Smithfield Times Publisher Steve Stewart and his immediate predecessor, John Edwards, each urged Smithfield’s Town Council on Aug. 26 to reject the two bids the town received in July for the 3,300-square-foot building at 228 Main St., and instead sell the building back to the newspaper.

“I come before you today to humbly ask that you preserve important history and ensure the vibrancy of the performing arts downtown by working with me to keep the Smithfield Times on the site it has occupied for a century,” Stewart told council members during the meeting’s public comment period.

The public will have another opportunity to weigh in on the matter when the council holds the official public hearing, set for the council’s Oct. 2 meeting, that’s required ahead of any sale of town-owned property. Town Manager Michael Stallings said a draft contract will be made available to the public prior to the hearing, likely at the council’s committee meetings scheduled for Sept. 23.

The town acquired the building from Edwards in 2020 for $425,000 and has recouped a portion of the cost over the past four years by leasing a portion of the building for $1,200 per month to Stewart-owned Smithfield Newsmedia, which publishes the Times, Slice of Smithfield magazine and related digital products.

Stewart purchased the newspaper, but not the real estate, from Edwards in 2019. 

Stewart said he offered to pay the town appraised value for the property in February 2023 and confirmed the offer in February 2024.

The council voted on July 1 to solicit sealed offers for the building due by 3 p.m. on July 31. The resulting bids were opened and made public at a 4 p.m. meeting that day.

“My sealed bid arrived after the 3 p.m. deadline but before the 4 p.m. opening due to a family emergency when I was literally en route to hand-deliver a bid,” Stewart said.

Jay and Amber Hassell, who co-own the Hamtown Mercantile multi-retailer venue across Main Street from the Times, submitted a bid of $400,000. Hallwood Enterprises CEO Mark Hall, who owns multiple commercial properties in town, submitted the other bid, at $325,000.

Stallings said the town had the property independently appraised prior to soliciting bids, but said the town will not release the result of that appraisal until after a sale is completed, citing an exemption from Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act that allows the withholding of “appraisals and cost estimates of real property subject to a proposed purchase, sale or lease, prior to the completion of such purchase, sale or lease.”

“There is zero conflict between me and Jay Hassell,” Stewart told council members, noting that Hassell, whom he described as a “class act,” had called him days ahead of the submittal deadline and offered to not bid if Stewart planned to bid. 

“It was an incredible but not surprising gesture from one who knew of my desire to own the building and keep the Times office where it’s been for a century,” said Stewart. “I thanked him profusely but told him that he absolutely should submit a bid, among other reasons being that Town Council would have a quality alternative should it decide, for whatever reason, that the Times must go.” 

Edwards said he sold the building to the town in 2020, which at that time had proposed converting it into government offices, months after he retired on Oct. 30, 2019, as editor and publisher of the Times.

“Thoughts of selling it were complicated by our commitment to the summer concert series and numerous other public functions,” Edwards said, stating that its sale to the town at the time “seemed a perfect fit.”

Edwards and his wife, Anne, in 1987, started the annual summer concert series on the lawn outside the building’s Main Street entrance, affectionately known for decades as “Times Square” until rebranded as “Main Street Square” last year when the town replaced the circa-1997 gazebo-style stage with a 37-foot-wide, handicap-accessible platform.

Stewart and Edwards also said the building has been used over the decades as an area for performers to change clothes, use the restrooms and escape the summer heat and thunderstorms. Stewart noted that the Times allows other uses of the building by community groups, such as for judges to confer on winning entries in the town’s Christmas parade and the Woman’s Club of Smithfield to stage cookies that are given out the night of the annual Christmas tree lighting.

Elaine Dairo, a board member of the Isle of Wight Arts League, which now oversees the summer concert series, also spoke during the public comment period in support of keeping the concerts at the Times building, regardless of who purchases it. The town, in its solicitation of bids, said it would reserve a permanent easement on the front lawn of the property and the stage for use by the summer concert series and others.

Selling the building to the Times would assure the community, “in a way that no legal easement can ever guarantee, that Times Square, recently rebranded as Main Street Square, remains family-friendly non-commercial community space,” Stewart said.

“I frankly cannot envision a use that’s more important for this property than having it continue as the heart of downtown’s cultural life, which we proudly have made it since the 1980s,” Edwards said. “No business other than a newspaper can logically be expected to embrace that kind of openness to public use.”