Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The LaFayette council accepted a bid on the McClendon building from Kim Langley and Steve White. Langley and White own the Mercantile on the Square business and are looking to expand into the building.

“We just kind of need to get some kind of resolution or some kind of direction because if we’re going to move forward with that we’ve got to have eight to 10 weeks to get windows in that building,” Langley said.

The business partners offered the bid over a month ago. They asked the council for their answer at last night’s council meeting.

Council member Tammie Williams suggested they go ahead and accept the original bid, and the other council members agreed. They voted on a resolution to make the McClendon building surplus, voting again to accept the bid after.

The council suggested a timeframe of 60 days to close the sale of the building, allowing adequate time to clear out and scrap the belongings inside. Langley and White said they plan on moving into the downstairs of the building as soon as possible. It will be at least eight weeks until the facade of the building can get windows.

The pair plan on repairing the building in phases. The first phase will be working on the facade and downstairs of the McClendon building, for the use of their Mercantile business. To bring the entire building online, Langley estimated it would cost around $200,000, so phases would make it more manageable.

“We just can’t tackle that… [we will] work towards bringing upstairs up as quick as possible. It’s just each time it rains, it adds more costs to getting that building back up and running because the roof is leaking in a lot of places,” Langley said.

The city originally purchased the McClendon building, located on Alabama Avenue, in 2017 with plans of making it the new city hall. After realizing the cost of making repairs to the building was too high, they decided to sell it. The new site for city hall, formerly a bank across from Renfroe’s grocery store is in the renovation bidding process.