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The city of Peoria purchased the Exposition Gardens property for $1.2 million at a foreclosure auction.Peoria plans to develop the 70-acre property into a new housing subdivision with up to 200 homes.Officials expect to solicit proposals from home builders within the next few months.
PEORIA — The city of Peoria is now officially the new owner of Exposition Gardens.
Peoria won the Exposition Gardens property at a public foreclosure auction on Wednesday for a price of $1.2 million. Peoria City Manager Patrick Urich and City Attorney Patrick Hayes were present to submit the one bid that was necessary for the city to win the property.
The winning bid of $1.2 million comes one day after the Peoria City Council gave Urich the approval to spend up to $2 million on the property.
Peoria’s aim for the more than 70-acre property, which sits at 1601 Northmoor Road, is to bid it out to housing contractors in hopes of seeing up to 200 homes constructed there, Urich said Wednesday.
“Really we want to get out on the streets and solicit interest from home builders and look at converting that property into single-family housing, that’s really what the council’s desire and intent was when we started discussing this and so that’s what we’re going to look at doing,” Urich said.
The city will issue requests for proposals for potential developers sometime in the next three to four months, Urich said. Urich said a start date for homes to be built would be contingent on the developers.
“You’re not going to see homes popping up within a year, you’re probably going to see homes two or three years from now is when we will probably see the first homes built,” Urich said.
The only other bid for the property came from Morton Community Bank, which holds the debt on the property and was the plaintiff in the foreclosure sale. It bid $1,200,099. Peoria followed that up with a bid of $1,200,100, the final purchase price.
Peoria will be receiving a $2 million state grant that can be used for land acquisitions like this one. $1.2 million of that will go toward the Expo Gardens purchase and the remaining $800,000, which council had allocated for use of the purchase if necessary, will be used for other land bank and land acquisition matters, Urich said.
The City Council supported the plan to purchase the Expo Gardens in a 9-2 vote on Tuesday night with only councilmember Denis Cyr and Alex Carmona voting against it.
Cyr and Carmona’s no votes stemmed from the fact that the city does not yet have the state grant money for the purchase in hand. To cover the purchase immediately the city will loan itself money from its OPEB fund (other post-employment benefits), which is generally used as a future liability fund for employee health care claims.
The $1.2 million purchase price the city made at auction Wednesday is slightly higher than the original purchase price of $1.1 million that the City Council approved for the purchase in June. That purchase fell through after the Expo Gardens Board failed to meet to approve the sale. The property instead went into foreclosure and had to be sold at public auction.
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