Crossville In Talks With Rural King To Occupy Old Kmart Building

Crossville city officials are in talks with Rural King about locating to the old Kmart building.

However, City Attorney Will Ridley said during Tuesday’s work session that the proposal made by Rural King may not be legal.

“The most recent request sounded to me like what they want is $300,000 paid out over four years once operations begin,” Ridley said. “They don’t want to pay it back, they just want us to recognize the additional sales tax we’re going to receive. So we were to say ‘we got this extra sales tax because of the new business so we’re going to forgive this loan.’ We can’t do that because it would be a grant to private industry.”

Councilman J.H. Graham previously proposed a PILOT offer during last week’s special-called meeting which was tabled to next week’s regular session.

“I think their comment is quite explicit in the fact they want to borrow $300,000 from us, and us pay it back, which sounds like a grant to me,” Graham said. “The only incentive I mentioned during our special-called meeting was a situation where we offered them a PILOT program just for the property where the Kmart is.”

Mayor James Mayberry said offering any benefits to Rural King may not be a good idea.

“I’m up to about 16 businesses that they’ll be competing with, and of those 16, none of them seem to have had any type of incentive when they went into business,” Mayberry said. “I don’t think it’s fair to the current businesses we have that will be competing with them. I understand that they’ve already been in some other locations around town trying to recruit employees passing out applications.”

Crossville City Council will consider all proposals during their next meeting April 9 at 6 p.m.