Burlington’s city council went behind closed doors on Monday to discuss a potential real estate transaction that could pave the way for a new “pocket park” in the city’s downtown business district.
The council ultimately spent about an hour and a half in closed session that evening after an otherwise public “work session” that ran for about 75 minutes.
During this confidential confab, its members conferred with the city attorney about various legal matters, including two federal class action lawsuits that target companies accused of contaminating waterways with a suspected carcinogens known as PFAS. The council has previously opted out of these class actions due to the limits they would’ve imposed on the city’s potential financial settlements.
Also on the closed session agenda were two relatively new lawsuits in Alamance County district court – one that Gretchen Bruesehoff has filed against Kevin Overman and another that Christopher Barrett has lodged against Travis Moore. In each case, the plaintiff has taken legal action against a city staff member over the results of a car accident.
In the meantime, the council held an unrelated discussion about the possible purchase of some vacant land that the Laboratory Corporation of America owns along the 400 block of South Spring Street.
Under North Carolina’s Open Meetings Law, a public body may go into closed session to discuss a proposed property purchase, although it must first disclose the location, owner, and potential public purpose of the real estate under consideration. In this instance, Burlington’s city attorney David Huffman indicated that the city is considering buying LabCorp’s vacant property along Spring Street for the development of a pocket park.
Earlier this year, the council received a recommendation for just such a park from the Burlington Downtown Corporation, a city-sponsored nonprofit whose activities seek to enrich the downtown business district. The council went on to instruct Burlington’s administrators to include $150,000 for this proposed park in the city’s current annual budget.
Before Monday’s closed session, Huffman indicated that city staff members have identified a potential site for this park along the block of South Spring Street that’s nestled between Davis Street and Maple Avenue. According to county property records, LabCorp owns three vacant, commercially-zoned parcels on the west side of this block. These tracts, which have a combined size of roughly a fifth of an acre, are located on either side of a small office that a limited liability corporation called Grupo Silva owns at 441 South Spring Street.
Huffman subsequently informed The Alamance News that city staff members are chiefly interested in just one of the three parcels – a .08-acre strip to the right of the office building with an assessed tax value of $24,776.
The council made no formal announcement about this property when it emerged from closed session shortly before 8:00 p.m. Nor did its members have anything to report on their privileged legal consultation with the city attorney.
