The former Jacobs Middle School campus at 674 Allard Avenue in Eureka. | File photo.

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Today was supposed to be the day that Eureka City Schools finalized a deal with the shadowy corporation AMG Communities - Jacobs, LLC, to swap the district’s former Jacobs Middle School campus for a small residential property at 3553 I Street in Eureka plus $5.35 million — a “land exchange” agreement valued at $6 million. 

But at a special meeting last night, the district’s Board of Trustees approved a second amendment to the agreement, extending escrow until next month.

“The District is working with our surveyor to finalize the remaining details and plans to submit documents to the City of Eureka sometime next week, with a close of escrow by our next regularly scheduled Board meeting on August 8th,” the district’s executive assistant in the superintendent’s office, Micalyn Harris, told the Outpost in an email.

This represents the third delay in closing the deal following an initial feasibility period that was mutually extended to Feb. 26 and then an amended agreement approved by the board back in April. It has now been nearly seven months since the surprise announcement of the deal at a Dec. 14, 2023, board meeting. 

According to the agenda for last night’s meeting, this second extension is necessary “to allow the Developer to cure certain conditions at 3553 I Street which were raised by the District, and to allow the District to complete the surveying and subdivision process to facilitate the conveyance of the Jacobs site.”

As noted in previous reporting, the interests behind AMG Communities have repeatedly refused to identify themselves except to insist that Security National founder Rob Arkley is not among them.

A website established by the company says it is backed by “a small investment firm that holds interests in real estate and businesses,” though a spokesperson told the North Coast Journal back in January that the company is “a private group of small individual and family investors focused on the single purpose for which it was formed — acquiring the former Jacobs Middle School site.”

While AMG Communities has provided the district with a $100,000 deposit, the text of the agreement says that this money “shall promptly” be returned if the deal doesn’t close by Aug. 9, unless both parties agree in writing to extend escrow yet again. (A $35,000 deposit that AMG put down on the I Street property is non-refundable.)

AMG Communities says on its website that while the 8.6-acre Jacobs property “is large enough to support a mix of housing and some neighborhood-serving commercial uses,” it also acknowledges that no “firm plans” have been developed yet.

The City of Eureka has several multi-story housing projects in various stages of development as part of a years-long plan to convert underused municipal parking lots into affordable apartments. Security National, meanwhile, is financing both a political group (Citizens for a Better Eureka) and a ballot measure (the “Housing for All and Downtown Vitality Initiative”) aimed at stymying those developments and preserving the downtown parking lots.

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