Warren County supervisors will take a different approach to selling the county’s Magnolia Road property off U.S. 61 South, approving a resolution to sell the property privately to an individual or company through negotiation.

The decision comes after the supervisors rejected bids of $26,000 from Rachel Walker and $62,500 from John W. Massey as inadequate. Following the board’s action with the bids, board attorney Blake Teller said the supervisors had two other options.

Because the property has been declared surplus an no longer any use to the county, Teller said, “One, you could list it with a Realtor, or two, sell it privately by negotiation with a private entity or person.”

What the board would have to do, he said, is again declare the property as surplus and of no use to the county, it is not in the public interest to offer it for public bid, and selling it through private negotiation would benefit the county and the money would used to benefit the county and go back on the tax rolls.

District 1 Supervisor John Arnold, a Realtor, supported using a Realtor, quickly adding he was not interested listing it. “I think we would better represented,” he said.

His motion to go that route failed for lack of a second.

The supervisors have twice put the 12-acre property up for sale by bid, once in December and again in January. They received no bids the first time and two bids from the January advertisement, which they rejected Monday.
The county acquired the land in the mid-1960s as part of an economic development program to allow F.L. Cappaert to expand his Magnolia Mobile Homes business.
The land was later subleased to another person, who then sold their lease interest to someone else. When that individual did not keep the lease up, it terminated the lease and the land returned to the county.