Daniel Prince
Work continues on several sewer projects, preservation group buys Dawkins House at tax sale
City Administrator Joe Nichols updated Union City Council on a number of items at its meeting Tuesday. He started with an update from the Piedmont Municipal Power Agency, of which the city is still a part. The PMPA received an offer to buy the Catawba Nuclear Unit 2 as it is. It currently has an expected life until 2042, and they hope to extend it by another 20 years. Nichols said the PMPA is trying to figure out the fair market value of the unit to be able to make some sort of counteroffer. He said the city has a vested interest in the unit, as the PMPA has a 25% interest in the unit, and Union has 10% of that.
Nichols said things are moving along with the Carlisle sewer project. The project has been bid out to Double R Utilities. The city asked Carlisle Finishing for an extension through December 2023 on the project, but they chose to extend it only through the end of September. Nichols said they finally finished up the condemnation proceedings on the Savage property. He said the issue with that was that there were so many listed heirs, no one knew who had the authority to sign over easements, so the city had to go through the condemnation process to get the easement done. He said the meetings finished up and payment has been made.
Work has begun on the Mycoworks sewer and water project. He said they did some boring on the water side earlier Tuesday. They have a deadline of April to get that completed. He said Mycoworks is working hard on the building.
Nichols said the city finally got the easements signed on the Medical Sciences Drive sewer line, which will run 24” sewer line from Walmart to CSL Plasma. He said they are getting close to bidding that project out, which has been in the works for more than 2 years.
He said he had a meeting with Preservation South Carolina to talk about the Dawkins House and Landmark Assets/Fairforest Hotel. He said the group purchased the Dawkins House at the tax sale for $11,000, and now they are waiting for it to clear probate. They plan to renovate the building for possible use by the university, but Nichols said they may be looking to the city soon for seed money to get an evaluation done on the building. He said the city continues to try and work on getting the Fairforest Hotel for student housing. He said Tradd Bruce has made a great proposal for building a place to house the folks from the Fairforest Hotel, but obstacles remain. Nichols said in his last email to the person at Landmark Assets, he was told a number of reasons why they couldn’t do that, but he also said the man had moved to a different job and gave him the contact information for another person. Landmark Assets also owns the building that houses the Union County Museum. Nichols said the city continues to try and move forward. He is trying to get people from Rural Development to come and look at the properties and see that there are some health and safety issues at those properties that need to be addressed.
He said the YMCA is trying to get The Timken Foundation to give them some grant money to build a field house on the YMCA soccer field. Currently, there are no facilities at the field except for a port-a-potty. The YMCA is looking for a $150,000 grant, and Nichols said the building would house restrooms, a concessions area, and storage for equipment.
He said the city should know by March if they have received a grant for the sewer line to the Trakas site. He said he feels good about the regional sewer project with Jonesville, but he wasn’t sure about the Trakas site.