Town Decides to Sell Berry House

The publicly owned but unused Berry House will be back on the market.

The Town of Summerville purchased the home for $700,000 in 2008, and Monday's decision to sell the home came after months of debate on what should be done with the property, which is adjacent to Azalea Park.

Summerville Town Council authorized the sale of the property and for Mayor Bill Collins to begin talks with real estate agents to negotiate listing and price during Monday's finance committee meeting. The vote was 6-0 with Councilman Terry Jenkins absent from the meeting.

Council adjourned into executive session to discuss the property and then came out for the final vote.

"We have decided we are going to sell it," Councilwoman Kima Garten-Schmidt told Patch after the meeting. "We decided this is the best thing to go ahead and cut our losses, sell it and get what we can out of it at this point ... It would have been a great thing if we could have held on to it and made it work."

In July, council had discussed making the Berry House an event venue, but the cost of marketing and fixing up the place in addition to the limitations of holding events in a 19th century building persuaded the council against the venture, Garten-Schmidt said.

"It was a combination of looking to see what the value was today versus how much we paid for it and how much it would cost to do some improvements to get it ready if we were to use it as a venue, plus just the complication of getting someone to market it," she said. "There's not a whole lot of people who would probably use it because of the way it's laid out inside."