Mayor Buddy Dyer and Commissioner Jim Gray spoke out in favor of a vote, citing months of controversy since it first got into the lap of the council last summer. Beth Norrow, an attorney for Greenberg Traurig who represents the bank, said there was an interested buyer in the property, but a deal couldn’t be made without clarity about what essentially the backyard of the house is.
“Mr. Mateer … is unwilling to negotiate with my client,” Norrow said. “It’s not that this has sat with nothing in eight months.” Jeff Aaron, who previously notified the Orlando Sentinel that Norrow, who ignored an offer on the property, said her version of the events was “extremely entertaining to me” and advocated the commission to join Mateer building there. Norrow claims that Mateer’s $ 300,000 cash offer went far below what they expect from buyers.
With the vote in the council, Mateer will be able to build a 2,400-square-foot home on the smaller lot he could sell. The fenced-in portion of the property could eventually be sold to the bank or a future owner, or Mateer could keep it and potentially reach an agreement with the bank on demolition costs.
The neighbors have argued that the decision means Mateer will have no incentive to solve the fence problem, so the house owned by the bank will deteriorate and no one will live in it. “I would think if you want to build and live in a house next to this decay, it will deteriorate [home]You would have an incentive to fix this problem, ”Dyer said.
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