Dear Editor-
I’d like to give you an update on the McCurdy. While I would prefer to stay out of the media, there comes a time when you must speak up for yourself.
After waiting over a year for our HUD deal to get approved, we’ve instead decided to go in a different direction due to the increase in interest rates and cash required to close. Instead, we are pursuing a more traditional financing structure from a couple different lenders. We expect to have that approved here in 60 days. We have partnered with a firm out of Chicago to help facilitate the transaction.
As you saw on the news the other night, the city has squarely placed a target on our back. To put it bluntly, it’s political arm twisting at it’s worst and it is related to the IU Med School.
Two of our buildings were deemed “unsafe” today. This is very interesting timing since three weeks ago we rebuffed the city’s request for us to give them an option on some of our downtown properties for the Med School site they prefer. We said we would like to respond to an RFP as a developer and their realtor said they already have a preferred developer in mind. He stated they will not support us on this project. The mayor corroborated this to us a few days later.
We are also getting grief from Area Plan now over some marketing signs we have throughout the city, and some fence heights for some storage yards. Metropolitan Development and the City Attorney are piling on as well. From our perspective, it is an all out assault on us to willfully give up our property that we’ve been investing in for 10 years downtown.
We are a locally owned family business. Ben and I are products of the EVSC school system and Ball St and Indiana University, respectively. We chose to come back home and try to make a difference in this town. We paid our way through school and started this business quite humbly with a couple of computers and some fresh ideas. We now employ over 100 people and own almost 3 million sq ft of real estate in town. We’ve taken risks and invested our own dollars into areas of the city that were long forgotten.
Entrepreneurship is not always easy. We do not claim to be perfect…far from it. Managing growth has been a challenge at times, but we truly feel the community (and the people that work for us) are better off because of the work we’ve done.
We choose to go home to our families and do not socialize with the select few that have held this city back for decades at the country club. The CCO has spoken extensively on the brain drain and inability to recruit and keep young talent in Evansville. The mayor campaigned on cutting red tape and being
business friendly. Are we not exactly who they should be supporting?
We completely understand the “McCurdy fatigue” the community feels. We absolutely agree. Keep in mind we were not owners of the property until about a year ago. It has taken longer to come to fruition than we have hoped, but we have refurbished 5 vacant structures downtown so I would hope our track record would mean something. The JC Penney building was full or pigeons and peeling paint and sat vacant for 25 years. Dejongs had 6 feet of water in the basement.
Welborn Hospital sat vacant for 7 years, and on and on…These refurbished
properties have dramatically increased the tax base downtown and improved the
overall cityscape.
To be clear, we will take the necessary steps to correct any issues with our property. These issues are by no means major and could have been corrected through an informal phone call (as they have in the past), but the City evidently wanted to put on a show by holding a public meeting and inviting the media. Believe me- No one wants to see the McCurdy succeed more than The Kunkel Group. Owning a vacant building does us no good. With a little more patience, it can and will happen.
All the best,
Adam Kunkel
Vice President
The Kunkel Group
