Aldi’s, Nestles’ Site and a Balance Sheet

by Contributor | January 19, 2017 8:14 am

To The Editor:

At the January 17th Common Council meeting, I asked the mayor about Aldi’s and Nestles.

He said they’re still working on it and Aldi’s is still coming.

I asked if there was anything else.

He then said that they had been talking with Aldi’s in the past few weeks. He added that Aldi’s wants the building closest to Route 481 to come down. It blocks the view of the new store.

My wife had said that six months ago.

What he failed to mention is that Aldi’s has been trying to close on the property for the past three weeks.

Aldi’s hasn’t heard back from the city’s lawyer about the deal.

In the deal Aldi’s would like to close and put the money in an escrow account and deal direct with a demo company to finish the job.

If Aldi’s doesn’t close soon, we may not get an Aldi’s store for another year at least.

Then they would pay the rest of the costs out of the escrow account. Whatever is left the city would get.

The key here would be not to look for a profit from the sale of a piece of pie when the rest will be worth more once someone sees how good the one piece was.

Get the store built more will come.

Now comes the Balance Sheet part of this story.

Remember I said not to look for a profit in the sale of this piece of the pie.

Selling price of a portion of the Nestles’ site to Aldi’s to build a store: $450k original price.

Bond $300k for bricks and asbestos air testing (bricks that couldn’t be used).

Now before someone says, “that money was bonded, we didn’t use cash.” Oh I see you used the credit card. It still has to be paid sooner or later.

At that point the books looked like this:

$450k – $300k (bond still goes against sale) = $150 profit.

Then Aldi’s says they will only pay $350k for whatever reason.

Now the profit goes down to $50k.

Now the site isn’t ready yet.

Lawyer fees haven’t been subtracted and there maybe realtor fees (I don’t know).

The smart thing to do is to close now and start getting people working and collecting property tax money, also attracting more development.

Will the city do the smart thing, is the $50k question.

Frank Castiglia Jr. – concerned taxpayer

Source URL: https://oswegocountytoday.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/aldis-nestles-site-and-a-balance-sheet/

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