PANAMA CITY — John Reeves still is determined to rehabilitate and open a grocery store in Millville.
“I’ve committed everything to get this business up and running,” he said. “I’ve got too much time and effort into this to quit.”
But city officials, who provided some of the renovation money through Community Redevelopment Agency grants, are getting tired at the lack of progress, and may demand the money returned.
“If we put money into a vacant building and it’s still vacant, what have we done?” Commissioner John Kady said.
Reeves freely admits the process to renovate and open a store at 2401 E. Fifth St. has taken longer than he expected. He was turned down by five banks for financing in the earlier stages of the project about two years ago. He said he has committed $100,000 of his own money in the rehabilitation. With grants from the CRA, he replaced the roof, building façade and painting on the outside. Independently, he replaced the floor of the building, redid the signs for each section and painted on the inside.
“Without the investment of the CRA, I would not have started the project,” he said.
When he first started working on the building in 2012, the smell that immediately emanated from opening the front sliding doors was so strong that it caused most people to instantly gag. The first steps in the rehabilitation were gutting the ceiling and the floor and in the process clearing out numerous rats.
He knows the grocery can produce at that location. In the market study he conducted, he said 17,000 cars drive that section of Bus 98 each day. Inside of a mile radius, there are 7,000 people. Inside two miles, it’s 20,000 people. Before the grocery store closed in 2011, he said it had revenue of $90,000 a day. Reeves would employ 14 people to work inside the store and another three to work in the barbecue restaurant on the east side of the business.
Still, he feels he needs about $500,000 to complete the project and stock the shelves. He has already purchased cash registers but nothing on the interior of the store has been installed, the 6,000 square foot space does not even have shelves. Reeves needs to install refrigeration and wiring is needed for compressors. The parking lot needs to be repaved, which he says was part of one of the original grants with the city.
“The inside has looked the same for a year,” Millville CRA program manager Onya Bates said.
Panama City Manager Jeff Brown said the city has waited long enough for the grocery store to open, already granting three extensions — in April 2013, January 2014 and April 2014 — and not enough work has been done.
Mayor Greg Brudnicki offered an ultimatum at the last meeting. Reeves has to prove in a letter in 10 days that some combination of his investing partner, who wishes to remain anonymous, and American Wholesale Grocers, who Reeves plans to use as his distributor and warehouse from their office in Louisiana, will provide $382,000 worth of funding.
Brudnicki then said if Reeves provides anything less than that or misses the deadline, the city will place a lien of $34,655.38 against the property to pay back the Community Redevelopment Agency grants. If Reeves produces the letter, he will get an extension to March 31.
Reeves wants to be a third generation grocery store owner, with his father and grandfather both owning small grocery stores in South Alabama — smaller than the Millville property that pales in comparison to the average Publix store of 45,000 square feet, according to Publix public information officer Dwaine Stevens. He understands the costs are high, maybe as much as $6,000 a month just for electricity, and the margins are small.
“God has laid it on my heart to get into the feeding ministry,” Reeves said.