City of Sedro-Woolley sells properties related to roundabout construction

SEDRO-WOOLLEY - The city of Sedro-Woolley has sold two properties it purchased prior to construction of a roundabout at the intersection of Highway 9, John Liner Road and McGarigle Road.

The properties at 827 John Liner and 900 McGarigle were purchased for right-of-way purposes necessary for the construction.

The sale of the John Liner property closed Tuesday at a price of $464,000, while the McGarigle property sold for $145,000 in February.

The John Liner property includes a house, while the McGarigle property is a vacant lot where a house stood prior to construction of the roundabout.

The city bought the two properties for $890,000.

About $3.4 million in funding for the roundabout came from the state Transportation Improvement Board, $555,569 from the city and $500,000 from a Skagit County Economic Development Grant.

"The roundabout was funded by TIB, a state agency," City Engineer Peter Lane said. "So we did use those funds to purchase the two properties."

While the proceeds from the sales will stay with the city, there is a condition.

"As long as the money is rolled forward into future transportation projects," Lane said. "So the plan is to do exactly that."

As far as the selling of property is concerned, Lane said while it's rather common for cities, it hasn't been for Sedro-Woolley.

"We haven't done this, at least Bill (Bullock, Public Works director) or myself personally," Lane said. "But we had a great Realtor who was supporting us. We think the process went well and the city benefitted from the sales and will be able to use that money for city projects."

Lane said the city tries to avoid such situations as much as possible.

"It's always a big impact when we are impacting people's properties," he said. "So we really try hard to not purchase property.

"We do have other projects where we will do ‘strip takes' where we might need a foot or two of someone's property when we are putting in a sidewalk or multiuse path. We do have some of those coming up, but nothing of this scale. We try really hard not to impact people that much."

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