The City of St. Pete will purchase the Carter G. Woodson Museum for $663,000. St. Pete City Council approved the purchase price during its meeting Thursday.
The issue came up after the St. Petersburg Housing Authority announced its decision to sell the property and dissolve itself as the museum’s landlord in order to shore up funds for other housing projects.
According to city staff, the selling price was vetted independently by the city through two separate appraisals that actually came in higher than what the housing authority was asking.
City Council member Karl Nurse proposed a resolution asking the St. Petersburg Housing Authority to set aside at least $100,000 of that for a home ownership program.
“They do have considerable reserves and the Pinellas County Housing Authority runs a home ownership program so this is not an unusual sort of thing,” Nurse said.
The only question he got from council came from Jim Kennedy, who simply wanted to know, “why only $100,000?”
Nurse asked the city’s legal team to take what he called a “chicken scratch” resolution written on legal paper and turn it into an actual resolution. City attorneys are expected to return that resolution by the end of its meeting and the measure seems likely to pass.
Nurse said he discussed the idea with Mayor Rick Kriseman and initially asked that the plan be a provision of a purchase contract, but in order to avoid a potential risk to the sale, Kriseman asked that it be a request, not a provision.
