Cornerstone Project has 'Pieces of the Puzzle Coming Together'

Fenton city officials voted to maintain one of the Cornerstone Project’s main players Tuesday as the project inches closer to becoming a reality.

The Fenton Downtown Development Authority (DDA) extended a contract for $3,000 a month to realtor Jerry Mansour for the next three months.

Mansour has been recruiting tenants for the proposed building. He said Tuesday he has tenants for nearly the entire bottom floor. Mansour has letters of intent, along with a deposit from the interested parties.

DDA Chairman Craig Schmidt said Mansour has done an excellent in holding out to clients, since construction was already slated to begin, but has been delayed.

“We had hope to get started at one year, but now it’s been 18 months,” Schmidt said. “We haven’t got a start date yet, but we are getting closer and closer. It’s hard to hang on to those tenants. We can’t build without tenants on the first floor. I think he’s doing an excellent job on something we couldn’t do ourselves.”

Mansour said he hopes to soon turn those letters of intent to actual contracts.

“It’s a really complicated project. It’s taken longer than expected,” Mansour said.  “But every hurdle seems to be coming up positively. While there is still a chance it won’t happen, we seem to have so many pieces of the puzzle coming together.”