CHAMPAIGN – City council members balked Tuesday night at a proposal to spend up to $50,000 on a consultant to come up with a site-development plan for the aging Country Fair Shopping Center.

But council members said they still want to work with the owner of Country Fair to redevelop the 50-year-old shopping center, which has numerous vacant storefronts.

In a related development, Michael Namoff, the owner of This Is It Furniture Discount, 1615 W. Springfield Ave., said he is "two days away" from signing a lease at Country Fair to occupy 21,000 square feet of space where Deals used to be.

And city Planning Director Bruce Knight said talks are "pretty far along" in relocating CVS/Pharmacy from its current location in Country Fair to an outlot near Springfield and Mattis avenues, where the Chase bank building currently stands. Under the plan, that building would be torn down and Chase would build a new bank to the west of its current location.

Council member Ken Pirok summed up council consensus when he said he thought the proposed $50,000 site development plan was something the owner of the shopping center, GMS Management, Inc., of Cleveland, should pay for, not the city.

"A site-specific redevelopment plan, I'm not sure we should pay for a dime of that," Pirok said. "If most of the benefit is for the owner, the owner should pay for it themselves."

City staff indicated that GMS Development had indicated a willingness to pay for half the cost of the study, and has promised to pay for half the cost of a $17,000 market analysis of Country Fair that is already done and was discussed Tuesday. That analysis showed Country Fair remains profitable for its owner, but the area is overbuilt for retail.

Council member Marci Dodds said she decided against funding the $50,000 study once she read in the market analysis that GMS declined to be interviewed.

"Once I saw that, I thought, 'We're done,'" Dodds said.

Based on council direction, Knight said planning staff will now go to GMS Management and try to get a firm commitment to redevelop Country Fair. That may take a "phased development agreement" that spells out exactly what steps the company would take over time.

"Probably the thing that is most clear is that the city council wants to continue the conversation," Knight added.