Player in parking assets suing city

A rejected bidder for the Charlottesville Parking Center’s assets is filing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the city, the latest development in an ongoing saga on whether the city will attempt to purchase CPC’s shares.

Spencer Connerat, formerly of Collective Resources Corp. and a CPC stockholder, said the suit is an attempt to force the city to specify if and when it inked a confidentiality agreement with the CPC. Such an agreement would be needed to allow the city to bid on CPC’s assets.

Connerat claimed city officials did not disclose the agreement’s date, and have not responded to his requests to get the information. The action was sent to the city’s General District Court last week.

There has been much speculation about forthcoming bids as the city has eyed multiple CPC parking sites downtown — including a 125-space surface parking lot, the land under the Water Street parking garage and 284 spaces in the garage — despite that the bidding deadline expired July 1 after already being extended three months.

The Charlottesville government owns the adjacent Water Street surface lot where the City Market is held.

Connerat said Aubrey V. Watts, Charlottesville’s director of economic development, told him July 18 — the same day “the ante was upped to $17.5 million,” he said — that the city had signed the aforementioned agreement.

Watts said he did not have any additional information on whether the city would make a bid. As of Tuesday morning, he was unaware that Connerat had filed a suit.

Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris said he also did not have anything new to report, and that there are continuing discussions among city staff over the potential CPC deal.

The city has held a long-time interest in the Water Street properties. Last year the Charlottesville Community Design Center held a design competition for possible uses for the two lots, costing the city $160,000. Additionally, to examine whether the properties would be a good investment, last August the city government commissioned a $200,000 study by the law firm Williams Mullen.

A July 10 Daily Progress story noted that city officials had not crafted a proposal but were still interested in purchasing the lots, despite the expired deadline. James R. Berry, president and chief executive officer of the Charlottesville Parking Center, said at the time he did not think the center planned to extend the deadline again, but it would be a board decision. Calls to Berry for comment were not immediately returned.

However, Connerat said that if a confidentiality agreement was signed before the extended July 1 deadline, then city officials had acted toward making a bid. If inked after the passed deadline, Connerat said board meeting minutes should show that the deadline was extended.

Now, Connerat said, “The question now is whether it has properly been filed,” referring to the suit.

The Charlottesville General District Court’s clerk’s office said the lawsuit had been received, however not necessarily at the right court. Until a judge examines it and decides where the suit goes — which will occur Thursday at the earliest — it is not considered filed.

Connerat said the lawsuit would be dropped if CPC repurchases his shares. He was one of at least two bidders for the company’s properties before it upped the price tag July 18, now demanding at least $17.5 million. Connerat proposed $16.2 million, while Richard T. Spurzem, a local real estate investor and CPC shareholder, offered to purchase the 405,000 outstanding shares of CPC stock for $9.3 million.

Northern Virginia investors attempted to purchase the surface lot in 2006 to build condos, but the deal fell through.

CPC was formed in 1959 by a group of business owners who wanted to expand parking in downtown Charlottesville. The first time the company paid a dividend was in January, for 50 cents per share, since it kept its earnings in reserve and reinvested profits into the business.