The Altoona Redevelopment Authority on Friday tabled action on the potential sale of the former Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on Chestnut Avenue near Juniata Gap Road so the purchase opportunity can be advertised more widely.

The authority had advertised a request for proposals for sale and adaptive reuse of the facility in the Mirror and on the city website, generating just one response — a proposal from Double Tap Range and Armory in Altoona to buy it for $1.5 million, to maintain and enhance its existing firing ranges, to allow continued access for Altoona Police Department training, to create jobs as specified in the RFP and to more fully use the facility’s warehouse and office space through commercial leases.

Before the board voted on the proposal, however, member and city Mayor Matt Pacifico suggested readvertising on a countrywide level, in keeping with wishes previously expressed by the board, to ensure the authority gets the best possible deal.

“Didn’t we want to cast a net nationally,” Pacifico asked rhetorically. “(Here) we cast (only) a 10-mile wide net.”

When board member Ron Beatty said even the local advertisements should have been enough to garner responses from a distance, and that the Double Tap proposal was detailed and complete, Pacifico countered that distant potential buyers would have needed prior knowledge of the opportunity in order to respond.

Community Development Director Eric Luchansky told the board that he checked with a staff superior whether the local advertisement was sufficient, and was told it was.

After a wider search, maybe the Double Tap offer will turn out to be the best, Pacifico said.

“But I will sleep better” after that wider search is made, he said. “I want to see our best case scenario for this property.”

“I agree,” said board member Jessica Sprouse.

ICE ceased operations at the facility in early 2025, relocating those operations to Georgia, then turned the facility back to the city several months later.

The 5.6-acre property has been appraised at $2.3 million, City Manager Christopher McGuire said previously.

ICE Armory Operations began in 2017 at the site.

Those included “the acquisition, testing, issuance and maintenance of all ICE-owned firearms, law enforcement equipment and ammunition,” according to a 2017 news release from the agency.

The site was also used for storage of seized weapons, McGuire said.

The facility had been linked to immigration since July 1994, when ICE predecessor Immigration and Naturalization Service turned it into a weapons repair facility, according to information from Mirror archives.

From 1947 until shortly before INS took it over, the property was the site of a U.S. Naval Reserve Training Center, according to information provided previously by local historian Michael Farrow, who researched archives of the Altoona Tribune, and the Mirror archives.

House rehab wrapping up

The board Friday transferred the title of a property on the 1300 block of 18th Avenue to Clear Creek Co., after learning from company owner Manny Nichols that workers are 95% finished with the house rehabilitation.

The transfer sets to rest Nichols’ worries that his $95,000 investment in the property was at risk if something happened to the house, because without the title he hasn’t been able to get homeowners insurance.

Those concerns triggered a general discussion about whether the authority may need to revise its development process to ensure against putting developers in jeopardy after they invest significant sums, but before they receive the title.

He would be hesitant to enter into such an agreement again with the authority without such protection, Nichols said.

The project has been a learning curve for the authority, said member and City Councilman Ron Beatty, noting it helps the authority to get feedback from developers.

Nichols has not gotten the project finished as fast as he wanted, mainly because of two recent deaths in his family, Nichols said.

“Thank you for your patience,” he told the board. “I’m doing all I can to finish.”

The work should be done in three or four weeks, Nichols said.

He has tried to ensure it will have maximum value by using high-end materials, like three-quarter-inch maple flooring, he said.

Good renovations incentivize neighbors to make their own improvements, Beatty said.

“The dumpsters start showing up,” Beatty said. As do the painters, he added.

Marketing efforts to increase

In response to apparent disappointment that only two contractors showed up for a walk-through on what would seem an attractive redevelopment property, board members resolved informally to step up marketing efforts through a digital media firm, to make use of and expand a pre-qualified developers’ list to complement public advertisement of development opportunities and to ask building supply centers to agree to host promotional signs for the authority’s development program.

That discussion and an observation from Sprouse prompted Beatty to reiterate his call for the hiring of an authority executive director to handle the increasing number of development opportunities being identified, many by the Department of Codes and Inspections working with the Blighted Property Review Committee.

It’s hard to process a dozen or more developments over the year for staffers who have other city responsibilities, Beatty said.

Properties purchased

At Blair County’s annual judicial tax sale of delinquent properties in June, staffers from the authority used its special land bank powers to intervene prior to the public auction to purchase nine properties — one house to be rehabilitated and eight lots on which homes could be built.

The authority paid a total of about $10,370 for those nine properties.

The house is on the 2600 block of Beale Avenue.

Five of the lots are on the 1600 block of 16th Street, while a sixth lot is on the 100 block of East First Avenue and the seventh lot is on the 100 block of Sixth Avenue.

The eighth lot is on the 1400 block of 18th Street, near property being developed with tiny homes by Roberta Hoskie of Connecticut.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.