The Costa Mesa City Council has made a formal proposal to have the city purchase the Orange County Fairgrounds from the state for $96 million.
The Daily Pilot has the scoop.
The offer amount is the minimum price state officials had been seeking from a sale of the fairgrounds to help close the state budget deficit.
Councilman Gary Monahan, Councilwoman Katrina Foley and City Manager Allan Roeder made the offer in Sacramento Wednesday during a visit to the governor's office.
It remains unclear how the cash-strapped city would come up with $96 million for the 150-acre property.
Foley tells the Pilot's Mona Shadia the fairgrounds, under city rule, would be operated by yet-to-be-specified private firms.
The city and county previously put together a bid to buy the fairgrounds in March. A $56.5 million bid from Craig Realty Group, a Newport Beach-based outlet-mall developer, was the highest, however.
The state, which went in expecting $96 million to $180 million, wound up rejecting all bids.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.