It's apparently back to square one when it comes to the sale of the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa.
The state seemed to be close to a sale to the city, which lined up a private management company to operate the 150-acre property.
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But Eric Lamoureux, a spokesman with California's General Services Department, said today the agency decided to put the land up for bid again because it's unclear whether legislation to approve the Costa Mesa deal will be approved by next week.
So, for the second time, the fairgrounds are for sale, with a minimum bid of $96 million.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last summer included fairgrounds as state-owned assets he would like to sell to raise much needed cash for the cash-strapped state.
That set off a flurry of rumors, accusations and ultimately bids for the Costa Mesa fairgrounds, the first in California to have gotten this close to being sold.
But the first round of offers failed to meet the state's minimum $96 million bid. So those bids were rejected.
Costa Mesa then offered to come up with the $96 million and have Facilities Management West run it for the next 55 years.
As we reported yesterday, a meeting on the future of the fairgrounds is scheduled tonight at Costa Mesa City Hall.
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.