From Deseret News archives:
'Blind' deal for Billings?
Provo is close to finalizing the sale of 10 acres of city-owned property in the southeast Provo business park to gun-range manufacturer Action Target.
Action Target is expected to pay $110,000 per acre. Provo is listing the rest of the 212 acres it owns in the business park for $120,000 per acre. Action Target is getting the discount and other incentives to jump-start the project.
Billings has a long and strange history with the property.
He once owned more than 160 acres of the land but sold 139 to the city at the below-market price of $3,000 an acre in 1999, when he also donated another 10 acres to Provo rather than fight about ownership with the city he was serving as mayor.
Billings still owns 10.85 acres of land in the park through a blind trust, but the two largest pieces are "landlocked" — no road access is ever likely. They wouldn't fetch a sum similar to what Action Target will pay, said the city employee spearheading development of the business park.
Billings is one of several private property owners who own about 100 acres in the business park. First his brother and then he tried to develop the land years ago.
While he has been mayor, the city has spent millions to build a road and clean portions of the business park contaminated by a former steel mill. Now the city has hired a commercial real estate firm to aggressively market the city-owned property in the park.
Billings has tried to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, he and employees say, and the mayor referred questions about the property to others.
Some City Council members who earlier this month authorized the mayor to complete the Action Target sale were surprised to learn the mayor owns land in the business park. Councilmen George Stewart and Steve Turley thought he had given his final pieces of property to the city or sold all of his interest there.
Billings did deed his final 10.85 acres to New Ironton Properties, a limited liability company owned by him, in April 1998, four months after he began his first term as mayor. The blind trust has complete control over when the land is sold, for how much and to whom, attorney Richard Hill said.
"A blind trust owns the property," Hill said. "The mayor doesn't have any control. He chose to put it in a blind trust so no one could ever criticize him for having a conflict of interest."
