Senior center buys Wakulla Trace
Wakulla Trace Apartments.
By WILLIAM SNOWDEN Editor
The Board of Directors of the Wakulla Senior Citizens Center has purchased the Wakulla Trace apartments, and closed on the deal last Friday, according to the board chairman, John Shuff.
“We’re excited about it,” Shuff said. “I’d like to congratulate the board for supporting it and take a chance and see it through.”
Wakulla Trace is a 34-unit subsidized senior housing complex that was built 15 years ago.
The apartments were built with an investment group as a general partner that put up money to get a federally guaranteed loan at a 1% rate and that gave tax credits to investors for 15 years.
Since that agreement lapsed, the board agreed to buy out the limited partnership and have full ownership.
That also means the board takes over a $1 million mortgage.
Shuff said the board spent some $51,000 to buy out the partners.
Two years ago, when R.H. Carter was fired as the executive director of the senior center, board members faced questions about Wakulla Trace and its finances.
It turned out the senior center owned half the complex and the board of directors was also the board for Wakulla Trace – which no one on the board knew.
“It was nothing clandestine,” Shuff said, “just something the former executive director didn’t feel like his ‘fundraising committee’ needed to know.” Members of the old senior center board were treated as a fundraising arm of the center rather than as oversight.
Shuff said the next phase would be to develop the five acres adjoining Wakulla Trace as more senior housing.
Shuff said that the current property manager, Lisa McKnight, would continue in that role.