City had interest in downtown Carmike building, couldn’t pull trigger

The city of Columbus was interested in the possibility of purchasing the former downtown Carmike corporate headquarters, but the process moved too quickly for the city to act.

Greyrock Properties LLC, and its managing member Will White, closed on the $3.2 million purchase last week in which he bought the five-story downtown headquarters at 1301 1st Ave. and a four-story brick building at 301 13th St.

The property went on the market in February, less than two months after Kansas-based AMC Entertainment Holdings finalized the $1.2 billion purchase of movie theater company Carmike Cinemas Inc.

About 20 offers were made to JLL, the national real estate handing the sale, according to a source familiar with the deal. Some offers were for both buildings and others were for one or the other, sources said.

Though it did its due diligence, the city did not make an offer, Mayor Teresa Tomlinson said.

“The city moves very slowly,” she said. “We have 10 part-time legislative directors of that kind of activity. So, we can’t move that quickly.”

Offers were submitted at the end of March and once White’s offer was accepted by AMC, it took less than two weeks to finish the deal, which is quick for such a large real estate purchase.

“We just couldn’t move fast enough,” Tomlinson said. “It would have saved us tens of millions of dollars if we could have put in an offer on that building. And I will say the council was interested in that proposition. Councilors who have spoken publicly about it — like Walker Garrett — have said constituents have recommended it to them, and they certainly recommended it to me and the city manager.”

The city’s interest comes as Tomlinson has formed a commission to look at the Columbus Government Center and evaluate its future use as a judicial center and city government building.

The more than 65,000-square-foot Carmike headquarters was the right amount of space to consider relocating the city offices currently in the Government Center, Garrett said.

“I brought up the idea based on quotes for 60,000 square feet that would have accommodated everything the city currently does in the Government Center,” Garrett said. “By the time we started thinking as a council, it was too late because the bids were due the next week.”

City officials never discussed the potential purchase of the Carmike building in a public meeting.

White has begun the process of leasing the Carmike space he purchased.

This story was originally published May 10, 2017 at 1:58 PM with the headline "City had interest in downtown Carmike building, couldn’t pull trigger."