Alamance County’s administrators have yet to consummate a proposed land swap with a Guilford County developer that has been key to both the developer’s plans for a mixed-use subdivision in Mebane and the county’s ambitions for a new EMS station in the eastern part of the county.
The Koury Corporation of Greensboro had originally proposed this land swap in order to obtain a 1.67-acre county-owned parcel for an 83-acre development that it has in the works between Third Street Extension and Trollingwood-Hawfields Road.
The county, which had acquired this land for a new ambulance base, has been approached by the Koury Corporation about selling the property in exchange for an alternate site for an EMS station along NC 119. Yet, the failure, so far, for this alternate site to materialize has left the county clinging to its patch of ground, which is now zoned into the Koury Corporation’s domain.
This state of inertia comes amid an announcement from Target that it intends to purchase land within the Koury Corporation’s development in order to build a new, 128,000-square-foot store.
The discount retailer has inked a 5-part agreement with the Koury Corporation in which it has agreed to pay $1,975,000 for a 10-acre slice of the developer’s 83-acre project. This compact includes a 107-page “operation and easement agreement” that mentions some property next to Target’s 10-acre tract that “is not currently owned by [the] developer, nor is it part of the shopping center” as of the agreement’s effective date on January 30.
The developer’s representatives were apparently already confident that they had the deal with the county locked up when they appeared before Mebane’s city council in early December to obtain the conditional zoning they needed for the mixed use development.
During a public hearing on December 2, Nathan Duggins, an attorney for the Koury Corporation, announced that the county had agreed to sell his client the 1.67-acre lot along South Third Street in exchange for another parcel at the intersection of NC 119 and Smith Road. Duggins added that the county-owned parcel would allow the Koury Corporation to meet a state transportation department requirement for a secondary entrance off of Third Street into the development’s residential component.
The county had originally purchased the Third Street property from the Alamance County Rescue Unit as a prospective site for a new ambulance base. Duggins nevertheless presented a site plan to Mebane’s city council that showed this secondary entrance on the land currently owned by the county.
Based on the attorney’s assurances that his client had the deal with the county locked up, Mebane’s city council approved a conditional rezoning request that included the county’s 1.67-acre lot within the development’s grounds. As a condition of this zoning change, the county’s land is now designated to serve as one of the development’s entrances – which, barring another adjustment in zoning, rules out any other uses, including the county’s proposed EMS station.
The council’s approval of this conditional zoning request caught the county’s administrators a bit flatfooted – as they admitted during the course of multiple interviews with The Alamance News in December. The county has nevertheless forged ahead with its plans for a new ambulance base at the alternate location.
Last month, Brian Baker, one of the county’s assistant managers, alluded to this change of venue when he presented the latest plans for the EMS station when the board of commissioners held its annual budget retreat. Baker acknowledged at the time that county was still waiting for the Koury Corporation to firm up the property’s transfer into the county’s hands.
“I think we’re going to do it,” the assistant county manager added during the retreat on February 17. “We’re just not there yet.”
The prospect of the land swap’s imminent completion doesn’t seem to be borne out by email communications that that The Alamance News obtained from the county earlier this month.
On March 6, the newspaper’s publisher, Tom Boney, Jr., sent the county manager a public records request for all documents and correspondence about the county’s proposed land swap that have accumulated since he first requested these records on December 3 based on Duggins’ remarks to Mebane’s city council.
In response, county manager Heidi York has sent the newspaper a few email threads, several of which concerned Boney’s earlier inquiries, and none more recent than January 30.
In one email dated December 12, York notified other county administrators that John Paisley Jr., the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, was “mad” after reading an article in The Alamance News about the Koury Corporation’s account of the land swap to Mebane’s city council.
One target of Paisley’s ire was the company’s attorney, who the newspaper discovered had informed Mebane city officials that the Koury Corporation had the county’s 1.67-acre lot under contract. According to York, Paisley demanded an apology from the company’s lawyer and asked the county’s administrators for more information about the property which the county is supposedly slated to get.
In response to the chairman’s request, county attorney Rik Stevens confirmed the company’s identification of the parcel to be exchanged with the county.
“The parcel we would potentially swap for is likely to be part of parcel 164904, at the corner of [NC] 119 and Smith Drive,” the county attorney explained in an email on December 12. “It’s also roughly 49 acres, so we wouldn’t be getting all of it, just the corner lot.”
Stevens went on to note that the property currently has a tax value of $756,140 – or more than twice the $300,000 which the county paid for its property along Third Street. Stevens added, however, that the parcel is currently serving as farmland and is being taxed at a “far lower,” “present use” value.
According to the county’s property records, this particular parcel comprises far more than the acreage that Stevens mentioned at the corner of Smith Drive and NC 119. It also extends to a half dozen other, widely dispersed bits and pieces, including a small landlocked lot in the Fieldstone Farms subdivision and another, much larger tract without road access near Lake Latham Road. The property, which currently belongs to the Oak Island-based Clifford M. Ray, Jr. Family Partnership, nevertheless contains a couple of reasonably sized parcels along NC 119. One, as indicated, sits at the corner of Smith Drive, while another farther north engulfs Cambro Drive.
A number of the other documents that York shared with the newspaper recount the efforts of county officials to evaluate this land at the corner of Smith Drive as a potential site for an ambulance base. One email thread chronicles the efforts of Baker and other county officials to arrange a site visit, which apparently took place on January 14. Other, more recent messages concern EMS data about call volumes and the confirmation of a Koury Corporation inquiry that the proposed ambulance base won’t need to house fire engines.
The final piece of correspondence that York sent to The Alamance News concerned a heat map that an EMS staff member had sent out on January 30 to show the locations of emergency medical calls in the eastern part of the county. The county manager’s document cache, which was dispatched to the newspaper on March 13, contains no items more recent than that.
