Elon’s town council has agreed to pay a reduced price for a former LabCorp building that the town’s leaders have been eyeing as a potential new home for the town’s police station and other municipal operations.
The town council voted 5-to-0 on Monday to shell out $2,770,000 for this 56,000-square-foot facility at 112 Orange Drive – or $230,000 less than the town had originally brokered with LabCorp.
The council’s approval of this revised price comes roughly four months after its members initially signed off on this facility’s purchase. At the time, the town’s leaders tentatively agreed to purchase this complex and its 6-acre grounds for $3 million – or roughly $1.1 million more than its assessed tax value of $1,852,803.
The council’s end game in striking this deal has been to acquire a new site for the town’s municipal building, which is home to Elon’s police department and other municipal services. These functions are currently squeezed into a 7,000-square-foot building at 104 South Williamson Avenue that the town’s leaders have increasingly deemed inadequate for the growing munici-pality’s needs.
The council’s approval of the original purchase agreement on October 27 set off a 90-day due diligence period that allowed the town’s representatives to check under the proverbial hood for any hidden drawbacks to the proposed purchase. Toward the end of this three-month span, the council received a report from its contracted inspectors that put a price tag of $7 million on the repairs and improvements needed to make the building suitable for the town’s own use.
This report also pointed to about $1.3 million in upgrades that were deemed urgent enough to occur within a year after the property’s purchase.
The observations in this report were enough to give some council-members second thoughts about the proposed real estate deal. These misgivings were allayed somewhat when Richard Roedner, Elon’s town manager, reassured the council that its general fund savings can reasonably spare $4.5 million for the purchase and renovation of the LabCorp facility.
In the end, the council called for an extension of the due diligence period and authorized Roedner to use the additional time to renegotiate the pro-perty’s purchase price. Roedner said that this extra time proved worthwhile for the town when he reported back to the council on Monday.
“We ended up negotiating a revised purchase price due to unforeseen capital expenses,” he explained, “and they were okay with that.”
The council went on to approve the revised purchase agreement by a margin of 5-to-0.
