CORPUS CHRISTI (Kiii News) — The deal to sell the old Nueces County Courthouse to an Ohio-based restoration company is officially off, according to Judge Loyd Neal.
Neal confirmed Monday that the developer had asked if the County would accept $600,000 now as part of the $1.5 million payment promised to pay outstanding taxes on the old courthouse building. He gave his okay, but on Monday morning the developer called again and said they could only come up with $100,000.
Neal told the developer the deal was off.
The deal was signed off on about five months ago, and the courthouse was supposedly sold -- a historic day for Nueces County, according to Neal -- but that historic day was dashed at Monday's budget workshop.
"We thought we had a winner," Neal said.
Nueces County Commissioners were given the bad news by Neal after a flurry of calls with the project's developers.
"This morning, very early, I got a call saying, 'Well, I dont have $600,000. We don't have $600,000. We may have $100,000,' and that killed it as far as I'm concerned," Neal said.
It was back in May when the company's owner Steve Coon told 3News the project is the real deal, adding that his company gets lots of requests to restore historic buildings all the time.
"But when I saw the pictures of the courthouse and that had, it had the right bones, and I felt it told the right story just from looking at it and from looking at hundreds if not thousands of buildings all over the United States," Coon said.
Now that the deal is dead, the Nueces County Historical Commission said the building's clock is once again counting down.
"The clock has been ticking forever, and I drive by it both toward Portland and back from Portland once a week, and I see more of the bricks down, and it makes my heart cry that it's being allowed to degenerate in this way," said Annita Eisenhour of hte Nueces County Historical Commission.
While Judge Neal said there could be others out there interested in restoring the historical building, Corpus Christi Mayor Joe McComb believes it might be time to be realistic.
"The community is disappointed but I think at this point you unplug the project as the judge said. You let the clock run out on the Historical Commission's restrictions and then you go to demo the building," McComb said.
The courthouse's time will run out in 2028.
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