Auction for City Lots Delayed

From Friday's News-Gazette:

Auction for two Campustown lots delayed after only 1 bid received
On the fourth floor of the Illinois Terminal on Thursday, no one was gathered for an auction of two city-owned lots near the University of Illinois campus.

Louis Fisher, national director of SVN Auctions Services, was turning people away, letting them know that the auction had been delayed.

Only one qualified bidder had made an offer for the 0.53-acre grass lot at 207 E. Stoughton St., and no one bid for the 1.3-acre parking lot at 207 E. White St., about a block west of County Market...

Fisher said the auctioneers will now give a report to the city council, which will determine how to proceed.

Full article here. Background information from a previous Cheat Sheet post:

Champaign may be able to find more funding for its MCORE projects by selling property that never got developed after previous plans fell apart in the great recession. From today's News-Gazette:

For Champaign, there's gold in them thar Campustown lots
The land near the University of Illinois campus has become so valuable that a couple empty lots are now worth more than $5 million.

The city-owned lots a block west of the County Market grocery store in Campustown are expected to sell for more than that later this month at auction.

The 1.3-acre parking lot at 207 E. White Street has a market value of $3.59 million, Stephen Whitsitt wrote in a March appraisal of the land, and the 0.53-acre grass lot at 207 E. Stoughton St. has a market value of $1.57 million.

That's up from 2016, when the lots were valued at $2.99 million and $1.47 million, respectively...

"We always intended that they'd be developed. They were part of the agreement for Burnham 310, then the recession hit, so we pulled out of the development agreement," said Bruce Knight, the city's planning and development director.

The city is looking to sell them now to help pay for the $46.9 million Multimodal Corridor Enhancement project improving many of the Campustown streets.

The project is funded with a $15.7 million federal grant and matching local funds.

"We thought that with selling these, we could use some of that return to meet the local match requirements for MCORE," Knight said.

This will be the first time Champaign has auctioned a property.

"MTD did it with a couple properties and had some success, so we thought we'd give it a try," Knight said.

More details and information at the full article here. More on MCORE projects here.

It's possible (and my current theory) that any governmental get-rich-quick schemes described as "gold in them thar" may be doomed from the start.