443 N. Detroit St., Warsaw. (Provided by Google Maps)

WARSAW — A purchase agreement for the abandoned gas station located at 443 N. Detroit St., was approved during the Warsaw Redevelopment Commission held on Monday, Feb. 4.

The agreement comes with a purchase price of $152,500, which was the average of the two appraisals the city received. The city also received a phase 1 environmental report on the property. The property is currently owned by Jaswinder Bhatti, president of JPJ Food Mart Inc.

City Planner Jeremy Skinner explained that grant funds may be available for any clean-up of the site but he expects there to be little clean up based on the future intended use.

“There are two things we could do,” explained Skinner. “We could do nothing … in which it ends up like the Arnolt (Corporation Building), it’s vacant and sits on the tax roles until we take ownership of it. Or we can take ownership of it now and start that cleanup process.”

“There are always going to be unknowns when you’re buying a piece of property,” said Skinner. “I think we’ve done a pretty good job of covering what we think we know regarding the environmental. We’ve done enough research to know the grant opportunities that are out there for us to, not only move the tanks but potentially clean the property up.”

The commission approved the purchase agreement and also approved a transfer request of $150,000 into the land acquisition budget to be used to purchase the property. The hope is that the city will close on the property sometime this month.

The commission also reviewed bids for the second phase of the CR 300N project, which were opened during the Warsaw Board of Works meeting held on Friday, Feb. 1. Rieth-Riley Construction, Goshen, submitted a bid of $2,315,601.95; and Phend & Brown, Milford, submitted a bid of $1,880,359.30. This project includes the planned roundabout at Sheldon Street and road reconstruction.

Skinner asked for the commission’s recommendation to award the bid to Phend & Brown, the commission approved. The bid will be officially awarded at the next board of works meeting.

The next meeting will be held at 4 p.m. Monday, March 4.