Smithfield’s Town Council has indefinitely deferred voting on a contract that would sell the Smithfield Times building for 75% of its appraised value for conversion to a food, beverage and entertainment space.

An Oct. 2 public hearing on the matter drew 15 speakers, all of whom urged the council to reject or renegotiate two lower-than-appraised offers for the building and either re-solicit bids or sell the building instead to Times Publisher Steve Stewart, who’d offered in February 2023 to buy the building at appraised value and reconfirmed his offer in February of this year. 

Stewart said he’d been en route to hand-deliver a bid on July 31, the final day of the 30-day window for prospective buyers to submit written proposals, when a family emergency resulted in his missing the 3 p.m. deadline that day.

The town purchased the 3,300-square-foot building for $425,000 in 2020 from then-Times owner John Edwards and at that time had planned to renovate the building into additional space for its government offices, which are currently divided between Town Hall at 310 Institute St. and the Town Manager’s Office at 911 S. Church St. According to Mayor Steve Bowman, an alternative plan to consolidate the town’s real estate holdings, which he said was among the matters discussed during a 45-minute closed-session meeting on Oct. 2 that preceded the public portion, has “hit a bump in the road.”

“That being the case, I’m here to tell you that we will not be taking any action this evening as far as the sale or movement of any town assets at this time,” Bowman said ahead of the hearing.

The town, on Sept. 26, released a draft contract that proposes selling the Times building for $400,000 to No Hassell LLC, a holding company owned by Jay and Amber Hassell, who co-own the Hometown Mercantile multi-retailer venue across the street from the Times.

The Hassells’ bid proposed transforming the building into a “vibrant and family-friendly recreational and community event center in the heart of Smithfield” offering “a diverse array of food and beverages, coupled with exciting activities that celebrate our local community spirit.”

The Hassells were the higher of two bidders who responded to the town’s non-binding July solicitation of proposals. Mark Hall, CEO of Hallwood Enterprises, submitted the other at $325,000.

The proposed sale price is well below the $535,000 valuation appraiser Sinnen-Green Associates provided the town in March.

Darren Cutler, one of six candidates running for four available seats on the council in November’s elections, called the Hassells “wonderful people” but asserted that “to sell this property at a loss of more than $135,000 should not be considered.”

The town used over $100,000 of its federal American Rescue Plan Act funds in 2023 to build the 37-foot-wide stage on the Times lawn, where the Isle of Wight Arts League and the Times host the Downtown Smithfield Summer Concert Series on Friday evenings. Councilman Randy Pack, at the council’s Sept. 23 committee meetings, had asserted the town was willing to accept 75% of the building’s appraised value due to the proposed contract’s stipulation that the town would reserve a permanent easement and retain the right to schedule activities on the lawn and stage provided it notified the Hassells at least 60 days in advance.

Cutler contended the stage, which the purchaser would be free to use when not reserved by the town, should increase – rather than decrease – the property’s fair-market value.

Jessie Linyear, among the speakers who urged the selling of the building to Stewart, called the Times a “staple” of downtown Smithfield, while Mary Batten, another longtime town resident, called the newspaper a “public monument.”

“Should you decide to sell the property in the future the Times wishes to remain on the site that we have occupied for a century, to pay taxpayers market value for the property, and to continue to be the caretaker of the wonderful, unique, public, community space that John and Anne Edwards created and nourished for four decades,” said Stewart, who was the hearing’s final speaker. “It would be important to me that taxpayers own the stage that was funded with their federal tax dollars and, importantly, private donations from individuals and organizations in this community.”

“Times Square,” he said, referring to the informal decades-old moniker for the front lawn and stage, “is a special place that would always be my top priority as the owner of the adjacent building.”