It looked like a typo: in the data collected for the Observer’s Home Sales Map, a small house at 206 Miller appeared to have sold in December for $1.2 million. Was the office of longtime local lawyer and sometime judicial candidate Shirley Burgoyne really worth seven figures?
Not by itself, no. But the parcel turned out to include another house around the corner on Ashley and two adjacent vacant lots. The buyer was developer Tom Fitzsimmons, who’s already built four condo projects comprising sixty-six units on nearby blocks.
Fitzsimmons says he’s planning a five-story, nineteen-unit building to wrap around the onetime gas station at Miller and N. Ashley. He couldn’t buy the station, but will still have to clean up after it. “The property is contaminated,” he says. “We can’t redevelop without doing a cleanup.
“We should have plans in to the planning commission by late March … Hopefully we’ll be in the ground by 2019, but that’s highly weather dependent. Putting in foundations this time of year is tricky.”
