South Orange has received three bids in response to its RFP for the sale and adaptive re-use of Village Hall.
Trustee Howard Levison reported at Monday’s Board of Trustees meeting, “We have received, being the deadline was last Thursday, [bids] for alternative uses of Village Hall. We have had a discussion of the finance committee of making a recommendation, if in fact we have feasible alternatives, that we go out and create a resident subcommittee of people who could do the analysis of comparing the costs, specifically the costs of the alternative to what we would do with Village Hall if in fact we are selling the current facility. We have to go through the process of … now moving forward and asking the respondents to give us some more detail to their reports.”
Village Administrator Barry Lewis added, “There’s a lot of follow up, a lot of additional information we need to get and I think at that point when we have all that info … we need to fully vet the economic impacts of the [sale] proposals, but that has to be in comparison with the economic impact of keeping and renovating Village Hall when we get those prices in, and then the alternative of if we don’t reoccupy Village Hall then obviously we have to have a location for our operations and where that is and what the economic impact of that is.”
Late last November, seven pre-qualified bidders received packages for the renovation of South Orange Village Hall. Proposals and bids for the renovations are due Jan. 22, 2015.
Trustees discussed forming a working committee to vet the proposals, keeping in mind that there is a 60-day window to respond to the bids.
After the meeting, Lewis explained that the Township received three bids for the sale and adaptive re-use of Village Hall; however, the Township cannot make the names of the bidders public at this time as it is in negotiations with the bidders. Lewis told the Village Green that the Township should be able to reveal that information in a few weeks’ time.
