AUGUSTA, Ga. (WJBF) – It’s prime piece of downtown property, and city leaders want to see something develop at The Depot.
“That’s some of the most valuable property downtown Augusta or in Augusta. It’s right there on the Riverfront, I mean, it’s been sitting there. We do, we need to do something,” said Commissioner Catherine Smith Rice.
Commissioners received an update on the potential mixed-use development and voted to give developers access to the property for another two months to continue soil testing.“They have their due diligence that was set to end October 26th. Obviously the commission extended it to December 12th to give them the time they need and they’ll be hopefully bringing a proposal back to commission to try to move forward with the project,” said Cal Wray, President of the Augusta Economic Development Authority.Other projects have not moved forward at the Depot. Almost 20 years ago, Augusta spent $1.8 million dollars removing contaminated soil at the site for a condo project. But even though the site has been cleaned, the Development Authority can’t prove it.“Still trying to put our hands on those records but to make sure everybody is covered doing that phase two just to check all the boxes make sure there’s no surprises. But yeah, heard the same story, you have, you were obviously here, I wasn’t, but the city did the cleanup, so we expect to have no issues,” said Wray.Commissioner Rice believes the cleanup records should be easily found…