Jackson Progress-Argus

The Great American Travel Center remains unfinished as the developer and the county have reached an impasse over a grant being used to bring sewer service to the site.

Jackson — Butts County commissioners on Friday gave a developer a five-day deadline to post a bond needed to complete a sewer expansion project.

Ataollah Masoodzadeghan is building a Great American Travel Center at Ga. Highway 16 and Interstate 75. The county and the county’s water authority used the project as leverage to secure two $500,000 grants to extend a sewer line under the interstate to serve the project and others. But one of the grants requires Masoodzadeghan to post a letter of credit or a bond, in the amount of the grant, that would be used to pay back the money should the promise of 55 jobs fall through.

Bill Jones said his firm JP Capital and Insurance has written the bond, but it has not yet been executed. Masoodzadeghan has thus far balked at the prospect of guaranteeing the $500,000, citing an economic climate that makes job creation a difficult prospect.

The developer met with county officials Friday to discuss the status of the project and the bond, which the authority needs in place so it can collect the grant to complete the sewer project.

Masoodzadeghan argued that he has already helped the county win the first grant, and that he was in talks with former county officials to secure a number of development incentives, including tax breaks and contributions to a road project needed to make his lot comply with county development codes. He acknowledged, however, that those concessions were never committed to paper.

Masoodzadeghan was given until Friday to notify the county whether he intended to execute the bond. County Attorney Mike O’Quinn said Butts County officials would pursue other avenues for finishing the sewer project if Masoodzadeghan didn’t supply the bond. The water authority has already threatened, if the developer refuses to post the bond, to revoke an agreement to waive sewer connection fees for the travel center that it said could top $160,000.

“We’re basically giving you five days to do what you said you’d do, or else we’ve got to make other arrangements,” O’Quinn said.

Stipulations in the grant in question, an Employment Incentive Program grant administered by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs, require that the project being served by the infrastructure funded with the grant money create jobs -- in this case 55 jobs mostly for moderate to low-income workers. That promise of new jobs is enforced by the letter of credit or a bond. “We can’t get the grant and we can’t do anything until you supply the letter of credit,” O’Quinn told Masoodzadeghan.

Masoodzadeghan argues that his project isn’t likely in this economy to meet that jobs number. “We thought the economy was going to grow,” he said.

A representative of Three Rivers Regional Commission that is working on the grant project said that a provision of the grant allows the developer to miss the original job target, as long as the project creates 70 percent of the jobs promised.

Masoodzadeghan has also asked that county officials appeal to the Department of Community Affairs to lower the amount of the required bond to reduce his exposure, citing a development in Columbus that was successful with a similar request. He argued that he has already spent $3.5 million to get the project nearly complete. He said that with the sewer project complete, the store could open within a month.

He said he could still choose to put the project on a septic tank and forgo sewer service.

The delay in pulling down the grant money is delaying the completion of the eastern side of the sewer project. Marcie Seleb, general manager of the Butts County, et al. Water & Sewer Authority, said in a meeting Jan. 23 that the authority gave its contractor 90 days beginning in July 2011 to finish, and has still been unable to greenlight the eastern half of the sewer project.

On Jan. 12, the Department of Community Affairs wrote to Butts County Commission Chairman Roger McDaniel to ask for an update on the status of the project by Feb. 10. The letter noted the county had six months from the date of the grant award, April 27, 2011, to meet each of six special conditions, and that to date, only one had been met. The letter did not specify those six special conditions.

“We’ve got to respond to DCA about this grant, and this could impact our ability to get grants in the future,” McDaniel said.