By Greg Paeth
NKyTribune Reporter
The Covington City Commission has approved a plan that will help a local real estate developer rehab three well-worn downtown buildings on Fifth Street just east of Madison.
Tony Milburn, who heads the Milburn Group, which has an office on Garrard Street in Covington, and ECCE Properties LLC, whose principals include Covington attorney Todd McMurtry, will purchase the three city-owned properties for $1 apiece in return for their pledge to spend about $700,000 to renovate and restore the three buildings.
After minimal discussion, the city commission approved the plan by a 5-0 vote.
The plan unveiled Tuesday to the city commission calls for the existing law office at 7 E. Fifth Street to be expanded into the building at 11 E. Fifth, which used to be a bar but is now vacant. The immediately adjacent law office is the Risk Firm, which is headed by Carol Risk.
Andy Juengling, Covington zoning specialist and project manager, said Milburn/ECCE plan to spend $322,400 on the on the south side of Fifth.
Across the street and a short distance to the east, the partnership intends to spend $370,000 on the buildings at 18 and 20 E. Fifth. The building at 18 E. Fifth is home to Floyd’s 7-11 Club, a bar that is well established in a high-visibility block for motorists heading east toward Newport. The adjacent building at 20 E. Fifth had been a coin laundry for many years.
And although the signage still identifies the property as the Fifth Street Laundry, the building is now being used as a Covington police substation for the officers who ride bicycles.
Juengling said that the city received three bids on the properties and decided to recommend approval of the Milburn/ECCE proposal after a thorough analysis. Although the investment by the developers is fairly substantial, the project will not prove to be lucrative to the city. After 10 years, the city will have made about $72,000 on the project, Juengling said.
Larisa Sims, assistant city manager for development, said the developers are prepared to begin work immediately and that the project may be completed in six months.
The commission also approved after a unanimous vote an ordinance that permits goats and sheep to be quartered inside the city for the purpose of land management, especially clearing land initially near Goebel Park of invasive plants, weeds and unwanted shrubbery.
Covington resident Gus Wolf, who owns a farm in Carroll County where he grows trees, is one of the leaders of the effort to experiment with goats in the park. He said the goats should be in place in the park in the near future.
They will be penned in by fences that will be moved to provide access to different parts of the park as the goats complete their hunger-induced clean-up work in one section of Goebel.
City commissioner Steve Frank expressed his support for the proposal with a distinctive “Baaaaa.”