I was at last night's special meeting of the Middletown Township Committee to hear the introduction of the new Town Hall Municipal Complex. I was interested in hearing how much it will cost us taxpayers.
The township entered into a public /private P3 agreement with a developer called Brandywine Acquisitions & Development . Brandywine will front upwards of $56.7M to build a new 72'000 sqft Municipal Complex. Brandywine will then recoup its investment by leasing the new complex back to the Township for $3.6M a year for 30 years. At the end of the 30 year lease Middletown can buy back the property from Brandywine for $1.
Sounds like a great deal until you try to work out the fuzzy math.
The Township can build a new municipal complex on its own for ~$60M (or less) but appears to prefer to pay Brandywine $108M in lease payments over the life of the 30 year lease just so the town doesn't have to payout any upfront costs. When the documents become available they must be looked at closely to see the structure of the payments. In the meantime, Middletown plans on signing the development deal within the next 10 days.
The Asbury Park Press has an article online this morning concerning the project. It pretty much confirms what I posted last night to my Facebook page.
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