The SSC Is Up For Sale!

[Qfwfq]

No, it isn't a joke.

 

C'mon folks, whatcha waitin' for? Ya won't balk at a measly US$ six and a half million, will ya?

 

http://discovermagazine.com/2011/nov/10-selling-cheap-abandoned-half-finished-collider

[JMJones0424]

If only it were that easy. In my opinion, the asking price at a little over $48,000/acre is steep, but I admit I know little about commercial property value in the area. Of course, if one purchased the site in order to build the SSC, the investment would be orders of magnitude more than 6.5 million.

 

Here's a googlemap view of the existing site, notice that it's surrounded by agricultural use land:

http://ludb.clui.org/gmap/?uuid=TX3155

 

Here's a listing of comparable land available in Ellis County:

http://www.landsoftexas.com/texas/land-for-sale/index.cfm?fs=1&sb=1&Searchit=county&county_id=5956

 

Unless there was an issue with zoning, which can usually be corrected due to the tax base you'd be adding to the area, it seems that there are better alternatives in the area.

[Qfwfq]

...a little over $48,000/acre is steep, but...

Er, I thought it included buildings, tunnels and whatever the heck is in them.

[JMJones0424]

From what I gather, it does. Of course, what use is 17 miles of water filled tunnels (unless you're looking at resurrecting the SSC, in which case the purchase price is inconsequential to the amount needed for your project)? The tunnels are a financial liability rather than an asset.

 

As far as I can tell, the buildings, while they have value, have been abandoned for nearly twenty years. The state of Texas abandoned its investment in the project and the attempts to locate industries that could make use of the infrastructure that had already been built. The previous owner seemed to be planning a data center, though it looks like there was never anything actually done to the site. Here's an account of a few people that poked around a bit in 2009.

 

ETA: Here's a wired article on the failed data center project. Wait another few years or a decade and you'll likely be able to purchase the land at a more appropriate market value after it passes through a few more hands and gets written off as a loss.

 

It's a sad monument to the best intentions of scientists meeting the worst ability of bureaucrats to create and follow long-term plans.

Edited January 5, 2012 by JMJones0424

[Qfwfq]

Of course, what use is 17 miles of water filled tunnels (unless you're looking at resurrecting the SSC, in which case the purchase price is inconsequential to the amount needed for your project)? The tunnels are a financial liability rather than an asset.

Well if you can't grow mushrooms in them they could always make an excellent sewer rat farm. I doubt it would be hard to deal with them if there's really no use for them.

Not even storage....?

 

As far as I can tell, the buildings, while they have value, have been abandoned for nearly twenty years. The state of Texas abandoned its investment in the project and the attempts to locate industries that could make use of the infrastructure that had already been built.

I say a building is always worth something, there must be a terrible lack of imagination if not even the township can make good use for it. Over here, I've seen much older buildings being made totally new use of. I vote for a good mix of things, that could liven the area up a bit, cultural & recreational, commercial, storage and productive.

 

C'mon, you know a good deal when you see one! What's six & a 1/2 million nowadays? :lol:

[JMJones0424]

Storage of what? The tunnels are a liability because if anyone falls in through the access shafts, if any trespasser gets hurt, if any of them collapse, if anything weird happens at all, the owner is financially responsible. Unless you have a specific use for the tunnels, purchasing the lot the buildings are on gets you the added hassle of dealing with the tunnels.

 

A building's value is only what it is worth to the owner or prospective buyer. Plenty of buildings are demolished because it is more expensive to repurpose them than it is to start fresh. At some point in the future, these buildings too will meet that point. Outside of office spaces, the rest of the facilities were built for a specific purpose. If a buyer's intentions do not fit easily into the engineering of the existing structures, then the value of the building is low or even negative to that buyer. For the extreme price of the property, one could easily buy land anywhere else in the county and construct a facility designed for your purpose, unless the buyer's particular needs are nearly met by the existing structure.

 

This land is not in city limits. It's not a matter of simply gutting the buildings and repurposing, though it might be if the price were less, or if the existing structures could be economically repurposed to meet the buyer's needs. Neither of those situations have been met yet. Other than sentimental ties, there's no reason to purchase the property unless the price is reduced, or you are one of the few buyers that have a need for the unique infrastructure in place. This is not a matter of lack of imagination. This is a matter of lack of economic interest. 6.5 million buys quite a bit in rural Texas.

[Qfwfq]

Oh I'm not an expert on Texas, never even been there, and I've seen plenty buildings get demolished and sometimes only to rebuild the exact same thing with new material. But I don't think that structure is in need of repair ATM and I see potential in it. Likely those tunnels intersect some of the big arteries of that area so, as soon as the crowds are ready to start flowing in, things can be fixed up for traffic.

 

If you say the price is wrong for the area then tell that realtor, he must be incompetent. Tell him about the RE slump and try to make it 4 on the dot, he might come 'round to you. Surely you can afford it? ;)

[JMJones0424]

Nah, if the property is overvalued, it isn't likely to be the realtor's fault. The realtor's job is to sell the property at the price the seller wants. And even if I could afford it, I wouldn't dream of purchasing the facility at anywhere near a price that they'd sell it for. It would cost more than the purchase price to make the property useful to me. Eventually someone who can use the structures and that vast concrete parking area will purchase it, after they get property tax variances from the county or sales tax breaks from the state and line up the appropriate road improvement commitments to get customers and/or workers in and out of there. At the rate the area is growing, that might even happen in the next decade.

[CraigD]

The main tangible feature I can think of that makes the abandoned SSC warehouse buildings attractive for a data center (J.B.Hunt's big plan for it) is that here must be lots of excess electric capacity there in Waxahachie, as a big accelerator would use more of it than even a big data center.

 

My personal experience with big data centers of late is moving gaggles of hosts from semi-urban southern CA where it's hard to get enough juice to rural northern CA, where there's it isn't. Nobody in my experience has come close to anticipating how much power a DC built in the '90s or early '00s would need ten years later (it's freaking obscene!), so all DCs have had to up their power capacity, which you can only do if your local power co can deliver it to you, ideally without you having to pay for them to build new towers, substations, generator plants, etc.

 

As the Wired article notes, those massive, empty, flooded (though I've read various place that they're flooded -I've never actually seen a photo or official statement, or a mention of to what depth) undergound tunnels are a great heat sink, so a well-designed HVAC system for the DC could be spectacularly efficient, which, on top of not having to build the buildings from scratch, and, I assume, low cost electricity, might give it a competitive cost advantage, though not a very sexy one.

 

An intangible is the coolness factor - being able to tell people "yeah, we host our servers in the rotting corpse of the SSC that Congress killed back in '93!" If it were me, I'd encourage the false impression the servers were actually stretched through 24 km of dry tunnels, and had to be reached via electric golf carts blasting through the stygian darkness ... very cyberpunk. :) That'd compensate, hopefully, for having it in the vicinity of a town that's name translates to "cow dung".

 

If life were like the movies, you could dry out the tunnels and build the mother of all cyberpunky rave clubs in 'em, but with a local population of only about 25,000, and major cultureal nexuses of a small Bible college and an extension campus of a 2-year state college, unless there's a surprise breakthrough in flying cars, high speed rail, or teleportation, that idea's more implausible than returning them to the use for which they were intended - a giant accelerator ring.

[belovelife]

why not have a testbed for lunar living, candidates from all natioins apply online, and experience and or train, in the facility, where translators and food production are powered by solar pannels on the surface, ?

[JMJones0424]

I was watching the news tonight (I get Dallas area news through DirecTV), and there was a story about Magnablend trying to relocate to the SSC site (video of news report) after their chemical processing site in Waxahachie was destroyed by a massive fire on October 3rd.

 

The report included protests by residents near the SSC site and along the access roads to the site, Arrowhead Road and FM 1446. Magnablend would definitely qualify as a buyer that could use the existing structures, as long as the county ignores the concerns of nearby residents

 

The Waxahachie Daily Light reports:

 

[Magnablend CEO Scott] Pendery also stated that he is looking at two other locations, including one in Lancaster and the other one out of Corsicana. He did confirm that the SSC location off of FM 1446 is his number one choice.

 

"At this point we have put a contract on that property, but nothing is firm and we are waiting with due diligence to see how it all shapes up," Pendery said. "As anyone who has ever tried to purchase a house or property knows, there are 100 things that could get in the way, but at this point we feel like this would be a good match for our company."

[Qfwfq]

And even if I could afford it, I wouldn't dream of purchasing the facility at anywhere near a price that they'd sell it for.

Aw, c'mon, be a sport!

 

I agree with Craig about it being a good tourist attraction, along with whatever the new management does with it. But Craig, don't be counting just the one township. Dallas is nearby too (though I haven't figured the exact location of the site, can anybody give us the coordinates for google maps?) and there's plenty folks in the rest of Texas and other states.

 

Let's keep hearing ideas folks... ;)

[CraigD]

But Craig, don't be counting just the one township. Dallas is nearby too (though I haven't figured the exact location of the site, can anybody give us the coordinates for google maps?) and there's plenty folks in the rest of Texas and other states.

Ah, you’re right! Waxahachie (32°23′59″N 96°50′50″W) is only about 51 km (32 miles) from the center of Dallas (32°46′58″N 96°48′14″W), so my super-super rave club could draw on a vast crowd of cybpunky freaks from the 6,000,000 or so greater Dallasians, for whom a 30 mile drive is nothing much! :)

 

I need to lean to always zoom out when looking at a map, as I’d imagined Waxahachie was way out in the middle of nowhere. One of the drawbacks of computer-displayed maps over the old paper ones, where paging to or unfolding the things, then locating your target, forced you to get a sense of what’s nearby.

 

I was watching the news tonight (I get Dallas area news through DirecTV), and there was a story about Magnablend trying to relocate to the SSC site (video of news report) after their chemical processing site in Waxahachie was destroyed by a massive fire on October 3rd.

Damn the timing! The last thing an aspiring super rave club owner needs is to get into a real estate bidding war with a giant chemical manufacturing company.

 

The imagination shudders (while recalling images of the classic 1984 B-movie The Toxic Avenger) to think what uses a giant chemical mfger might dream up for 24 km of concrete lined underground tunnel! :eek2:

[pamela]

you guys are too funny :D

[Qfwfq]

Pity Pyro ain't around, he would fork out the cash on the nail, just to be the proud owner of the SSC. :D I discovered that the link JM gave takes right to the site. It isn't between that town and Dallas but, still, following Farm to Market Rd 1446/Old Buena Vista Rd get's you downtown in a jiffy... or onto one of those big arteries straight to Dallas and, also, it's in the vicinty of a regional airport. There's even a gliderport nearby so it's already a bit of a recreational area!

 

But alas, I just read that all the hi-techy apparatus has long been auctioned off to the highest bidder, so that explains the cheap price compared to what US taxpayers had put in. Rats! Still, we could easily fool ol' Pyro! ;) :hihi:

Edited January 8, 2012 by Qfwfq
slight additions

[Moontanman]

17 miles of tunnels! When I win the lotto i am going to buy that bad boy, talk about a great place for a cave man like me to live....

[pamela]

17 miles of tunnels! When I win the lotto i am going to buy that bad boy, talk about a great place for a cave man like me to live....

oh you're such a Neanderthal ;)