LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The Clearlake City Council on Thursday unanimously approved the purchase of a piece of property to build a new roadway for a major commercial development.
City Manager Alan Flora asked for, and received, the council’s approval to purchase the parcel at 6540 Old Highway 53 from AmeriGas for the appraised value of $110,000.
Flora explained that the property will be used for the construction of a new public roadway and future commercial development at the city’s former Pearce Field airport off of Highway 53.
He referred to the city’s purchase, approved in December but completed early this year, of some old mini storage buildings at 6461 Manzanita Ave. and 6452 Francisco Ave. for $550,000.
The parcels are located to the west of the Highway 53 and 18th Avenue intersection, on the edge of the Pearce Field property. A new road will be constructed through one of those parcels.
As part of that development, Flora said city staff had been trying to negotiate for the property for quite some time.
He said it had been a challenge to get responses from AmeriGas, which is located on the East Coast. “We believe we’re on the right track at this point.”
The city had performed an appraisal and got a title report to speed up the process, Flora said.
“This piece of property is necessary for the 18th Avenue road construction that we’re trying to finalize the plans on right now and hope to initiate construction on that project yet this year,” he said.
He said that AmeriGas had agreed to sell property to the city for $110,000. He hadn’t yet received the final agreement from them, which he said the company had been promising for a couple of weeks by that point.
In order to keep things moving, Flora said he wanted the council to authorize him to execute the documents needed to purchase the property as soon as he gets the documents from AmeriGas.
There was no public comment before Councilman Russ Cremer moved to approve the purchase, which was seconded by Councilman David Claffey and approved in a 5-0 vote.
The council on Thursday also held the first introduction for the first reading of an ordinance to update the municipal code to reflect the city’s migration from a traffic engineer to a city engineer model, approved the use and retention of the development impact fees for fiscal year 2021-22, and discussed the proposed bylaws amendments for the 2022 League of California Cities Annual Conference.
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