BANK ADVERTISING SALE OF 100 BROADWAY BUILDING

In mid-June, Cape Girardeau and NationsBank officials announced they had reached a verbal agreement giving the city a 60-day option to buy the old Boatmen's Bank building at 100 Broadway.

Less than 60 days later, Trammell Crow, a St. Louis-based real estate firm, has taken out classified ads in the Southeast Missourian announcing that the building is for sale.

Don Weiss, the agent at Trammell Crow who placed the ad, said NationsBank requested the ad. "Were asking $350,000 for it," he said.

The city and bank had earlier spoken of a price of about $150,000, said the city manager, Michael Miller.

Asked about the city's possible purchase of the building, Weiss said, "I'm not sure that's not going to happen, but (NationsBank) asked us to run it."

Miller said the deal with the bank is still on. "We're still in contact with the bank," he said. "At this point it looks like we're going to buy it" for about $150,000.

Asked about the ad, Miller said, "I'm not concerned about it."

If the deal goes through, the city could move the Convention and Visitors Bureau there, use the old drive-up windows for accepting payments of city bills, and the vaults for storing city records, said Miller.

The city could realize some income from the building by renting NationsBank space for an Automatic Teller Machine there, Miller said.

NationsBank purchased Boatmen's last year and completed the merger in June.

Miller said the city needed the 60 days to determine whether the building was sound, whether it would work and whether fixing it up would be cost effective. "What we see so far is that's a good building," he said.

No one from NationsBank returned a phone call to comment.

Jim Limbaugh, former regional executive for Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois for Nationsbank, announced the deal in June. He no longer works for the bank.