If you want to get your hands on the old Boy Scout building down at Chapman Park with all its various amenities, you need to take some fast action now. With work set to start on the Chapman Park Community Center later this month, the nearby Boy Scout building needs to go—as in yesterday. The details and deadlines of the free building offer are contained via ad elsewhere in this newspaper. Tell the city administration we sent you. That being said, another momentous action also took place at the last council meeting when the city council approved the sale a of city-owned land parcel on North Broadway to the Halterman family for $32,500 at the Monday September 21 council meeting. A motion to recommend the land sale was made by Kevin Hendrickson and seconded by Holly Kitchell, with a similar motion to approve sale being made during the regular meeting also by Hendrickson and Kitchell. The final sale of the land in question is dependent on some alleyway details and a developer’s agreement. The nearby alleyway was once used by the Stanley Merrill & Phillips (S. M. & P.) Railway and is reportedly still a railroad right-of-way, though now paved and used as an ordinary road. Not everyone was happy with the council’s decision to sell Monday, however, as was made known in a letter after the fact. Among those objecting to the potential details of the sale was Stanley Housing Authority Executive Director Linda Fredrickson, with offices at 124 West Fourth Avenue, Stanley. In a letter addressed to the Mayor and Council members, Fredrickson wrote as follows: “Dear Mayor Haas and City Council Members, We understand that it may be your intention to close a portion of the alley that goes from North Broadway Street to 4th Avenue. While we have no legal recourse to interfere with this plan, we are very concerned about the safety and welfare of the residents of the Stanley Housing Authority.

This thoroughfare is utilized, not only by our tenants and their visitors, but by emergency personnel. First responders and ambulance personnel use this alley to access the north entrance to fourteen apartments in our northernmost building and for approximately five apartments in our northeast building. We are concerned that precious time may be lost with decreased street accessibility, and that may make the difference in life or death in a medical emergency.

Please take our concerns into consideration when making your decision regarding the alley.

Sincerely, Linda Fredrickson, Executive Director” While the majority of the common council seemed on board with the decision to sell coming out of closed session prior to Fredrickson’s letter, second ward alderman Kent Barby made a notable dissent on the basis of what he said was the unknown equalized tax and developer’s value of the property in question—something he said the city had always known beforehand in past land sales.

“I just want to say I voted ‘no’ in committee and the reason I voted no was that we’re going to approve something without knowing the equalized value and the developer’s value,” Barby said. So now that the decision to sell has been made by the city pending some final details, what do the Halterman’s plan to do with their new property?

“We’re going to move our car lot there and we needed customer parking,” family representative and mechanic Chad Halterman said of why the family business was moving its main operations to the North Broadway site when reached for comment. Halterman additionally said that the salvage yard on Fourth Avenue was going to have most but not all of its vehicles removed.

“It’s going to be used for storage and we’re going to get rid of a lot of the cars there,” Halterman said of the salvage yard in business locally since 1947.