By Eric Curl
May 2, 2023 – With a padlocked chain securing the entrance, the former Broughton Municipal Building on East Broughton Street, where Savannah residents once paid their utility bills, has not welcomed visitors for about four years.
Ever since the city sold the historic mid-century building and relocated the revenue department in 2019, the 6-story structure has sat vacant and unused, aside from being a canvas for graffiti.
Despite the deteriorating condition, the downtown building’s current owner is now facing a tax hike for the property. The Chatham County Board of Assessors voted on April 27 to remove a preferential tax assessment on the building after plans to rehabilitate the structure for use as a hotel failed to move forward.
The building’s tax appraised value has been frozen at $4.4 million since 2020, after the city sold the property for $4.5 million in June 2019 to the previous owner, Columbia Ventures. The Atlanta-based developer’s plan to convert the building into a hotel was approved in August 2018 as part of former City Manager Rob Hernandez’s plan to sell some city properties and construct a new municipal complex to centralize city departments.
The “Broughton Haus” was to include 45 rooms with a ground floor restaurant and rooftop bar, according to Lynch Associates Architects description of the project. However, construction never began and Columbia Ventures sold the building to Colorado-based M/A Capital Ventures for $6.25 million in March 2022.
The city had the right of reversion to re-purchase the property if construction did not commence within 24 months of closing, but in 2021 the city chose not to exercise that option to re-acquire the property, according to city spokesperson Keturah Greene-Luckett. The city has yet to get any information about the exact plans for the building moving forward, Greene-Luckett said Tuesday.
Ryan Diggins, who is the registered agent and manager of the building’s current owner, is also the founder and operator of The Ramble Hotel – a 50-room boutique hotel in Denver. Diggins declined to comment for this story via a spokesperson reached through the hotel’s website. Columbia Ventures and Lynch Associates Architects did not respond to requests for comment.
Constructed in 1959, the historic structure now sits vacant a block away from the terminus of the recently completed $13 million streetscaping project along Broughton’s western half. The preferential assessment the building had is an incentive offered by the state to rehabilitate historic properties. The incentive freezes the property’s tax assessed value for up to eight years at the acquisition cost or the assessed value at the time of the application, whichever is greater. Once a preliminary certification for historic rehabilitation is received, the property owner has 24 months to complete the rehabilitation. Since the proposed rehabilitation work did not begin within that 2-year period, the board voted to remove the preferential assessment at last week’s meeting.
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