Alamance County’s commissioners have formally approved a land swap with a private developer in order to obtain an alternate site for a proposed EMS station in the eastern part of the county.
The board of commissioners voted 4-to-0 for this proposed transaction this week after nearly a year of back-and-forth with the Koury Corporation of Greensboro, which has already broken ground on a mixed-use development around the original location for the new ambulance base along South Third Street in Mebane.
During a regularly-scheduled meeting on Monday, Brian Baker, one of the county’s assistant managers, reminded the commissioners that they had authorized the purchase of that earlier location in order to provide faster EMS service to residents of Mebane and its environs.
“We are in pretty desperate need of an EMS substation in Mebane,” Baker recalled, “The nearest station to Mebane right now is here in downtown Graham, and it’s causing pretty slow response times.”
The county ultimately paid $300,000 to acquire this 1.68-acre parcel from the Alamance County Rescue Unit in the summer of 2023. A year later, this same tract attracted the notice of the Koury Corporation, which was trying to cobble together a site for a venture that would combine retail development with townhomes and rental apartments.
Last fall, the Greensboro-based developer presented the city of Mebane with plans for an 83-acre development whose footprint was to include the county-owned land along Third Street. Mebane’s city council ultimately signed off on the project in December after an attorney for the company assured them that his client had the county’s property under contract and had the county’s permission to rezone it to serve as one of the development’s entrances.
In his remarks to the city council, the Koury Corporation’s lawyer also betrayed the first public admission about a potential land swap between the developer and Alamance County. In the wake of this revelation, county officials insisted that the company’s attorney had jumped the gun when he assumed the county had already agreed to part with its property on Third Street. They nevertheless admitted that they had, indeed, discussed a potential land swap with the developer in the hope that the results would meet the needs of both parties.
In his remarks to the commissioners on Monday, Baker identified the developer’s proposed trade for the county’s Third Street property as a 2.58-acre swath of some 48 acres in undeveloped acreage that lies at the intersection of Smith Drive and NC 119. He went on to add that the Koury Corporation has agreed to purchase this property as an alternative EMS site for the county. In addition, he noted that the company has promised to construct an entrance into the property, install a 50-foot culvert, and do a measure of grading to make it more suitable for the county’s proposed use.
“The advantage of this new site,” Baker continued, “is that it is not next to apartment complexes and a shopping center. It is a little bigger, and I think it gives us a little quicker access out to the road without going through the additional traffic on Third Street.”
In order for the proposed land swap to pass legal muster, the county had to establish that it would obtain its month’s worth from the transaction with the developer.
In a public notice about the prospective land swap, the county’s legal department contrasted the assessed tax value of the Third Street property, which is currently estimated at $66,975, with the $756,140 that the county’s tax office has assigned to the entire 48-acre parcel along NC 119. In his remarks to the commissioners, Baker acknowledged that neither the county nor the Koury Corporation has commissioned a formal appraisal to augment this clumsy juxtaposition of tax values. Even so, he assured the commissioners that he had good reason to think that the proposed trade was an equitable one for everybody concerned.
“We did not do a direct appraisal on these,” he added. “But, we did look at some comps – things that are for sale in the area, and things that have recently sold in the area…I have a whole list of comps here that I could show you. But, I think we have satisfied ourselves that there is a fairly even distribution in value between these two lots.”
In the final analysis, the proposed arrangement seemed prudent enough to commissioner Kelly Allen based largely on the location of the property the county stood to receive.
“I think there’s going to be a whole lot less traffic and a whole lot less chance that somebody isn’t going to see where you’re going,” she observed, “and it’s also very centrally located.”
The lot’s geographic situation also won over commissioner Ed Priola, who happens to reside within Mebane’s municipal limits.
“I like the swap,” he told the rest of the board, “seeing that I live between Tanger and Third Street and the train is enough to wake me up in the morning.”
Priola nevertheless asked Baker for some additional figures to substantiate the presumed value of the two parcels. He also stressed the need for the county to obtain competitive bids for the construction of the new EMS station – which, according to Baker, is expected to cost the county something in the vicinity of $5 million.
Priola went on to join Allen, commissioner Pam Thompson, and Steve Carter, the vice chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, in Monday’s 4-to-0 vote to proceed with the land swap. To this end, the board signed off on a formal resolution that deemed the proposed transaction to be “a full and fair consideration” of the county’s property value.
Absent from this vote, as well as Monday’s meeting, was John Paisley, Jr., the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners.
