The EDC has been named the designated buyer of about 1,750 remaining acres at the former Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant.

The EDC submitted a proposal to buy the land in hopes of developing it into an intermodal transportation center and an industrial park with a foreign trade zone.

Ferguson calls it an opportunity of a lifetime but one that has a cost.

The 1994 act of Congress that gave the Hall County Board of Supervisors the unique legal authority to pick buyers for the once 20-square-mile plant land, has one strict caveat. All land sold must be sold at fair market value.

It's not a give-away, Army officials reminded the county board. The county designated the EDC as the buyer on Jan. 22 and gave the EDC 75 days to reach a purchase price agreement and pay earnest money.

"We have an idea of cost," Ferguson said after receiving the buyer designation.

But he's not saying how much.

Based on valuation records from the Hall County assessor, irrigated land in the vicinity has a value range of $1,270 to $2,242 per acre. If the Army charged the top value of $2,242 an acre on all the EDC's property, it would cost $3.9 million to buy.

But not all the EDC land is irrigated.

"It's predominantly dryland," said Mary Wellensiek of CAAP's operation support command.

Hall County Assessor Jan Pelland said the dryland in the area has a range of value from $539 per acre to $1,141. Grassland on other CAAP property has a current value of $429 to $1,026.

No current values exist on the EDC's designated property because the land has not yet been surveyed and has not been recently sold. It has been under government ownership since the ammunition plant was constructed in 1942.

Pelland said the sale will dictate the value on each of the eight subclasses of irrigated, dryland and grassland at the plant site.

Besides the land itself, much of the EDC's designated property is currently under lease a revenue stream that the Army's land negotiation consultant, Dale Lamke, is sure to factor in.

Also to be factored in is the cost of preparing the land for use, said Al Kam, the Army Corps Environmental project manager.

Kam told members of the Hall County Reuse Committee on Jan. 7 that there may be remnants of Load Line foundations that a buyer will negotiate as a cost to remove, thus reducing the purchase price.

The land earmarked to the EDC comprises Load Lines 2, 3 and 4 and the land between the load lines. All the property lies immediately north of Old Potash Highway in what was the direct center of the plant.

In determining a possible purchase price, the valuation for tax purposes may not be indicative of "fair market value."

During the first public auction of CAAP property in September 1999, a 161-acre parcel of irrigated cropland went for $451,080 or $2,800 per acre.

All of the irrigated cropland in the 1999 auction went for a per-acre price between $2,300 and $2,950. Dryland went for $600 per acre.

A total of 1,400 acres were auctioned off in 1999. Another 1,600 acres were auctioned in September 2000.

The largest public auction of CAAP land was held in November 2001, when 3,000 acres were sold. Accepted bids were at a range of $850 to about $2,300 per acre. Tom Baxter of Big B Inc. bought the majority of the land that year. He also bought land during the 2000 auction.

A much smaller auction was held in March 2004. The big buyer at that auction was Bonnie Bilderback-Vess, president of Heritage Disposal and Storage. She paid $951,683 for 389.4 acres. That was a $2,443 per-acre price.

In April 2002, Farm Progress Shows of Carol Stream, Ill., paid $1.9 million for the 960-acre Husker Harvest Days farm show site. Farm Progress was a designated buyer and paid $2,050 an acre to the Army for the land.

Less than three months after it bought the land, Farm Progress listed the land for sale. It asked $2.3 million or nearly $3,200 an acre for it. The land was sold to Rohwer Family Limited Partnership of Omaha on Aug. 20, 2002, for $2,729 an acre.

But the Husker Harvest land was the prime ag land.

While Ferguson wouldn't say what per-acre price he's estimating to pay, he did say he hopes it is below $3,000 an acre.

The EDC is planning to pay for the land using cash on hand it has from recent land sales at the Platte Valley Industrial Park, plus hopes to use the equity in the land and its lease revenue to obtain a loan for the purchase price.

Ferguson said although he's a little nervous about the pending negotiations with the Army and securing all the financing, he's confident about the land's potential to create jobs and add to the tax base in Grand Island and Hall County.

"Absolutely," it's worth going after, Ferguson said. "It's a premier (industrial) site."