New Cobb parks deal with Trust...Should speed up land buys

From Bill Kinney’s column in the Marietta Daily Journal on Sunday, May 6, 2007. Bill Kinney is associate editor of the MDJ.

The Cobb Board of Commissioners on Tuesday is expected to approve a deal that should speed up the process of acquiring future parkland with money from the $40 million parks bond referendum approved by county voters in November.

The board is expected to OK an arrangement with the Trust for Public Land to act as an independent buyer and principal in land transactions.

Here's how it would work: The TPL will contact and work with willing sellers whose properties have been nominated by the Parks Bond Citizens Advisory Committee and approved by the board of commissioners. The landowner would sell his land to the TPL, which at a "simultaneous closing" would then convey the property to the county, according to Bob Ash, director of Cobb's Public Services Department.

That arrangement would allow the not-for-profit Trust to offer certain tax advantages to the seller that the county would not be able to offer, and also makes it easier for the Trust to "leverage" charitable contributions from big foundations.

"The Trust for Public Land is a good organization. We're very pleased with what has been presented to us," Ash said. "I think it will help us acquire the land more quickly than we would be able to do so otherwise."

Although the county has land-buyers on staff with expertise in buying right of way for road widenings, that's a different animal than this. The TPL works all over the country. Close to home, in the past decade it has helped create eight new Georgia state parks, doubled the size of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area and conserved land for multiple county and city parks around the state.

In addition, the Trust has worked with the county in the past toward the conservation of the Hyde Farm and Power Cabin in east Cobb. It was instrumental in the arrangement that resulted in the National Park Service's purchase of 20 acres to add to Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, and provided expertise and support that were helpful in last year's passage of the bond referendum.

What else would the deal involve? The TPL - at no cost to the county - would:

• Assist the county with its highest-priority land transactions by acting as an independent buyer and principal.
• Assist if requested in identifying the priority parcels for purchase.
• Cover the usually significant operational, project and other costs of its participation through confidential charitable donations from individuals, foundations and other philanthropic sources, and from the landowners with whom it works.
• Absorb the costs associated with negotiating for and purchasing the land selected for purchase by the county.
• Negotiate option contracts with landowners of parcels selected by the commissioners.
• Sell the land it acquires on behalf of the county to the county at the same price, with no markup.
• Perform all required due diligence on behalf of the county. That is, it will do the title searches, etc.
  

A "Memorandum of Agreement" to that effect is expected to be approved by Cobb Commission Chairman Sam Olens and the rest of the board at Tuesday's commission meeting.

"The (Trust) brings to the table an established track record of success in negotiating complex real estate deals; a professional and streamlined approach with sufficient staff to expedite the land-purchase process; and ability to assist in leveraging funds with private monies; and the potential to save money in the transaction process," Ash wrote in a memo to County Manager David Hankerson.

The county already has announced that it will not be condemning any land in order to convert to use as parks. It also will not pay higher than the assessed value for any land purchased.

A 15-member committee was appointed by the commission to examine and make recommendations to the commission about which properties should be acquired.

It had received 77 nominations at last count, Ash said, and has focused in on 34 of them that it has identified as candidates for "site visits." They range in size from one acre up to 122 acres. Those 34 will be prioritized as land to be purchased "immediately," "not so immediately," and "later," Ash said.

In addition, all committee members have ranked all the nominated tracts based on a 10-criteria system that includes size, historical significance, threat level and environmental factors. Ash told the MDJ's Joe Kirby on Thursday that four of the nominated properties have significant historical associations, either due to factors such as remaining Civil War trenches or to the fact that something of historic significance happened on the property.

The committee has kept the exact locations and descriptions of the sites under wraps, contending that making them public might cause their price to go up.

The deal with the Trust for Public Land sounds like a wise one, and a good step for the county. And if it results in land becoming parkland a little sooner, that's even better.