Bristol City Manager Randy Eads said Tuesday that he’s tired of playing games with U.S. Magis, the company based in China that owns the blighted and burned-out property that was once Virginia Intermont College.
One day after the city filed a lawsuit July 10 in circuit court to gain control of the 37-acre downtown property — trying to take advantage of a new law Eads successfully sought from the General Assembly — a lawyer for Magis paid off all the current and back taxes owed to the city.
Eads then requested that the court nonsuit the lawsuit, which dismisses the action, he said.
He said U.S. Magis now needs to “be a good citizen and neighbor to the other citizens of Bristol and they need to clean up their site, and they need to bring it into building code compliance and they need to have security up there 24/7 and they need to mow the place on a weekly basis.”
City Treasurer Angel Britt confirmed Monday that the property taxes owed by Magis totaling $605,000 have been paid.
All that’s left is an $18,387 bill from the city for work it’s done on the property, most of it since a December inferno destroyed most of the original buildings on campus. The city paid to have the standing walls demolished, purchased a cover to put over the bricks, which Eads said contain asbestos, and mowed and secured the property.
John Kieffer, the Bristol-based attorney representing U.S. Magis who paid off the taxes on Friday, did not respond to phone and email requests for comment Monday and Tuesday.
The 130-year-old school closed in May 2014 due to its loss of accreditation, declining enrollment and financial woes. In 2016, the property was purchased at auction by U.S. Magis. The company announced it planned to open a business school there and some effort was made toward gaining accreditation, but the school never opened.
Company representatives have said over the years that the project stalled during the pandemic and amid bad relations between China and the U.S.
The property has been in decline for years, with broken windows, high weeds and vegetation growing on the buildings. It had become a haven for the homeless, and the city’s fire chief said earlier that the fire in December was likely started by someone who sought shelter there and started a fire to get warm.
Over the years, the city has had difficulty trying to communicate with what they called an “absentee” owner, and repeated efforts to get the owner to improve and secure the property have been unsuccessful.
Eads and the city council have long sought a solution to the problems with the former college property. The city manager spent several weeks going back and forth to Richmond to work with state lawmakers to get the blighted property bill passed during the most recent session in January and February.
Under the law, the city could petition the circuit court to appoint a special commissioner to convey the property to the city. That would have allowed the city to bypass auctioning off the property to the highest bidder, giving it some control over who bought the campus.
The purchaser also would have had to start work within six months of the sale and bring the buildings into compliance with city code within two years. There are no such requirements for Magis.
Eads and Mayor Becky Nave both said Tuesday that they were surprised when the taxes were finally paid because they had been promised that so many times in the past, but it had never happened.
“It is the worst thing that could have happened, and if anybody thinks it’s a good thing that they paid their taxes, they are mistaken. The city truly needed to get control of this property and get it into the hands of a developer that is going to turn it into a tax-producing property that the citizens can be proud of,” Eads said.
The city manager, who is also the city attorney, said he had planned to file the suit within a day or two of the law taking effect July 1. But he said he was told by Kieffer and another representative of U.S. Magis that the taxes would be paid early last week. When that didn’t happen, the city filed the suit.
Within the next week, Eads said he will send U.S. Magis a letter detailing what is wrong at the site and what needs to be brought into compliance, and letting the company know it has 30 days to provide a plan detailing how it plans to accomplish that.
If that doesn’t happen, the city manager said he will go to the city council with an ordinance that again declares the site blighted.
He added that the $18,387 owed to the city by U.S. Magis is due July 23 and the city will stay on top of that.
“The moment they’re late again on taxes, I’m going to file another complaint to take the property back,” Eads said.
