In a joint session Monday, the Warren County Board of Supervisors and Front Royal Town Council approved a complex real estate sales contract and operating agreement for buying the Avtex Fibers site from its bankruptcy trustee.

The sale would be made subject to approval of a set of detailed environmental conditions and restrictive covenants, officials said.

Under the financing plan, the town and county will pay $60,000 at closing, and give a credit of $1.2 million in county tax liens and $277,908 in town tax liens against the property.

Additionally, $2 million in net proceeds from the development of the land will be paid to FMC Corp.; 3 percent in net proceeds to be paid to the trustee; 10 percent to EDA; and 87 percent to EPA and FMC.

By December, the property is expected to go to closing and be transferred by trustee Anthony Murray to the Front Royal/Warren County Economic Development authority, EDA Director Stephen Heavener told officials.

Monday’s real estate contract and memo of understanding is scheduled to go before a U.S. bankruptcy judge in Reading, Pa., on Nov. 23. Other parties to the contract, which haven’t yet signed it, include bankruptcy trustee Anthony H. Murray Jr.Inc., the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and FMC Corp., a former owner of the site which is doing and paying for most of the cleanup at the Superfund site.

"Under the circumstances we got the best deal we could get," Warren County Attorney Doug Napier said Tuesday. "We negotiated long and hard. Everybody’s made a good faith effort. FMC has committed substantial time and resources to clean up the site. EPA has committed time and this locality has been willing to devote the time and resources to redevelop the property."

The site is expected to be cleaned up in five years, with redevelopment into a mixed-use business park over 15 years, Heavener said. A hotel and conference center, office space, and open green space are part of the plans for the site. Community soccer fields will be developed on the ED Stump Park land adjacent to the site.

The EDA will move its office into Avtex’s office building after it’s remodeled, oversee the site’s phased redevelopment into a mixed-use business park, and handle the leasing of building space, Heavener said.

The U.S. Soccer Federation is currently working with the EDA to design the soccer fields over 25 acres at Stump Park, Heavener told supervisors and councilmen Monday.

The size of the soccer park was reduced from 35 to 25 acres, after 10 acres were found to be the site of a former coal pile. Once it’s cleaned up to environmental standards. The county could acquire it from the EDA for $9,000 an acre within the next eight years, the EDA director said.

Since last week, negotiations resulted in a firm agreement that the purchase price for a 10 acre parking lot area formerly used by Avtex employees on the north side of Kerfoot Avenue, would be $7,000 an acre. An 8-acre tract adjacent to Stump Field was set at $9,000 an acre.

The county and town will have eight years to purchase those sites at those prices.

The town and county also agree in writing to change zoning on the land from I-1 to I-2, to allow a broader range of industrial uses on land east of the railroad tracks and west of Kerfoot Avenue, Napier said. They agreed to allow high-tech and "clean" manufacturing there in addition to standard industrial uses, he said.

The property the EDA will purchase consist of the Avtex, 428 acres; the Allied Chemical/General Chemical property, with 77 acres on the northern boundary of Avtex; and 68.5 acres of open space on the west bank of the South Fork of the Shenandoah River, where a residential community is planned.

Allied Chemical has not yet agreed to any of the town or county’s terms for buying the land and cleanup issues are still up in the air, Napier said.