jumped by $2 million when replacement housing was made a part of the equation. Any agreement had to pass muster with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

While replacement housing is not always required in such transactions, HUD -- responding by e-mail to questions from the Ledger-Enquirer -- said that the housing authority had to choose between six options as reasons to demolish existing public housing units: two-part obsolescence test; density reduction; disposition; change in neighborhood; one-for-one replacement; and mixed finance.

"Based on the application, one-for-one replacement would be required. Whichever choice is made by the housing authority must be properly documented and verified," the e-mail stated. "In this application, the housing authority eventually chose one-for-one replacement as the option they could justify."

Creative Community Solutions, a group affiliated with Phenix City developer Mike Bowden, helped secure replacement housing. Bowden purchased Brookwood Park Apartments, 2319 College Drive, Phenix City, for $2.42 million last summer to serve as replacement housing.

The developer is under contract with the housing authority to redevelop Riverview Courts, with part of that process including the arrangement of replacement housing for residents.

The city and the housing authority announced HUD approval and the $2.97 million sales agreement in October 2007. The city and the Downtown Redevelopment Authority sought private donors for the $2 million in additional costs, but the sales agreement languished. No such private donor stepped forward.

Shepard said there are a few residents remaining in the development. "At one point there were none, but we asked HUD what we should do and they suggested we use the building if we have applications," he said. "It was taking so long for the sale to go through."

City's financing plan

The city plans to take funds from a variety of sources to cover the purchase price and get the redevelopment moving.

"We're going to take the $1,338,000 we have in our Industrial Development account and use that money," said Phenix City Finance Director Steve Smith. "We already have $615,000 budgeted towards that purchase. We originally had $965,000, but we used some of that money on the soccer complex. There was the delay and we really weren't quite sure when or if The Triangle property was going to become available."

The city received a payment of $209,000 from the state on an old receivable that will be used toward the purchase. It proposes to borrow the remaining $800,000. "We may not borrow that full amount. We've got a couple of other options, but they're not absolutely assured of coming through," Smith said. "We wanted to go ahead and authorize the borrowing in case we needed it. We're going to try to pay for it without that borrowing."

Last year, U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Saks, had pushed a $250,000 grant through Congress for use in development of the riverfront. Smith said the city received notice March 24 that those funds are now available. The city isn't sure whether the grant can be used to buy the property, but will if it's possible. The city is going to go back to Ronnie Gilley Properties about its purchase of the former Davis property, which is across 14th Street from the original site for the $35 million The Phenixian.

Gilley Properties has redrawn its original plan to build two buildings at the western end of the 14th Street Bridge -- the main Phenixian building on the northeast corner of the intersection of Third Avenue and 14th and a smaller building on the Davis property on the southeast corner. The new plan is to build one 10- to 11-story building incorporating both corners.

"They plan to expand the project and make it bigger," Smith said. "So we're going back to them. We'd like to close that and sell (the Davis) property and that's $650,000, which we would use for the purchase in cash and not have to borrow."

Considered keystone to river development

The Triangle and Troy University's plan to build an academic campus on that site is a very key piece to the development of the riverfront "from trestle to trestle," as former mayor Sonny Coulter has said in the past.

Troy University is expected to draw students from TSYS and Aflac across the 14th Street pedestrian bridge who will attend classes and shop the retail and restaurants that are planned for The Phenixian.

J.W. Brannen, the chairman of the Phenix City Downtown Redevelopment Authority and the primary local contact for Gilley Properties, said Gilley is still solidly on-board for The Phenixian project, but is waiting for deeds to change hands before proceeding with the project. An attempt to contact Billy Graham, the Gilley Properties vice president for acquisitions and dispositions, was unsuccessful.

South of the Davis property between the 14th and 13th street bridges is property owned by Phenix City developer Mike Osman. The property has recently been cleared of old commercial buildings, but its future planned use is unclear since the collapse of the $32 million Phenix Rising project late last year.

The current economy and the tightening of the bond market will play a role in what ever happens on the riverfront.

There have been rumblings in various quarters in the city about the size of the purchase price for The Triangle, but Smith said people should remember that $2 million of the purchase is to cover the replacement costs and the importance of the property to the further development on the river.

"We think that that will spark the redevelopment of downtown, and if we're correct, we'll get that money back in time," he said.