VIDALIA — The City of Vidalia will soon begin the legal advertising required to sell 144 acres of city property to a housing developer.

City Manager Ken Walker said at Tuesday’s aldermen meeting that he had met and spoken with representatives of REI Development and their financiers about their proposed apartment complex near Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

The aldermen had previously approved advertising the sale, but had asked that more information about the project be gathered before it proceed.

The developers want to build three-story apartment buildings with two- and three-bedroom apartments that will have an average 1,100 square feet, Walker said.

The land, which abuts the BASF property, will be sold at its appraised value of $3,960 an acre, Walker said, and the developers will have to buy the entire 144-acre tract.

“This (sale) will be written so that they can only develop a residential development for market price, market-rate (housing),” Walker said.

“If they choose to do anything else with the land, they would have to come back before the board to get our permission.”

The sale is being done with no financial assistance to the developers, Walker said, and the stipulation that they buy all 144 acres is not negotiable.

“We don’t want somebody to come in and purchase the street front first and then not purchase the rest of it,” he said.

The proposed apartments will have a standard construction of brick and wood, and Mayor Hyram Copeland said the designs would have to go before the board before they were built.

The company also has plans to build single-family housing units on the interior of the property after the apartments are built, and the construction will have to meet all city guidelines for streets, curbs, gutters and sidewalks, Walker said.

During the meeting the aldermen also had a public hearing for the third phase of the proposed city park near the new recreation complex. The first two phases included basketball courts, restrooms and showers and a pond and sprayground.

The third phase will include the consideration of a children’s playground, grant coordinator Teresa Dennis said.

“When we started this project, we had to start out with anything and everything we could possibly want in city park,” she said. “Basically, this is just a proposal; depending on the cost of the construction will (determine) how we will budget it out.”

During the hearing, residents suggested a swimming pool, a skate park and a competitive racetrack.

Copeland said the city has not discussed a swimming pool, and Dennis said the sprayground could meet that need.

“(Spraygrounds are) kind of the direction all communities are going in, because there is not as much liability and the kids seem to enjoy it,” she said.

Dennis said she would like to hear input from local children as well.

“I asked an 11-year-old what she would like to see, and she said immediately that we need to have a playground that people with disabilities could have access to,” Dennis said. “I asked a 16-year-old boy what he wanted, and he said he wanted to play wall ball.”

In other news:

-The aldermen voted to pre-file an ordinance that would start a Tree City USA program in Vidalia.

Dennis said the ordinance would define how trees are planted and managed in the city, and that being a Tree City USA city would allow Vidalia access to certain grant funds.

-The aldermen adopted an ordinance regarding water wells.

Attorney Scott McLemore said the ordinance was part of a larger effort by the Department of Environmental Quality, and restricts certain actions — such as the storage of hazardous chemicals — within so many feet of water wells.

-The council heard from a resident who said she felt like she was being harassed by police because her car, a former police vehicle she had bought surplus from the city last year, still had police equipment in it. Police have pulled her over several times because of the equipment, she said.

McLemore told her to come by his office and he would help her get an appointment with a local shop to have the equipment removed.