Turkey Farm Meetings Show Limited Progress

The hope of working within the recently appointed Turkey Farm subcommittee was that after a pair of meetings the group would have recommendations to give to the full council. 

However, after the group held its first two meetings, they appear to be not much closer than they were in their general discussion in resolving the matter.

"I thought we hadn't gotten very far [after the first meeting]," said subcommittee member Matt Finney.

According to Finney, the bulk of the first meeting was listening to property owner Harold Wachtel reiterate his plan for the Larison's Corner property in more detail.

"What he wants to do is what we've been hearing for the past six months," Finney said. "I don't know that we've moved terribly far, in my opinion."

Subcommittee member and council president Tim Iversen said that the first meeting validated that they were at an impasse and that prompted borough council attorney Brian Mason to send a memo requesting deliverables on marketing materials.

"We wanted to see exactly what they had done and how far they were with contract negotiations," Iversen said.

Iversen said the owner provided the information, which included the news that it was a Wells Fargo bank that was interested in the corner.

"From there we came back to the issue of needing a vision or having to fix a vision, or we would be going in circles," Iversen said. 

Iversen said that in the second meeting the group reviewed what Wachtel's attorney delivered, and they explored the ideas in his business model.

"It's pretty clear that he has two land lease pads that were pretty important to his model," Iversen said. "We went through, I think, every conceivable pad that's out there — fast food restaurants, chain restaurants, furniture outlets, various retail pads — I think the conclusion was that nothing was jumping out at us as something we'd be interested in."

Finney said that Wachtel's real estate developer Mitch Berlant has an idea that everybody seemed interested in, which is a bed and breakfast/upscale farm to table restaurant. According to Finney one option would be Berlant purchasing part of the property from Wachtel and develop it in concert with Wachtel's development.

Mayor Bob Davis said that, at the second meeting, David and Frank Bansich were "trying to give significant advice about what happens if you go down the road with an unwilling partner."

"If we start to go the blighted route, for example, and we have opposition the opportunity for us to lose control is very evident. If you end up with a zoning board adjustment-type application then as a council we have lost control of that, and then we may lose control of the affordable housing aspect," Davis said. "That's kind of the big picture of what I got out of it. A lot of questions were named, and Harold Wachtel's group is supposedly working on answers to those questions."