Jake Palillo at the Sept. 19 PDRC meeting | Photo by Jason Benavides

Sept. 23. By Dave Yochum. Developer Jake Palillo is pulling up anchor at the BoatYard site in Cornelius and moving on. Plans for a $10 million automotive services complex on the acre site were met with opposition from the Pre-Development Review Committee as well as community members who attended the PDRC meeting this past Thursday.

Suggestions that an Optimist Hall-like facility with multiple food booths and entertainment possibilities are not viable, he said.

“The problem is we don’t have enough population to support a place like Optimist Hall,” Palillo said, explaining that some restaurants in Cornelius are struggling.

BoatYard | Photo by Jason Benavides

BoatYard is an indoor-outdoor live music venue with a large following but it is among the few remaining in Cornelius.

Those who attended meeting of the PDRC—an informal advisory board—said too many music venues had closed in the past.

“The reason all those [other] music venues closed was lack of business,” Palillo said, suggesting that a larger population and more apartments and condos would support various retail enterprises.

“The Town needs to allow developers—that want to come into the town and invest money—some rights,” he said in an email.

A bird in the hand

What he’s saying is a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. His proposed automotive services complex with a convenience store and gas pumps, a car wash, multiple detailing options and an oil/lube facility was a sure means of redeveloping the property which has been for sale for some time.

Palillo predicted that an alternative proposal won’t come forward anytime soon even though Atrium is nearing completion on a new hospital just to the south of the intersection of Hwy. 21 and Westmoreland. No one is beating a path to adjoining development parcels at the 100-acre Atrium assemblage, he said.

Quotable

The Sept. 19 PDRC meeting / Photo by Jason Benavides

“The hospital is not a mega project that is going to change the area and make that a huge employment center. The hospital can’t even get anyone to take the land and develop it. Office is dead, retail dead. Who’s coming to Cornelius and why would you? People looking for office space want to be downtown and south end where the young population workforce is. They just don’t understand that,” Palillo said.

Palillo said he had the BoatYard property under contract in excess of $3 million.

But that ship has sailed.

“I’m terminating the purchase contract and moving on with one of my other sites,” he said.