Rabbitman purchase offer stalls with ADICA board

ALBANY — Tony Williams says he gets the fact that the Albany-Dougherty Inner City Authority is under no contractual obligation to sell the 125 College Drive property that Williams and his brother, Johnny, are leasing from the authority.

Williams also says that he understands that the ADICA board’s mission is to serve the best interest of the entire community.

What Williams doesn’t understand is why he was instructed to have an engineering firm draw up a plat on the property and why he was instructed to have an attorney draw up a letter making a formal purchase offer if the board had no interest in selling the property.

“My question is, if the ADICA board knew they weren’t going to sell that property, why did they have us jump through all these hoops?” the co-owner of Rabbitman’s Footwear said.

The Williams brothers signed a lease a little more than three years ago on what was once a city-owned skate park, tucked onto a corner lot just east of the Flint River and across the street from Albany State University. They were looking for a permanent, strategic location for the business that had been in their family for more than 50 years. ADICA agreed to a five-year lease on the 125 College Drive property with the understanding that the Williamses would have right of first refusal if another offer was made on the property during the terms of their lease.

As they hashed out the agreement, members of the ADICA board indicated that if the Williams brothers decided they wanted to buy the property during the lease period, that deal could be negotiated. This came after the board had turned down an offer of $43,000 from businessman Bob Brooks after then-chairwoman Thelma Johnson pushed for rejection of the offer because Brooks “did not submit an adequate business plan with his offer.”

The Williamses let the ADICA board know in July that they were interested in purchasing the property, and Johnny Williams said they were first directed to obtain a plat showing what specific parts of the 125 College Drive property they were interested in buying and then to draw up a formal letter with their offer.

On Aug. 4, the Williamses, through the Lane Law Group, sent an offer letter of $17,000.

“We didn’t hear anything from Ms. (Downtown Manager Latoya) Cutts or the ADICA board, so we went before them at their Aug. 9 meeting,” Johnny Williams said. “The board voted at that meeting to do an appraisal.”

ADICA Board Chairman Jimmy Lindsey, the minutes from that meeting show, mentioned during discussion that the board was not obligated to sell the property. Lindsey later said, after getting informal bids on appraisal costs, that he saw problems from a business perspective.

“We got a couple of bids, and the cost for doing an appraisal on that property was going to be around $5,000,” Lindsey said. “From a business standpoint, I think it was obvious that this was not a good deal, not necessarily for ADICA, but for the public. As (board member) Alex Rolfe (who is employed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) pointed out, the Williamses had about $11,000 more on their lease (at $500 a month). If we paid $5,000 for an appraisal and lost the $11,000 in lease payments, that adds up to $16,000.

“We would, essentially, be selling them that property for $1,000. That just doesn’t make business sense. And ADICA’s purpose is to promote the welfare of the public at large. This is not about the Williams brothers, who are nice gentlemen and good tenants. It’s about our responsibility to the public.”

On Sept. 25, again through the Lane Law Group, the Williams brothers sent a letter to ADICA upping their offer to $21,000. They asked to address the board at its Oct. 3 meeting, and on the day of that meeting, Johnny Williams said they received a letter from city of Albany (and ADICA) attorney Nathan Davis informing them that the city is not obligated to sell them the property.

“Yes, the lease agreement with the Williamses grants them right of first refusal,” Davis said. “What that means is that if ADICA gets an offer on the property during the terms of the Williams brothers’ lease agreement, the board must present that offer to the Williamses to see if they want to buy it at that price. What that does is prevent (ADICA) from selling the property out from under them.”

But Davis said the board is not obligated to sell the property under the terms of its lease agreement.

“This is ADICA’s property, and if they decided they had a fair offer and wanted to sell it, they could,” Davis said. “But what I think you’ll see is them weighing all their options before making this kind of decision. Of course, I’m sure everyone hopes real estate values are going to go up (with redevelopment going on downtown and with nearby trail projects on the drawing board). That would certainly justify holding onto the property.”

Cutts said any ADICA decision about the property should be a business decision.

“This is in no way about Johnny and Tony; they are great tenants, make their payments on time every month,” Cutts said. “But it makes better business sense, I believe, to wait at least until the terms of the lease run out. We feel the value of that property could be very different two years from now, just like Rabbitman’s business model could be different by 2019.

“But this is not just about the value of the property. This is not about a public entity trying to get rich off this property. It’s about taking into account things like downtown redevelopment and the trail project that will connect Albany State with downtown and this property’s location in conjunction to those projects. We owe it to the public to take these things into consideration.”

All of which Tony Williams says he understands. What he doesn’t understand is what he calls “mixed signals” he’s gotten from the ADICA board.

“There are members of the board who said they wanted to do an appraisal and members who’ve indicated they wouldn’t mind selling the property,” Williams said. “But it seems like Jimmy Lindsey is making arbitrary decisions like he owns the property. This is not a decision for Jimmy Lindsey to make. It’s not a decision for Latoya Cutts to make. It’s a decision that should be made by the ADICA board.

“This thing is supposed to be a process. We’ve done what we’re supposed to do, and it’s cost us money. What we want is the opportunity to go through the process without jumping through all these hoops.”