Amador County – The Sutter Creek City Council this week announced it has purchased 3 parcels of the Knight Foundry for $850,000 dollars, and signed a 6-year lease to use the “new” machine shop and tools, on parcels not purchased. City Manager Rob Duke said owner Richard Lyman was worried the city would make a partial purchase of the foundry, get the important parts, and not purchase the rest of the property and items. The agreement requires the city to have the property placed into trust, to prevent the city selling it. The purchase price was $851,087 dollars, while the lease will cost another $25,000 dollars a year. Duke said they did not yet know the source for lease payments. He parcels were quit-claim deeded to the city June 30th, when at 5 p.m. Mayor Pro Tempore Tim Murphy signed the purchase agreement, at the close of business hours on the deadline day to preserve a city clean-up grant, awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency. The grant is for $600,000 dollars. Duke said 2 closed-session discussions at special meetings hammered out the agreement. The city will put $1.9 million dollars in matching funds into the Knight Foundry, part of it to match a California Cultural & Historic Endowment of $871,000 dollars. Purchased lands are: Parcel A, with a tumbling shed, molding shop, machine shop, pattern shop, office and coke shed; Parcel D with a pipe shop, storage building and carriage shed; and creek-side Parcel 3, with a blacksmith shop, brass foundry materials, and a list of personal property fixtures. Those include the main Knight wheel, pulleys, belts, drive shafts, grinders and other working, water-powered machinery from the historic steel foundry, which opened in the late 1800s and operated until the late 1990s. The foundry still operates on water power, run by generators propelled by pressurized water. Duke said the Department of General Services thought the price was too high, and will appraise the Knight Foundry. Duke said the appraiser “will come out and see it’s much more than a property and a metal building in Sutter Creek.” He said the city will be in a good spot to get funding from the Sierra Nevada Conservancy. And CCHE will soon get back $7 million dollars in unspent funding. Duke thought “the CCHE will look very favorably in giving us some more money.” The drawback is that CCHE grants must be matched 50-50 by the city. Story by Jim Reece. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.