School board sells warehouse/property for nearly $2 million

The school district recently sold this warehouse at 506 SE Third Ave., Ocala. [File photo by Jennifer Hunt Murty].

The Marion County School Board reluctantly closed the sale on a warehouse it has owned since 1912, after the buyer needed two extensions to finalize the deal.

The board will receive $1,910,580 from this sale and signed the closing documents after discussing and approving the sale at its July 22 board meeting.  No details were provided at the meeting about the intended uses of the funds other than a reference to the money being “earmarked” for a datacenter.

The warehouse lot is 1.34 acres located at 506 SE Third Ave., with a market value of $1,862,582 in 2023. The board decided to sell the district-owned quarter-acre vacant lot that is south of the warehouse parcel separately.

The law firm McGraw, Rauba & Mutarelli handled the sale for the school board. Attorney John McGraw said the buyer requested it be named One Remington Ocala II, LLC. in the sale documents. One Remington Ocala is an affiliate of a New York-based company and was selected despite local bids for the warehouse.

No information was available as to how the new owners intend to use the property.

As of 2023, the warehouse property had a market value of $1,862,582. The assessed value was $1,313,767, with the value of the land assessed at $838,656 and the value of the building at $1,008,801, according to the Marion County Property Appraiser’s Office.

McGraw and his colleague at the firm, attorney Alexandra Scales, said the buyer had put the money in an escrow account on July 21 and signed the final documents in anticipation that the board would approve the sale.

Despite the money being placed in escrow, the board still had the option to re-list or retain the property.

Scales said the buyer was set to close on June 30 but was then unwilling to meet that deadline as it failed to get the necessary surveys. She said the board “generously” granted them an extension to July 11, which the entity failed again to meet.

Finally, the buyer requested to get the survey and money by the date of the meeting on July 22 and was successful.

Board member Sarah James recommended that the board close on the sale when a discussion opened about next steps.  She said that while the timeline was not ideal, the “back-and-forth” process is how a typical commercial real estate sale often works.

“As long as you get it across the finish line and everybody walks away happy, that’s the end goal,” she said.

James said the money from the sale needs to be “earmarked” for the datacenter to offline another property.

Board member Allison Campbell agreed with James because of the “cash in hand” already but said she is never in favor of extension after extension.

Vice-Chair Eric Cummings disagreed that this process is typical of commercial real estate transactions and recommended that the board consider how it wants to do business in the future as a government entity.

Board member Nancy Thrower supported Cummings’ opinion, adding, “There’s not a free pass because this is how it happens in commercial real estate. I was embarrassed for them a couple of times.”