An offer from Gwinnett County to buy Simpsonwood, one of the region’s largest undeveloped tracts of land on the Chattahoochee River, has been rejected.
Its owners will vote next week on the property’s fate.
The county made “a fair offer,” District 2 Commissioner Lynette Howard said, but it was not accepted by the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church. Howard said she could not say any more about potential negotiations and several other people with knowledge of potential negotiations declined to comment on the property.
The 227-acre riverfront tract in what is now Peachtree Corners was given to the church by Norcross teacher Ludie Simpson in 1973 with the understanding that it would not be “chopped into smaller parcels or exploited or despoiled.” But the Conference received permission from a Gwinnett County judge earlier this year to sell the property, including to possible developers.
The church is not publicly discussing the offers that have come in. Voting members will not see the offers until they are presented to the entire Conference immediately before an Oct. 25 vote said Sybil Davidson, a spokeswoman for the North Georgia Conference, which represents Methodist churches in the top part of the state. There, the 2,800 voting members will be presented with “the best offer, or offers,” Davidson said.
For the past decade, the church has been losing between $500,000 and $750,000 a year on Simpsonwood and a conference center on the property, Davidson said. The conference center, which will close Nov. 30, has been underutilized, and has been subsidized by the Conference’s 900 churches.
“It isn’t carrying out the mission that was hoped for in the first place,” Davidson said. “It’s an enormous expense. It just can’t go on forever at this rate.”
The expenditure accounts for between 2 percent and 3 percent of the conference’s annual budget, she said.
Matt Reeves, an attorney for the church, said an appraisal showed Simpsonwood’s market value was higher than that of neighboring properties, but he declined to give an exact figure. Scott Hilton, president of the United Peachtree Corners Civic Association, said he was told by the county that the gap between what Gwinnett offered to spend to make Simpsonwood a passive park and what the church hoped to receive for the land was “significant.”
While the county’s offer may not be as high, dollar-wise, as those from developers, Hilton said he hoped church leaders would consider more than the price when making their decision.
“Any time you have that much acreage along the Chattahoochee undeveloped… it really is kind of a jewel,” he said. “We would like to see the public, county offer accepted.”
Commission Chairman Charlotte Nash said she understood the community’s concern for what happens to Simpsonwood, but she would not speak to any efforts the county is making to buy the land.
“It’s a beautiful, special piece of property,” she said.
Davidson said because the voting body is so large, and members do not know the various offers on the property, she has no sense of what might happen to Simpsonwood. She said she expects the meeting to be well attended, and to last several hours.
“It’s been years and years we’ve been researching, praying,” she said. “It’s been weighing on the church for a long time.”
The membership could vote not to sell, she said. But leaders recognize they have to be good stewards of the church’s money.
“We are hopeful for the future of this community and this property we’ve loved,” Davidson said. “It is a very big decision. …I do know when we’re done that day, we’ll have an answer.”
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