MORGANTOWN – For years, WVU Hospitals has coveted the county-owned properties sitting in the heart of its Morgantown campus that are home to the Monongalia County Health Department.
Now, at long last, it’s going to get the chance to buy them – as will, presumably, anyone else with enough interest, and cash.
The Monongalia County Commission on Wednesday approved the posting of notice for property sale regarding the three parcels that contain the MCHD Building (453 Van Voorhis Road) and neighboring WIC Building (1000 Elmer Prince Drive).
The county proposes to sell the properties for no less than a cash purchase price equal to the greater of $6 million, or 75% of the properties’ aggregated appraised value.
The commission’s notice will appear as a legal advertisement in the next two Friday editions of this newspaper. The deadline for submission of written offers is 10 a.m. May 6.
The commission will take action on the sale during its May 13 meeting.
The notice indicates the closing on the property is to take place before June 30, at which point the buyer will lease the property to the county for a mutually agreed upon period of time.
“It’s no secret that for my whole tenure here on the commission, we’ve been negotiating or having conversations about the sale of our health department property,” Commissioner Sean Sikora said. “The problem is that property is very valuable to us. It’s also very valuable — being right in the middle of the campus of WVU Hospitals — it’s very valuable to them.”
Sikora went on to say the conversations have “drug on for years” at this point.
He also noted it was a recent change to WV Code 7-3-3e enacted by the West Virginia Legislature that helped grease the skids by giving counties the same flexibility available to municipalities to sell property to private entities.
“The biggest issue was, I mean, both parties were negotiating in good faith, but it was hard for us to really feel like we were getting enough out of that property so that we could move into another place and not have a significant impact on our budget or the citizens of our county,” he said.
While a specific location was never named, Commissioner Jeff Arnett said the county has identified property that could meet the health department’s future needs.
“I feel like we’ve looked at about every possibility within five miles of the current location to find the new home for the health department,” Arnett said. “We think we have an idea of where we’re going to move next. I’m excited about the prospect.”
MCHD Executive Director Anthony DeFelice offered his appreciation to the commission and everyone else who played a part in the process.
“We are excited that this process is moving forward. It’s been a total team effort, but there is still a lot of work to do to get a new facility ready to serve the residents of Monongalia County,” DeFelice said. “This has been our home for nearly 51 years and we’ve appreciated it, but we’ve outgrown it and we need a more updated facility to serve the public health needs of the community.”
