GERMANTOWN, Tenn. — The Shelby County Clerk’s Office is closing its Germantown branch at 2037 Exeter Road after the office’s lease expired before it could move to a new location.
Shelby County Clerk Wanda Halbert said the office had planned on moving, but not this soon. Five employees will move to other locations. The branch processes vehicle registrations and titling.
Halbert said a new leasing contract for the Exeter Road space was never signed. She said she didn’t find out until she called the property manager last week.
“We called the property manager because we cannot find the contract, and that’s when we discovered last week that there was a scheduled closure,” Halbert said.
Halbert said it is the county mayor’s job to secure contracts.
“Every contract that has to be signed, it has to go to the mayor’s office,” Halbert said. “Sounds like this caught everybody off guard. Sounds like there was some miscommunication somewhere between this office and support services.”
WREG has called the mayor’s office for a response on what happened with the contract, but we haven’t heard back.
The clerk’s office is working on renovating a building at Hacks Cross and Winchester, Halbert said, but no date has been set for that to open.
A representative for DNA Property Management said the office’s lease on the space was set to expire Jan. 31, and the company had been told the clerk’s office was looking for a new space.
But because of considerations due to COVID-19, that lease was extended several times — to April, then August and finally an extra two weeks until Sept. 11. In all, the property manager said, the clerk’s office received extensions to stay in the space an extra seven and a half months after the lease expired.
In the meantime, other potential tenants expressed an interest in the space, and the landlord secured a new tenant.
“We are absolutely making sure that we straighten up our administrative services,” Halbert said, “but if there is ever a problem that occurs under the elected official, myself or Mayor Harris, those problems should be brought to our immediate attention. That wasn’t done.”
