Neillsville City Council Approves Bid for former Christie Property
Saturday, February 16th, 2019 -- 8:25 AM
The Neillsville City Council approved a bid for the former Christie Property in downtown Neillsville.The council had been fighting with the former owners of the property for some time to clean it up. The city now owns the property, which needs an extensive amount of work, and they want to make sure that the new owner will do something with it and not let it sit and rot and fill it with junk like the previous owners had. The council approved a bid of $500 from Jeff and Maxine Kluckhohn.
The Kluckhohns also provided a timeline of what they hope to repair over the next three years. This year, they plan to repair/replace the existing roof, start work on the exterior front façade and start work on the removal of damaged interior walls, surfaces, flooring, etc. In 2020, they will start refurbishing the interior of the first and second floors and complete work on the exterior maintenance of the building. Finally, they plan to complete the project in 2021. They would like to turn the first floor into commercial space and the second floor into rentable residential space.
Finally, the council approved creating a Reserve Firefighter Program for the Neillsville Fire Department. This idea came about because some Neillsville Firefighters have retired or will be soon, but they’re not ready to walk away from the department completely. This program would allow them to help out the current firefighters. For instance, if they’re paged to a call and the department has been on scene for a few hours and there’s another hours’ worth of work left, like cleaning hoses, etc., these reserve firefighters could do that job. There was a concern regarding insurance, so it was decided they would be paid a maintenance rate, around $10, and they would be covered by insurance.
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