City Council Approves Purchase of Experian Building

By: Lance Schwartz - Email

Updated: Tue 8:22 AM, Oct 26, 2010

The Lincoln City Council votes to approve the purchase of the Experian building in northwest Lincoln.

Despite seeking bids for a building with 23,000 square feet, the city council makes the move on a building offering 355,000 square feet.

The Council heard compelling arguments for and against the purchase. But in the end, the Council decided it was just too good of a deal to pass up.

The Council voted 5 to 1 to approve the purchase. The lone no vote coming from Adam Hornung who had a very big problem with the way the RFP process was handled, "This doesn't look anything like our normal RFP process. This is a complete disregard of it. I mean asking for 23,000 and getting 350,000, that's just a complete disregard of the integrity of the process. I don't understand why people are so excited about doing that."

John Spatz also had a problem with the process but in the end voted in favor of buying the building, "That's one of the things that's disappointing to me because I think if we had followed the RFP process I don't there's any question that this would have been the building that would have come out of it."

And that building, says Jayne Snyder is a perfect building for Lincoln, now and in the future, "That building is special. I've been in property development for almost 40 years now and I will tell you that there's not another building in the city of Lincoln that is the quality of that building. You could eat your lunch off the garage floor."

Doug Emery is satisfied that the building will pay for itself over the long haul, "Despite what one of the people said tonight, we're not going to pay for this raising taxes we're going to pay for this with the proceeds from rents with the rent that we're going to get from Experian."

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