Commissioners Authorize Route 85 Land Sale

by Jonathan Weaver

A nearly-35 acre plot of county owned land along Route 85 was sold to the only bidder.

County Commissioners Pat Fabian, Jason Renshaw and George Skamai heard Buffalo Valley, Ltd. – of Kittanning – issued a $65,000 offer for the land in mid-November, and voted this month to sell it.

Fabian said the Route 85 property is one of many properties commissioners are entertaining offers for.

Skamai also called Buffalo Valley, Ltd’s bid “very generous based on the commercial assessment done on the property.”

“That made it a no-brainer in that sense,” Skamai added.

Company Representative Terry McMaster said Buffalo Valley, Ltd. – a landholding division of Snyder Associated Companies - was pleased with the sale, but said there are no “major” plans for the property at this time.

“But, it adjoins other properties we have in that area so it’s good to have,” McMaster said. “It’s not a real valuable piece of property because it’s in a flood zone.”

Local officials said the property has flooded during county ice jams the past few years.

Scott Walter, owner of Mark T.K. Welding, said the Route 85 company has utilized county property since about 2012, and hopes to continue utilizing space as well.

“We have some ideas – see what the future holds,” Walter said. “It’ll be something to complement Mark T.K. Welding. Right now, we’ve been using the county property to park trucks over there. We’re running out of room on our side, so if we have the ability to move our storage over there, maybe we can do something like that – make a warehouse building or something like that.

“(Commissioners) were nice enough that it cost us nothing – we just had to insure it.”

McMaster said he was willing to work with Walker.

Walker started working at the family-owned business shortly after he graduated from Freeport Area High School in 1972.

In June 2014, Glade Park Gas, L.P. bid $80,000 for the land, but the previous board of commissioners rejected the bid because of uncertainty about gas rights.

No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.