February 24, 2011 Millennium Project Bid Postponed To April 5, 2011

Bidding on the Downtown Millennium Project has been postponed to April 5, 2011.

Click here, here, and here, for background on the many conflicts within this project.

This all started with awards to the City of $1,200,000 of federal grant money for historic preservation and well as improvement and development of the Morristown College site.  Click here.

Four and one-half years later, historic preservation and improvements to Morristown College were left behind.

The City transferred the entire $1,200,000 of federal grant money to the Millennium Partners for improvements to their Main Street property--including "approximately" 22 rooftop parking spaces (atop the private retail shells below) that make the project eligible for grant funds since the City is going to consider this as parking for a "greenways trailhead."  

The lease for the parking deck allows the City, if it desires, to designate two of the parking spaces for  "greenway purposes" and two for handicapped parking. The remaining 18 or so spaces are just standard downtown public parking.

The Millennium Partners include the City auditors (Hiram Jones, son Tom Jones, daughter Mira Craine, and son-in-law James Craine) as J&C Partners; Morristown businessmen/contractors (David Wild and Tim Wild) as D&T Partners; and Dr. Sid Boyd. Businessman Bill Young may still be a partner. 

This is not the first time that the City has transferred grant funds to the Millennium Partners. 

When the first Millennium building was built downtown about 9-10 years ago, the City amended a 1988 UDAG (Urban Development Action Grant) grant in order to give the Millennium group $105,816 of unused funds from that grant. 

[The first Millennium building contains the offices of the City's auditors Craine, Thompson & Jones; of Wild Building Contractors, Inc.; and of Community National Bank).]