By Eric Curl
Feb. 4, 2024 – The city’s investment in the new Enmarket Arena continues to grow as the remnants of a former industrial site haunt what is now the home of the Savannah Ghost Pirates.
The Savannah City Council is set to consider spending an additional $4.5 million for a surface parking lot next to the arena, almost two years after approving the original $9 million contract for the project. The contract increase with APAC-Atlantic Inc. will cover the removal of additional contaminated soil on the former Chatham Steel site after sampling determined the actual amount of contaminated material was much higher than previously known, according to the agenda report.
An arena parking analysis determined the 2,000-space surface lot on the 22.5-acre property, combined with a 400-space parking garage attached to the arena, is the most economical and efficient means to deliver required parking for the new facility, according to city officials. The original contract for the 2,000-space parking lot north of West Gwinnett Street was approved by the city council on May 27, 2021. The increase brings the total cost of the project to about $13.5 million, but city officials say that in addition to being significantly less expensive than another parking garage, the parking lot provides the most flexibility to adapt to changing parking demands. The city’s parking fund, revenue from parking meters, garages and citations, is being used to cover the costs of the project.
The city does not own the land and a 20-year lease extension will also be considered at Thursday’s meeting, after the city initially entered a 10-year lease in 2019. The annual rent will increase from $573,681 in 2024 to $1.3 million by 2049, but the lease extensions will provide time for the city to recapture its investment in the parking lot construction, according to city officials.
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The revised lease agreement comes more than three decades after Meyer Tenenbaum transferred the 23-acre site for $273,100 to Chatham Steel in 1989, according to property records. Chatham Steel was formed as a scrap iron and metal business in 1915 by Samuel Tenenbaum, according to the company’s website , and operated as a local family-owned business that was sold to Reliance Steel and Aluminum Co. in 1998. The parking lot site was transferred to Tenenbaum Inc. in 1998, a company in which former Chatham Steel Vice President Sheldon Tenenbaum serves as the CEO, according to state registration records.
After the city entered the lease agreement with Tenenbaum, Chatham County’s appraised value of the property increased from $906,500 in 2020 to almost $1.5 million in 2021 and up to $2.5 million in 2023. The city will reimburse the landlord for property tax increases and liability insurance premiums, according to the lease agreement.
The property between the Springfield Canal and the Chatham Steel facility was occupied in the 1910s by lumber company and Chatham Steel appeared to be using the property to store, handle, and process scrap metal from at least the early 1950s until the early 1990s, according to a 2020 remediation plan by Terracon Consultants. A crusher was reportedly operated on-site for the processing of automobiles, transformers, and other sources of scrap metal before industrial activities ceased in 2005, Terracon reported.
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