The owner of a lumber company in Bingham Township and a retired Leland dentist have offered to buy and develop Leelanau County’s 2.5-acre courthouse campus in Leland when the county seat moves to Suttons Bay Township next year.

Business partners Gene Kelly of Bingham Township and Dr. Jim Varley of Leland submitted the only bid to purchase the property – if their one-page fax to the county administrator can actually be called a "bid."

Although the property has been appraised at around $2.5 million, a hand-written fax cover page written by Kelly did not specify how much he and his partner would be willing to pay for the property.

“Jim Varley and I are interested in buying this property,” Kelly wrote. “We are both local. Our intention would be to pay fair appraised value and clean up for residential housing …”

Kelly added: “I am prepared to offer a less general offer; being very specific can be quickly accomplished when I can ask you a couple of questions. Bank financing will not be a problem. If possible let this paper act as our initial bid.”

Kelly and Varley reportedly spoke with county administrator David Gill on Tuesday and agreed to make a more formal presentation to a “Leland Property Subcommittee” of the Leelanau County Board of Commissioners following the board’s rescheduled monthly executive committee meeting next Wednesday morning, Feb. 14.

The chairman of the subcommittee, District No. 5 commissioner David “Chauncey” Shiflett, said he was “disappointed to say the least” that the county’s Request for Purchase Proposals – posted since Nov. 1, 2006 – had resulted in just one “bid” on the property.

Gill said the county had received about a half-dozen inquiries and requests for “bid packets” on the property – but only one offer to purchase the property.

Shiflett noted that Kelly’s one-page fax “did not meet the criteria of the Request for Purchase Proposals,” which asked for detailed information from potential purchasers on buying the property “as is, where is,” or with possible incentive opportunities in place such as a Land Bank Fast Track Authority or a Brownfield Redevelopment Authority.

“We just seated our Brownfield Redevelopment Authority last month,” said Shiflett, who was among those named to serve on the authority. “At our Leland Property Subcommittee meeting next week, I expect we’ll discuss whether the authority should be involved in this project.”

Shiflett said he was “shocked there was so little interest” among developers in purchasing the Leland property. He added that the committee might recommend that the bidding process be reopened, extended or otherwise modified to see if more bids might be forthcoming.

Officials of Leland Township last year formed a committee that outlined the wishes and concerns of township residents regarding how the county’s courthouse campus would be redeveloped. The project will be subject to Leland Township zoning. A letter from the township committee had been included in bid packets available for those willing to bid on the property.

“The Leland letter may have been far too restrictive for some potential developers,” said Shiflett, who works fulltime as a real estate agent when not serving on the county board.

“It’s not an easy market to make money in real estate these days,” he added.

Varley agreed, but added that he and his partner, Evans, also believed that most of the wishes expressed by the Leland Township committee could be fulfilled.

“We understand that the committee’s recommendations are non-binding, but we basically agree with their recommendations anyway” Varley told the Enterprise this week. “The committee is hoping mostly for residential development with maybe a section of multi-family condos as part of the mix. That’s what we’re looking at too, but our plans are very preliminary to say the least,” Varley said.

“The idea that there’s going to be ‘affordable housing’ in that neighborhood might be a problem, though,” Varley added. “That’s some expensive dirt – with tiny village lots currently going for more than $150,000. There won’t be any ‘low income housing’ in that area, but we’re hoping that homes there will be reasonably priced. We don’t want any ‘bigfoot McMansions’ filling up lots to the setback lines,” Varley said.

In addition to co-owning P.D.M. Lumber Company on Bingham Road between County Road 633 and County Road 641, Kelly and Varley have also built houses in a development behind their lumber company property. In addition, the partners currently own the M-204 Country Store near Lake Leelanau.

“We don’t know how realistic the appraised value (of the courthouse property) is,” Varley said. “Maybe it’s realistic, maybe it isn’t. But the county probably isn’t going to sell it to us for $1 million – they’d get roasted and the county board wouldn’t vote for that. We need to create a plan where the county ends up with a decent amount of money and my partner and I can make some money too.

“If we did this project instead of somebody whose not local,” Varley added, “ it might turn out pretty nice.”