There has been no dearth of controversy over the 83-acre mixed-use development that the Koury Corporation of Greensboro has proposed on the periphery of Mebane.
But one potential wrinkle in this project didn’t become apparent until the very evening that it obtained approval from Mebane’s city council.
The project’s approval on Monday night followed an extensive presentation from the developer’s representatives about this hybridization of a shopping center, apartment complex, and town-home development that’s slated to go between Third Street Extension and Trollingwood-Hawfields Road.
Particularly noteworthy, however, were remarks that Nathan Duggins, an attorney in the developer’s employ, made about a county-owned parcel that had been incorporated into his client’s plans.
Although a relatively small part of the development’s site, this 1.67-acre tract has enabled the Koury Corporation to meet one of the state transportation department’s demands for the project’s road access. Yet, the lot’s rezoning on Monday may have thrown a wrench in the county’s own plans which envisioned this lot as the home of a future EMS substation.
County officials insisted in interviews with The Alamance News a day and two after Monday night’s city council meeting that they didn’t expect their proposed use, which needed a redesignation for commercial zoning, to be upstaged by the Koury Corporation’s designs, although the county manager had previously authorized Koury to obtain a new zoning designation for this property on the county’s behalf.
The company’s plans included both commercial zoning on the front half of the property, where a retail shopping center, parking lot, potential medical office buildings, and outparcels are to be located. The back portion, closer to South Third Street, was designated for 645 apartments and 38 townhouses. Both portions were presented as part of a single “conditional” rezoning, based on a site-specific layout that was presented to, and ultimately approved by, Mebane’s town council.
[Story continues below graphic illustration of the project.]
Koury attorney presumes transfer of county’s EMS property; raises issue of alternative EMS site
The epicenter of this minor upheaval is a rather unassuming piece of vacant land that the Alamance County Rescue Unit had once owned along Mebane’s Third Street Extension. The county originally acquired the property in July 2023 as a potential site for a much-discussed EMS substation for the eastern part of the county. At the time of this sale, the property had a tax value just north of $100,000. Yet, its enviable location persuaded the county’s board of commissioners to pay $300,000 for the lot – or nearly three times what the county’s tax office had judged it to be worth.
The unexpected hitch – a “misunderstanding” according to county officials, who also characterized it as “putting the cart before the horse” – began during the presentation by Nathan Duggins, one of two attorneys from the Greensboro-based Tuggle-Duggins law firm who represented the Koury Corporation before the city council Monday night.
During his pitch to Mebane’s city council, Duggins said that this same county-owned parcel was now a key piece of his client’s development (he used the term “had owned” to refer to the county’s ownership) that will serve as a second entrance into the project’s residential component from South Third Street. This proposed outlet, had been added to the company’s plans at the behest of the N.C. Department of Transportation, is one of numerous conditions that were attached the rezoning request when it reached Mebane’s city council on Monday.
Duggins acknowledged an error in his slide show that said the Koury Corporation was: “Assisting Alamance County with a new Fire Station location.” Duggins corrected the error verbally, saying it should have read an ‘EMS center,’ which was, in fact, the intended purpose for the land when purchased by the county last year.
Instead, on the layout for the shopping center, the land owned by the county is shown as providing one of two entrances off of South Third Street into the residential portion of the project.
Duggins told the city council, “We’ve identified another property on NC 119 and we’re working with NCDOT to help [the county] build a new EMS station – corner of NC 119 and Smith (Drive).”
Duggins’ claims about the role which the county’s property has in this project surprised Tom Boney, Jr., the publisher of The Alamance News, who was on hand to cover the council meeting in Mebane.
While he did not raise the issue during Mebane’s council meeting, Boney said he knew that the county’s commissioners had taken no action on the property since they authorized its purchase more than a year ago. He was also aware that state law would require the county to go through an open process to dispose of the land, which seemed to rule out any back channel arrangement with a private developer.
Mebane city officials told the publisher that night that the county had signed a form authorizing the Koury Corporation to act on its behalf. During a break in the council meeting, they readily provided a copy of a “Property Owner Authorization,” signed by county manager Heidi York on November 8, 2024, which authorized the Koury Corporation to seek rezoning for the county’s parcel as a part of their overall request, which involved 19 parcels, 18 of which the company already owned.
[See a copy of the authorization York signed HERE.]
Newspaper questions county officials
Boney ultimately took his concerns to York, who met with the publisher Tuesday afternoon. Also present was assistant county manager Brian Baker, who has been directly involved in some of the county’s more recent real estate transactions, while Alamance County’s attorney Rik Stevens joined the conversation by phone.
“I was covering the Mebane city council meeting last night,” Boney explained, “and in the course of things, the lawyer for the Koury Corporation said that one of the parcels for their project is owned by Alamance County…On their map, it’s shown as an entrance into this project…and he said that one of the conditions of this project is that entrance.”
Boney stressed that the conditional zoning which the developer obtained from the council effectively locks down the permitted use of the county’s property to the proposed entrance depicted on the Koury Corporation’s site plan.
“Based on their map and what was said by the lawyer, the county’s property is being incorporated into the residential portion of their project,” the newspaper’s publisher continued. “[The lawyer] goes on to say that they had identified some property on NC 119 to swap with the county.”
County officials initially tight-lipped
Asked about Duggins’ portrayal, the county’s representatives repeatedly stressed that the county’s intention was to obtain commercial zoning for the current land for a future EMS site (it had previously been zoned for residential use only) and did not understand why the Greensboro company had not followed through with the county’s intention.
They were reticent, meanwhile, to discuss with The Alamance News much about the idea of an alternative EMS location or the possibility of a “land swap.”
York readily conceded that she had authorized the Koury Corporation to submit a rezoning request on behalf of the county, although she insisted that this authority only extended to a zoning change consistent with the property’s intended use as an ambulance base.
“It was zoned residential, and we wanted a commercial zoning for an EMS station,” the county manager recalled. “The Kourys said they would submit that rezoning…and we authorized a rezoning for an EMS station.”
York’s assurances on this point were backed up by Stevens, even if not by the document she signed November 8.
“We knew we would need to have it rezoned commercial anyway, so when the Koury folks approached us, we said we would authorize it,” Stevens said.
Baker, likewise, insisted that his own dealings with the various parties involved in this matter had the development of an EMS substation as the ultimate goal of any zoning amendment.
“I had a phone call with the Koury Corporation, and I had a phone call with the city of Mebane that this is what we would need to do to rezone it for an EMS base,” he explained.
Baker was adamant that he never envisioned a scenario where Mebane’s city council would rezone the county’s property in such a way that it could only serve as an entrance in the Koury Corporation’s development.
He was equally emphatic that he never courted any outcome that would undercut the imperative which he and his colleagues received in 2023 when the commissioners agreed to use this property for a new EMS substation.
“We’re aware that we can’t do anything with that property except what we said we were going to do,” the assistant county manager declared. “There is nothing to bring to the board at this point, and if there was it would have to be in open session.”
Boney continued to question whether York’s authorization letter nevertheless posed some serious problems for the county’s position in this case.
This document, which York signed on November 8, includes an attestation stating that she understood the ramifications the developer’s rezoning request would have on the county’s property.
This passage explicitly states that the letter’s signatory “attest[s]” to have “actual knowledge of the zoning map amendment request” and had “read the application including all attachments and/or exhibits.
“The agent I appoint herein is authorized to modify the zoning map amendment request as necessary to obtain approval of the request,” the paragraph goes on to declare, “and that the acts of the agent appointed herein shall be binding upon me and my heirs, successors, and assigns, unless I revoke this authorization in writing.”
When asked Tuesday if the commissioners knew that she had signed a letter ceding authority over the property to a private developer, York was hard-pressed to provide a simple, direct answer.
“We were looking at that as a necessary step in the rezoning we need,” the county manager said, although she later acknowledged that she had confided her arrangement with the Koury Corporation to the board’s chairman John Paisley, Jr.
Duggins’ mention of a potential land swap also forced the county’s representatives to do some fancy rhetorical footwork.
“He’s way ahead of himself,” Baker said of the developer’s lawyer.
“I have not agreed to anything like that,” York concurred.
“That’s new to me,” added Stevens before he rejected the possibility that such a deal could’ve even been struck without the explicit approval of the commissioners.
“That has not happened,” he said Tuesday. “If it had, it would be public. It hasn’t, and so it’s not.”
Stevens subsequently provided The Alamance News with the statutory provision that allows counties to engage in land swaps with other public or private landowners. This statute allows municipal and county governments to barter real estate through “private negotiation” provided it “receives a full and fair consideration in exchange for its property.” The statue also lays out a public procedure for the authorization of this sort of swap:
“Property shall be exchanged only pursuant to a resolution authorizing the exchange adopted at a regular meeting of the council upon 10 days’ public notice. Notice shall be given by publication describing the properties to be exchanged, stating the value of the properties and other consideration changing hands, and announcing the council’s intent to authorize the exchange at its next regular meeting.”
County officials’ denials that such a trade has occurred without any formal approval proved less than convincing to the newspaper’s publisher, who found it hard to accept that Duggins would’ve gone as far out on a limb as the county’s representatives seemed to imply.
“If I understand you, the Koury people are getting ahead of themselves and were not authorized…to make that lot part of the [mixed-use development]…But they’re portraying it like they have the county’s authorization from you,” Boney said to York. “I’ll leave it to you to figure out if you got hoodooed. But in my experience, these are sophisticated but basically honest players.”
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As Boney continued pressing the issue, Baker opened up a bit more about his own conversations with the developer’s agents.
“It’s not a surprise to me that they would like to purchase our property,” he went on to concede. “We’ve had some discussions. But we’re not there; we’re not at a point where we have any agreement.”
The assistant county manager also confessed that he knew the developer had identified an alternate site for the county’s EMS substation. He went on to note that this option has yet to be fleshed out in any real detail.
“If they want to talk about something that would put the county in a better position to build an EMS station, we would be open to that,” he added. “But there is nothing to discuss at this time.”
Yet, in the end, Boney couldn’t shake the suspicion that the county’s representatives were being less than forthcoming.
“I’m reading body language, and my read of that body language is that you’re not telling me the whole story,” he said. “I must tell you that, on the face of it, this has the appearance that you, Heidi, have entered into an agreement with them that you are either going to sell this property to them or trade it.”
York took umbrage at Boney’s insinuation.
“I understand your concern,” she declared, “but we’re not hiding anything.”
“We needed the rezoning, and the commissioners knew about that,” Stevens interjected [from when the property was first purchased in 2023], “but I’m not willing to entertain your position about what you say has happened.”
All three county officials expressed surprise about the newspaperman’s summary description of the preceding night’s meeting that the city council’s action had, instead, included the county’s property in the conditional residential rezoning that had been approved for the 83-acre Koury site.
Commissioners react
Two senior members of the board of county commissioners, however, were somewhat more forthcoming.
Board chairman John Paisley, Jr., who called the newspaper after the reporters met with the three county officials, reiterated that the EMS property had not be rezoned “correctly” by Mebane’s city council.
“[The Koury Corporation] went behind us,” Paisley said, then modifying his description to say, “Well, let me say they didn’t do what we were expecting.”
“We’ve heard of no [alternative] location,” Paisley said. But he added, “If they make it sweet enough, we might be interested [in trading properties].”
Vice-chairman Steve Carter told the newspaper during an interview Wednesday morning that county officials “have been having conversations with the Koury Corporation” about a potential “swap,” although he, too, said he “wasn’t sure about the proposed location.”
Carter emphasized that if the county commissioners didn’t approve an alternative location, “[the Third Street parcel] is [still] our property.”
Carter said he was “surprised that the Koury Corporation had made that kind of error [in its rezoning request] when [a swap] wasn’t nailed down.”
County’s land “under contract”?
The newspaper learned through additional research that the Koury lawyers told Mebane they had the county’s property under contract.
That statement was included in the information packet for the Monday night rezoning: “[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 public records request 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) stating, “We will have the parcel under contract as well this week,” said one from Duggins. Another lawyer with the firm (Kaitlyn Jackson) used the same terminology in a separate email sent later that afternoon.
Wednesday: admission of negotiations to ‘swap’ EMS land for another location
On Wednesday, Baker and Stevens followed up on Tuesday’s meeting, coming to the newspaper’s office (next door to the county office building) to clarify and elaborate on their answers to the newspaper’s original questions.
They also insisted that there had never been a contract to purchase the county’s EMS property.
“We are in negotiations,” Baker conceded this time, “and I would prefer that we not have those negotiations in the paper.” He said that’s why he didn’t want to answer the newspaperman’s questions the day before. [Baker conceded that he had talked both with Koury officials and Mebane city officials since the publisher’s initial Tuesday meeting with county officials.]
“Koury came to us and was interested in acquiring [the county’s EMS lot on South Third Street],” Baker said of the county-owned property that Koury representatives had said was under contract to purchase.
As to a potential “swap” of property, Baker said that the county “didn’t have a strong attachment to the [Third Street] property.” The assessed value for the property that Koury has approached county officials about acquiring is now $66,975, based on Alamance County tax records.
Baker acknowledged that there had been some discussion with Koury representatives about a potential swap of the county property, for a portion of a 48.77-acre parcel located at the northeast corner of Smith Drive and NC 119. The property being discussed for a possible exchange is currently owned by the Clifford M. Ray, Jr. Family Partnership and is designated on the county’s GIS maps as a Future Phase of the North Carolina Industrial Center.
But the assistant county manager stressed that those discussions were very preliminary. He also said the county might end up getting a larger tract of land than it owns on South Third Street once Koury buys the property that it might want to then swap with the county. “The property hasn’t been acquired, it hasn’t been subdivided,” he added.
And Baker stressed that the county was in no particular hurry since “there’s no money, yet, to build a EMS substation.”
From the county’s perspective, Stevens insisted Wednesday that any change in zoning would put the county in a better position than they were before to move forward with a future EMS station.
The goal, said Stevens, has always been trying to find the best possible location to build an EMS station.
Baker, for his part, described the existing site that the county acquired from Alamance County Rescue, Inc. last year as a “less than perfect place for an EMS station.”
Still, Boney pressed Baker and Stevens about why York had signed the authorization for Koury to represent the county in obtaining rezoning for the county-owned property.
“It didn’t put us in a worse position,” Baker said, adding that the county would’ve had to obtain rezoning anyway in order to build an EMS station.
“Except now it’s the wrong rezoning [for the county’s purposes],” the publisher pointed out.
Baker explained another rationale for a potential land swap at a different location, “It’s not ideal to have an EMS [station] next to a big residential presence [such as the new residential portion of the Koury project] because we make a lot of noise.” In the event of a swap, county officials have told Koury representatives that the county would need a minimum of 1.5 acres to build a future EMS station, he said.
“We just said, ‘we’ve got to be in a better position than we are now,’” Baker told the newspaper.
Pressed as to why this hadn’t been discussed with the county commissioners, in an open meeting, Stevens said the negotiations with Koury were still preliminary. “We like bringing them options. You see it taking shape right now, today. We don’t want to bring them” theoretical possibilities.
Baker opined, “It wasn’t a secret. I’m sure some of the commissioners have heard it through the grapevine…I [would like to] bring them a worked-out, finished plan.”
The assistant county manager added that county government officials weren’t actively working to sway the outcome of the rezoning that Koury Corp. needed to proceed with the mixed-use development. “We were agnostic to it,” Baker said. “We wanted to not stand in the way…We encourage development on the interstate, and we are happy to have property values go up.”
Baker and Stevens repeatedly described the county’s apparent role in helping Koury rezone the 1.67-acre site along South Third Street as “a misunderstanding.”
“I had told her [the county manager],” Stevens added, “even if this [rezoning] has been ‘screwed up’, we can get it fixed [with our own request to rezone the property for what we need]…we can make it happen.”
Stevens insisted that – despite the terminology in the authorization form that York had signed, which said the Koury representation of the county would be “binding” – the county would be able to get Mebane to consider another rezoning, if the county chose to, notwithstanding the potential impact on the Koury project.
By the close of business Wednesday, York had not responded to the newspaper’s public records request left with her at the end of Tuesday’s meeting for all documents about all correspondence with commissioners, Mebane officials, Koury Corporation officials, or anyone else about the possible sale or trade of the county’s South Third Street property intended for an EMS station.
Neither attorney Duggins nor Richard Vanore, the president of the Koury Corporation, had returned phone calls seeking their comment about the inclusion of the county’s property in the company’s rezoning request Monday night.
