A.G. Gancarski
The saga of Jerome Brown BBQ, the family business of Jacksonville City Councilwoman Katrina Brown, took a turn for the legalistic Tuesday.
Action News Jax and News4Jax report that the BBQ company’s warehouse on Jacksonville’s Westside was raided Tuesday morning.
The raid appears to be multi-jurisdictional, involving the FBI, the IRS, HUD, the Small Business Administration and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
Councilwoman Brown told us earlier this year that she owns a “very small percentage” of Cowealth, the parent company of Jerome Brown BBQ that faces delinquent property taxes and a drop-dead date of Dec. 31 regarding a city disbursement of $640,000 in loans and grants for job creation that never materialized.
Cowealth is attempting to sell the building; however, despite the $1.5 million asking price for the industrial space in an area of town with a lot of unemployment and a lot of vacant space, a sale even at that price would not satisfy Cowealth’s obligations, which include a primary mortgage of $2.65 million.
A raid of the building with those parties seems to go beyond the company’s failure to come through on an economic development deal, however.
