The county released a brief statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe county disagrees with the ruling and intends to file a motion to challenge the verdict,\u201d spokesperson Sonja Dosti said in a statement on Monday. \u201cThe board will discuss and consider options during its closed session in the Aug. 25 meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dosti said the county could not immediately say how much was spent on attorneys fees to defend the case.<\/p>\n
CMG was the buyer of the University Medical Center campus on Kings Canyon Road and Cedar Avenue in a 2019 deal for $4 million. The developer had plans<\/a> to turn the site into a mixed-use development with affordable housing, a pharmacy, a grocery store and other retail.<\/p>\n The deal fell through in 2021 after<\/a> former Supervisor Sal Quintero\u2019s staffer Steve Rapada was accused of a conflict of interest over the agreement. Rapada was later sentenced for a conflict of interest violation.<\/p>\n But CMG\u2019s attorney, Butch Wagner, said the conflict of interest case had no bearing on the court\u2019s judgment.<\/p>\n \u201cThe judge thought that was nonsense,\u201d Wagner said. \u201cDidn\u2019t even allow it as evidence. So that Rapada thing was an excuse, a baseless excuse for the county and the city to back out of the deal, and it cost them a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n Wagner said weeks after the county backed out of the deal with CMG, the county put up the land for sale with a $6 million selling price, which was $2 million more than the contract with CMG.<\/p>\n \u201cThey found that they undervalued the property, and then wanted more money, so that\u2019s why they breached the contract,\u201d Wagner said. \u201cIt was devious.\u201d<\/p>\n The latest on UMC campus plans<\/p>\n The city of Fresno in 2022 entertained buying the property to make it into affordable housing, but the county\u2019s Board of Supervisors ultimately approved a sale in January 2025<\/a> with developer Sevak Khatchadourian. The deal took $700,000 off of the $6 million asking price as a credit in lieu of extensive repairs of flooding and electrical damage caused by copper thieves in December 2023.<\/p>\n The grounds have had a hospital on site for nearly 140 years. A 75-bed hospital was built there in 1889, but was destroyed by fire in 1900 before a new building went up four years later, according to Bee archives. What was originally known as Fresno County General Hospital was renamed Valley Medical Center in 1970.<\/p>\n Fresno County ran the hospital until a 1996 merger transferred the building to Community Hospitals of Central California, and the name was changed to University Medical Center. The facility closed as a hospital in 2007.<\/p>\n Khatchadourian owns a number of buildings in Fresno\u2019s downtown, including the Pacific Southwest Building<\/a> and the Helm Building<\/a>, both on Fulton Street, and the former Radisson Hotel<\/a> on Van Ness Avenue.<\/p>\n Related Stories from Fresno Bee<\/p>\n