Just in time for Black Friday, here's a deep-discounted deal on a prime slice of North Dallas real estate.

It's along Forest Lane just east of the Dallas North Tollway, on the outskirts of the Melshire Estates neighborhood where Oncor planned to clear-cut half a mile's worth of trees until, late last week, residents stopped the chop. The Korean Young Nak Presbyterian Church used to sit here, but it was reincarnated in Plano a few back, after excavators were sicced on the house of worship and its remains chucked in a landfill. Bonus: This empty parcel sits halfway between Liberty Burger and Torchy's Tacos — and it's 2 miles from Valley View Center!

Anyone hoping to build a mini-mart or townhomes or apartments here is out of luck. This 150,702-square-foot slice of cracked concrete patched with brown grass is zoned single-family residential, and the neighbors will never let it be anything else — buyer, beware. But it could be a steal: According to the Dallas City Council's voting agenda for next week's meeting, the land could go for around $1.8 million at auction, which is about $800,000 less than the current owner paid.

And by current owner, I mean the city of Dallas. You and you and you and me, suckers all.

The land is the supposed-to-be site of the new Preston Royal library, a replacement for the small, aging branch on Royal Lane near the tollway. Land acquisition for that library and four other branches was part of the whopping $1.35-billion bond package sold to voters way back in '06, the year Tony Romo took over as the Cowboys' starting quarterback and Nickelback was popular enough to have three Top 100 songs.

The City Council will decide next week whether to sell this land — deemed "unwanted and unneeded" — at auction. That vote's outcome should be as inevitable as it is obvious: The city absolutely must try to wring as much from this land as possible.

City Hall's been squatting on this abused, disused tract for almost a decade. And it could be another 10 years or more before we can even begin talking about doing something there with bond money. Right now, there's none for it.

All in, the city sank more than $3.2 million into the Forest Lane site, according to a December 2015 briefing: $2.6 million for acquisition; around $360,000 for a design; $76,610 to demo the church; and about $100,000 for testing the land and keeping it clean since. All for a building that's never coming, because there was never any bond money to actually build it or others for which land was bought.

1 / 3This was supposed to be the new Preston Royal library branch. But it's not.(Robert Wilonsky / Staff) 2 / 3This was supposed to be built on Forest Lane. But it won't. 3 / 3A vacant lot owned by the city of Dallas at the intersection of Forest Lane and Nuestra Drive in Dallas. Wanna buy it?(Vernon Bryant / Staff Photographer)

The Dallas Central Appraisal District says it doesn't appraise city-owned land because it doesn't generate tax revenue, so why bother? Last time DCAD put a dollar amount on the land was in 2012, when it was valued at just over $1.8 million. The city has set a secret reserve — a dollar amount it won't take less than. But we'll probably lose money on the deal.

Assistant City Manager Joey Zapata, who oversees libraries, said whatever revenue the city gets from the building's sale will go toward renovating the existing Preston Royal site. "Having some amount of money," will be better than none at all for the area's residents, he said.

"How long have they waited for something better?" he said.

What that something will be is unclear. No plan exists yet, just some ideas libraries director Jo Giudice has been contemplating while awaiting the day City Hall finally and inevitably threw in the towel. She said she's disappointed that she won't be able to deliver the new library residents asked for and voters approved.

"But it's the best thing right now," she said. "And this is what the community wants. They're behind it, so I'm behind it."

Some council members, like North Dallas' Lee Kleinman, would like to see City Hall clear the shelves of its empty and little-used land. Because there's plenty.

A nice chunk sits along Marsh Lane near Forest meant for the Park Forest replacement, for which there's also no construction money. That property cost around $800,000 — $1.2 million when you add in a wasted design and other costs. And the city owns a big piece of property off West 10th Street at North Bishop Avenue, which is proposed site of the new North Oak Cliff branch — another good idea going nowhere. That land was a bargain at half a million bucks, twice that once you factor in demo and design.

And while we're on the subject of bad buys, there's that 3.721-acre scratch of weeds along the west side of Stemmons Freeway between Mockingbird Lane and Commonwealth Drive. City Hall bought that land 10 years ago this month for the Trinity River toll road. Even tore down an old Howard Johnson's and paid the residents to get.

It cost us about, oh, $5 million, give or take. And now it's sitting there, like all the other empty library lots — a waste of money that's now costing us a small fortune to maintain.

I'd sell it all, but Assistant City Manager Majed Al-Ghafry has his own ideas. He said the Forest Lane property is "unique" in that it can only be used for single-family homes. But the other properties could one day be mixed-use developments, he said, maybe done as public-private partnerships.

1 / 3The city spent $1.2 million for a Park Forest branch library replacement that ain't happening.(Brian Elledge / Staff Photographer) 2 / 3This is another lovely piece of North Dallas owned by the city — at Forest and Marsh lanes.(Brian Elledge / Staff Photographer) 3 / 3The city hopes maybe it can find a partner to develop something of the mixed-use flavor near Marsh and Forest lanes.(Brian Elledge / Staff Photographer)

"I've told my boss this, and if council asks me the same question, I would say the same thing," Al-Ghafry said. "I would try not to sell any more properties."

"Disappointed" is the word you hear a lot whenever you talk to anyone at the city about all of this vacant land, the blank spaces caused by City Hall that blight neighborhoods and waste taxpayer money. Disappointed we bought the land when we did. Disappointed we didn't do anything with it. Disappointed we're having to sell it.

"It's just a lot of empty land we don't have a plan for," said council member Jennifer Staubach Gates, who long ago promised those northwest Dallas residents their new Preston Royal library. "It's representative of poor city planning of the past, and it's frustrating I won't deliver something promised to the neighborhood. The sensible thing is to accept there was a poor decision made."

One of many.