Langley considers option for firehouse sale

Langley is trying to find a way to part with its old fire station. The city had put it up as a surplus property through a request for proposals. Only one proposal was submitted, and it came from current tenant Callahan McVay, who runs Callahan’s Firehouse Studio in the Second Street building.

Langley is trying to find a way to part with its old fire station.

The city had put it up as a surplus property through a request for proposals. Only one proposal was submitted, and it came from current tenant Callahan McVay, who runs Callahan’s Firehouse Studio in the Second Street building.

Since 2009, the glass-blowing artist transformed the old cinderblock truck bays into a working studio for his blown glass business as well as a showcase for glasses, sea floats, bowls and art. He made a $350,000 offer after being in the building six years this July because, he said, he has shown it is a successful business in an ideal location.

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“I’ve been able to demonstrate with hard work and regular hours what I’m able to do,” McVay said.

“I grew up in a fishing family,” he added later. “This is my gill net.”

The offer is reasonable, he says, because the building is old and would not include exclusive rights to use the parking lot behind the building near Third Street.

Langley City Hall initially disagreed. Mayor Fred McCarthy said the planning director is awaiting a pair of value estimates from real estate professionals before making a recommendation to the council. Only two dollar figures exist for the property now, McCarthy said. One is from McVay, and the other is the Island County Assessor’s valuation of more than $840,000 for both lots.

Now the city is considering splitting the lots, with a possible boundary line adjustment, and selling off the building to McVay and keeping the lot closer to Third Street for public parking.

“The interest is not really in selling, it boils down to whether the whole property would be sold or whether some of it would be sectioned off for sale and public parking,” McCarthy said.

Others are not so sure of the lower value or the city’s process. Real estate agent Leanne Finlay, who was asked by the city to look into comparable sales and offer a value for the property and building, wouldn’t say what she thought it was worth before giving her report to the city.

She said in a phone interview with The Record that the city should have listed the property rather than posting a request for proposal (RFP) for less than two months.

“I don’t think they could expect to get enough bids to know whether they got fair market value,” Finlay said Thursday.

“It’s a much different property than it was prior to Second Street being redeveloped,” she added. Ben Watanabe / The Record | Callahan McVay speaks with a customer this week at his shop in the old Langley firehouse on Second Street. He wants to buy the building, which is still publicly owned.

Potentially further complicating the possible sale is an entanglement of political interests. Mayoral candidate Tim Callison is holding his campaign fundraiser kickoff party at Callahan’s Firehouse on Tuesday, June 16. Supporting his candidacy are four sitting city council members: Robin Black, Rene Neff, Jim Sundberg and Bruce Allen. Black is his wife.

McVay is letting the political fundraiser occur without charging his normal $90-per-hour event rental fee. He said it was his contribution to Callison’s campaign and saw no problem with hosting the event.

“I’ve been running to own this place a lot longer than Tim’s been running for mayor,” McVay said.

Sundberg said he never considered a possible conflict of interest might exist in a case where council members would be deciding the sale of a property that was recently rented, for free, to a political candidate a majority of council members support.

“It would be kind of a stretch to call that a conflict of interest,” Sundberg said in a phone interview Thursday.

He was adamant that the fundraiser’s location will have no bearing on the council’s decision to potentially sell the property and building.

“It has nothing to do with the disposition of the property,” Sundberg said. “We will vote for the best public interest.”

Callison said he selected Callahan’s Firehouse because of its location as the de-facto center of town. Located adjacent to the Second Street plaza, Langley’s centerpiece of its road redesign, the area offered ample space for his campaign kickoff. He also did not see any possible conflict of interest arising from holding his fundraiser there.

“I guess somebody could look at it if they were very cynical,” Callison said. “The reason we chose Callahan’s is it’s situated in the very center of one of the best city-run improvements there at Second Street.”

The city put out the RFP in late March with a May 18 deadline for proposals. Only one was turned in McVay’s offer.

Rumors that mayoral candidate Sharon Emerson was trying to make an after-the-fact offer on the building are untrue, she said in an email.

“I had some interest in knowing whether it might be a good investment for us, but primarily I was interested in learning more about what seemed to be an odd way of handling the disposal of the firehouse,” she wrote in an email. “From the outside, I couldn’t understand why the city chose to sell the building in that manner if the goal was to get the best possible price for a surplus public asset … However, I ended up dropping the whole project due to lack of time.”

When the city council approved the RFP, they did so knowing that the process meant the city had greater control over selection criteria than solely price.

When McVay’s offer came back, the council met in an executive session to discuss and set a minimum sale value for the property. McCarthy said he was not able to say what the minimum value was, only that the council indeed agreed to one.

The issue is not on the city council’s agenda for its upcoming Monday, June 15 meeting. McCarthy said he expected the planning director to have a recommendation to the council by its July 6 meeting. First, the city wants to get more value estimates before resuming negotiations.

“We want to talk price, and we want to get some additional opinion about where that price ought to be other than just what we had,” McCarthy said.