News-Record.com

That's been known for a while. But today I got the official word via a public records request for minutes of the private meetings. The timeline:

* On June 5, the Greensboro City Council instructed City Manager Mitchell Johnson to offer the appraised value, $2.475 million. The asking price was $3.7 million.

* The property owners (stay tuned for an important announcement about that) rejected the offer and made a counter offer, a figure not disclosed in the minutes.

* On June 19, the council voted unanimously to reject the offer. The minutes don't mention a counter-counter offer, so the deal is, for all intents and purposes, dead.

Plans for the ACC Hall of Champions and new offices for the Greesboro Sports Commission and the Greensboro Convention and Visitors Bureau continue, however. Another public records request showed that Coliseum Director Matt Brown wants to make a space inside the coliseum for those features.

And now, this important announcement: The Canada Dry property is owned by Susan Robinson, the wife of News & Record Editor John Robinson, and her brothers, W. Hardy Spence and Royall Spence III. The family, which owned Canada Dry of Greensboro, sold its franchise to distribute soft drinks in 1998 and has since focused on developing the land.