The town of DeWitt has announced they will not declare the former Howard Johnson property located off of Carrier Circle on Thompson Road as eminent domain due to forward strides made with McDonald’s and the owner of the property.
“We are tremendously excited and encouraged by the way it turned out. The art of a compromise is that both sides walked away with a bit of disappointment,” said Supervisor Ed Michalenko at the Feb. 23 meeting of the DeWitt Town Board. “Both sides made compromises. I’m cautiously optimistic because it’s been so long.”
In December 2014, the owner of the Howard Johnson’s property announced plans to demolish the degrading building and construct a Home 2 Suites hotel in its place. In order to make this happen, an access road will have to be built through McDonald’s property.
According to Michalenko, the town has been pursuing improving the former Howard Johnson’s hotel property for the past six years, but ran into a deadlock moving forward because of disagreement in stipulations with the owner of the property and the neighboring McDonald’s restaurant over the brand of food and take-out terms at the planned Home 2 Suites.
Because Home 2 Suites is a franchised company, they already have contracts with food vendors and did not feel they had to reach an agreement with McDonald’s Corporation.
On Dec. 8, 2014, the DeWitt Town Board adopted three resolutions to help move forward with the redevelopment of this property in case McDonald’s and the property owner could not reach an agreement, including authorizing the town to send legal notice to perform surveys on the property near the building, authorizing the town engineer to perform the surveys and for the town assessor to get appraisals of how much the property it is worth.
At the Feb. 23 meeting, a public hearing concerning the town’s consideration of acquisition by eminent domain of the property was held, but because of the meeting between the two parties seemed to be positive, Michalenko said this action would not be necessary.
“We thank McDonald’s Corporation for coming here today and we thank the property owners. I don’t think it could have gone any better,” Michalenko said.
Agreement terms will continue to be written up by both sides, and demolition to the crumbling Howard Johnson’s property can hopefully begin this summer, said DeWitt Town Councilor Kerry Mannion, who was also present at the meeting of the property owner and McDonald’s.
Also at the Feb. 23 meeting, the board received a purchase offer for the DeWitt parks building, located at 5889 Butternut Dr., East Syracuse, that was put up for sale by the town.
Representative from Sabre Enterprises Inc., a portable restroom rental company, presented two offers to the town board: One for the building at the asking price of $199,000 and the other to additionally purchase a small parcel of land surrounding the property, which is currently owned by the town.
The building would be the Syracuse area central storage facilities for some of their rental toilets, said Jerry Vecchiarelli, co-owner of the company.
“We think this building would be great for our rapidly growing business,” said Vecchiarelli. “It’s in a good location and it’s just what we need.”
Sabre has a contract with all of the water treatment facilities in the area, according to Vecchiarelli, and all of the portable toilet would be cleaned prior to storage at the building.
The town board said they would have to look over the proposed offers and allow the town attorney some time to review it before any decisions could be made.
Hayleigh Gowans is a reporter for the Eagle Bulletin. She can be reached at [email protected].
