Alamance County’s administrators were already discussing a proposed “land swap” with a Greensboro-based developing firm nearly two months before they authorized this same company to handle the rezoning of property that the county had originally acquired for a new EMS station on the outskirts of Mebane.
According to emails that The Alamance News has obtained from the county in response to a public records request to the county, a representative from the Koury Corporation had initially contacted a county official on September 12 in order to “document” this potential real estate deal.
This overture paved the way for weeks of additional correspondence that culminated on November 8 when Alamance County’s manager formally authorized the Koury Corporation to serve as the county’s agent in rezoning the 1.67-acre lot that it had acquired along Mebane’s South Third Street in 2023.
This email exchange ultimately undercuts the initial claims of county officials that they were caught off guard when the Koury Corporation unveiled plans for an 83-acre mixed-use development that featured an entrance into its residential component on the county-owned parcel. This project went on to receive zoning approval from Mebane’s city council last Monday, effectively precluding any other use of the county’s property without subsequent changes in zoning.
The county’s administrators had originally professed complete ignorance of the company’s plans for the county’s property when Tom Boney, Jr., the publisher of The Alamance News, confronted them about the ramifications of the city council’s decision on their plans for an EMS station in Mebane. The newspaper’s persistent inquiries eventually prompted the county’s administrators to open up about the proposed land swap, which an attorney for the Koury Corporation had already mentioned last Monday during a public hearing before Mebane’s city council.
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Yet, the extent of the county’s backchannel discussions with the developer, as well as their timing with respect to the county’s zoning authorization, didn’t become clear until the newspaper had a chance to peruse the county’s email correspondence with the Koury Corporation.
The county provided these emails to the newspaper on Wednesday in response to a formal public records request that Boney had made when he sat down with some of the county’s top brass on the previous Tuesday. In this request, the newspaper’s publisher sought access to “all documents and correspondence” pertaining to the county-owned parcel along South Third Street. Boney noted that the newspaper’s inquiry extends to any discussion about a potential “land swap” and specifically asked for any relevant emails and text messages that were bandied between county officials, municipal authorities in Mebane, and representatives of the Koury Corporation.
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In response to this request, Alamance County’s manager Heidi York provided the newspaper with 36 separate documents that, together, comprised more than 100 pages of emails and email attachments. Some of the earliest messages in this trove date back to before the county’s acquisition of the property along South Third Street. These emails include back-and-forth between county staff members as they firmed up the purchase of this land from the nonprofit Alamance County Rescue Unit, which ultimately handed over the title and deed to the property on July 28, 2023 in exchange for $300,000.
Discussions begin in spring
Another string of emails from the following spring chronicles the county’s exchanges with officials in Mebane about the zoning and utilities needed to develop this property. This electronic discourse also contains allusions to the county’s potential interest in an alternate site for the proposed ambulance base. In one particularly noteworthy email on May 22, assistant county manager Brian Baker lays out the county’s site-related considerations to Mebane’s then-assistant city manager Preston Mitchell, who has since been elevated to the city’s top staff-level position on an interim basis.
“We would be satisfied with anything 2 acres or more that has easy access to [NC] 119 between I-40 and Hwy. 70,” Baker informed his equivalent in Mebane. “The area around Smith Drive or Development Center Drive would work if either of you know of anything in that area. We are concerned about being north of Hwy. 70 because of the expected increased calls from the Hawfields area in coming years.”
In addition to Mitchell, Baker sent a copy of this email to the Koury Corporation’s CEO, Richard L. Vanore, Jr., who was simultaneously laying the groundwork for his firm’s own mixed-use development. Previous email exchanges had documented Mitchell’s attempts to schedule a Zoom meeting with both Vanore and Baker – with the teleconference apparently taking place a couple of days before Baker’s email from May 22.
“Land swap” raised in September
A gap of several months follows these emails, although the conversation ramps up again in September when one of Vanore’s subordinates breaks the ice about a prospective “land swap” with the county.
On September 12, Doug Herberle, a vice president and general counsel to the Koury Corporation, contacted Baker about this proposed deal at the apparent behest of his firm’s CEO.
“Richard Vanore asked me to reach out to you to start the process of documenting the land swap agreement for the EMS location,” Herberle reveals in this message. “We are still working on the LOI [letter of intent] and Purchase Agreement for the replacement property, but rather than wait until that process is 100% complete, I’d like to get out ahead of it so that we can be in a good place to finalize the documents once our PSA [purchase and sale agreement] is in place so we can expedite everything.”
Baker wrote Herberle back a day later, and in the course of this email, he matter-of-factly reads in Alamance County’s attorney Rik Stevens on this backchannel discussion.
“Thanks for reaching out,” the assistant county manager begins as he addresses the company’s representative. “I am copying our County Attorney Rik Stevens. Rik, we are considering a property swap for the future EMS station in Mebane. We still have several details to work through, but it won’t hurt to get started on the paperwork.”
Despite Baker’s willingness to get a head start on the paperwork, it isn’t until about six weeks later that the “documentation” of this deal appears to have begun in earnest.
Herberle ultimately “got the ball rolling” on November 4 when he contacted Stevens to let him know that he thinks the “time is right” for “following up” on their previous discussion.
“Mebane’s city manager has informed us that we need to have the exchange agreement accomplished ASAP for the necessary approvals moving forward,” Herbele went on to elaborate. “We have the swap property under an LOI [letter of intent] and the PSA [purchase and sale agreement] and closing could happen soon after. We would like to have the swap agreement in place prior to closing. In fact, it would be ideal for us to have the swap agreement ready for signature upon finalization of the PSA [purchase and sale agreement].”
This message touched off a flurry of emails between Baker, Stevens, and others involved in the deal about a “consent form” to allow the Koury Corporation act as the county’s agent in getting the property on South Third Street rezoned. Conspicuously absent from these exchanges is county manager York, who doesn’t appear to be among the correspondents in any of the emails sent out at this stage in the conversation.
Stevens nevertheless invoked York in an email on November 8 when Baker asks him about the most suitable person to sign the consent form. The county manger went on to ink her signature on this document latter that day, clearing the way for the Koury Corporation to roll the county’s property into its proposed mixed-use development.
County manager alerts county commissioners about newspaper’s inquiry
York eventually had a chance to weigh in on this direction as she and her colleagues scrambled to address Boney’s interrogatories about the county’s ostensibly secret pact with the Koury Corporation.
On the evening of Tuesday, December 3, York emailed the county’s board of commissioners about the publisher’s inquiries regarding the county-owned land on South Third Street.
“The Alamance News is asking questions because the property was recently rezoned by the city of Mebane concurrent with the rezoning for the Koury development that was approved at last night’s city council meeting,” the county manager went on to acknowledge. “Over the past year, Koury has reached out to us to ask if we would consider swapping the S. Third Street property for another property owned by Koury in order to allow Koury to use the property [on South Third Street] as part of their adjacent planned development. We have engaged in some preliminary site review with Koury, but haven’t made any commitments because we want to make sure that our EMS base is built in the best possible location for service to our citizens. As of now, Koury has not offered a particular property to the county and, as you know, the county has not agreed to transfer the S. Third Street property to Koury. We have simply engaged in discussion.
“Earlier in November, Koury asked if the county would consent to allow our property to be included in a rezoning request of the city of Mebane for the other properties in their development,” she added. “As the county would need to rezone the property in order to build an EMS base anyway, we consented to allowing their assistance. Mr. Boney, in conversation with us today, indicated that as a part of its rezoning request, the attorney for Koury implied that the county’s rezoned parcel would be included in Koury’s planned development. We were surprised to hear that this statement was made and will be following up with Koury this week to make sure we are on the same page about this potential land swap, as the county has not made any commitments to that effect.
“Again, we have not made any commitments about the potential use or sale of the property to Koury, but are trying to work to ensure that we have the best site possible for an EMS base that will eventually serve a large portion of the county where we know we need better ambulance coverage. We will bring the matter before the board of commissioners if there is any potential option that is fleshed out for the board to consider. Until then, we appreciate your understanding that all we do is in the public’s interest.”
County’s land “under contract”?
The newspaper had learned last week through additional research that the Koury lawyers told Mebane officials they had the county’s property under contract.
That statement was included in the information packet for last Monday night’s rezoning public hearing: “[Koury Corp.] has one of the nineteen properties” proposed in its rezoning “under contract for purchase, contingent upon approval of the conditional rezoning request.” The county’s EMS property was specifically identified as the property that was “under contract.”
In response to a separate public records request to the city of Mebane about how that description was contained in the city’s summary, city officials promptly provided a copy of two emails from Tuggle-Duggins attorneys (both dated November 12) which included this statement, “We will have the parcel under contract as well this week,” said Nathan Duggins. Another lawyer with the firm (Kaitlyn Jackson) used the same terminology in a separate email sent later that afternoon.
There is no indication in any of the documents provided by county officials to the newspaper this week that there had ever been a discussion (at least in writing) with county officials about the county’s property being “under contract,” about to be under contract, a proposed sale price, or identifying any specific alternative property to be “swapped” for the county-owned property along South Third Street.
However, an attorney for the Koury Corporation specifically identified the corner of NC 119 and Smith Drive, the same area Baker had mentioned in May to Mebane officials as a satisfactory location, as the intended land swap when he addressed Mebane’s city council last Monday night.
However, as of press time Wednesday, there is no indication that Koury actually owns that property yet.
See original story in last week’s (Dec. 5) edition: https://alamancenews.com/investigative-report-county-mgr-gave-koury-corp-authority-to-represent-county-owned-parcel-in-its-rezoning-but-she-says-company-didnt-request-what-county-had-intended/
