In May of 2018, the city of Augusta approved funding on the development of the Beacon Station apartment complex, located at 1480 Wrightsboro Rd. On Wednesday, June 10, the Urban Redevelopment Agency (URA) approved the owners of Beacon Station paying off those municipal bonds, four years earlier than the originally agreed upon seven years.
“The city is getting its money back. It increases the city’s bonding capacity by the amount of bonds that are being paid off, and the city will be paid for the property that the complex is on,” said former mayor of Augusta Bob Young, who also serves as chair of the Urban Redevelopment Agency.
Jim Plunkett served as the legal special counsel on the project. He helped work on the issuance of the bonds from the government side. He made a point to clarify the flow of transactions.
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“The URA is the issuer. The city of Augusta, through an inter-governmental agreement, backed that issue of bonds, and Columbia Ventures made lease payments which served as the debt on the bonds,” Plunkett said. “So the conveyance is from the URA to Columbia Ventures, and part of that lease agreement was that if Columbia Ventures wanted to exercise the right to terminate the lease and acquire the property, they had to reimburse the URA for the land and infrastructure, which is a sum of $1.3 million dollars. That money doesn’t go into the coffers of Augusta; it will go back to the URA for future projects and to the overall benefit of Augusta.”
Columbia Ventures is selling the property to “another entity,” according to Young. The complex has a 93% occupancy rate and the rent prices are market-rate, so the project has been extremely successful, Young said.
“Since it’s been so successful, I doubt you’re going to see any changes,” he said.
Young said there was initially some opposition in the Augusta Commission to approving the bond issuance, but the project was eventually passed through.
“Activity breeds activity,” Young said. “The city took the risk to offer the incentive to get the multi-family activity going in a big way. The city got a return on its investment. It’s a positive thing.”
Tyler Strong is the Business Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at tyler@theaugustapress.com.
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