[Durham INC] Rezonings and broken promises -- will history repeat itself?

[Melissa Rooney]

Just a reminder of the broken promises Durham has been subject to over the years 
-- see News and Observer article (by Andy Curliss) below.

http://blogs.newsobserver.com/iteam/promises-promises

Melissa
 
 
July 23, 2002
 
Durham -- Last year, Ohio developers dangled a promise that helped entice the  
City Council to approve a massive housing development in eastern Durham: They  
pledged to donate 27 acres for a new elementary school.
Rhein Interests got its rezoning but recently backed out of the Village Creek  
project. The school land was not donated. And now, with the new zoning in place,  
other developers are eyeing the 680 acres of hilly land off Sherron Road, where  
they can put 2,700 new houses without any obligation to make room for a  
school.Village Creek is one in a pattern of unfulfilled promises from developers  
who made them while persuading elected officials in Durham to rezone land for  
shopping centers, offices and homes. The developers aren't breaking any laws  
when they fail to follow through on the nonbinding pledges, which often are made  
on the night of a rezoning vote or as a goodwill gesture. 

But elected officials say that unlike other communities in the Triangle,  Durham 
does not always get what it expects from new projects. New neighborhood  schools 
accompany Chapel Hill's Meadowmont and Raleigh's Wakefield, for  example.
"We are learning that these promises made at meetings aren't always tied  down," 
said Ellen Reckhow, a county commissioner who is disappointed the Village  Creek 
school pledge was so soft. "We've got to begin holding these up, just  getting a 
delay, when the developers come down there making all of these  promises like 
that."
Other promises made in Durham include a free-standing job-training  "institute" 
that instead will be housed in an auto dealership, and a shopping  center that 
was supposed to have upscale boutiques but instead will get the  standard stores 
seen at "big-box" locations across the nation.
Twice in recent years, council members thought they were approving rezonings  
that would trigger a long-awaited extension of Garrett Road at a congested spot  
in South Durham.
But both times, council members learned after reviewing tapes of meetings  where 
the promises were made that the Garrett Road project was tied to the date  the 
approved construction was actually occupied. That construction has not  started.
The issue of promises flared earlier this year when The Streets at Southpoint  
mall opened with a projected tax value of $160 million, a figure that will  
generate $900,000 less in property taxes than many originally thought it would.  
When the hotly contested project was debated, its owners repeatedly said the  
project was a $223 million venture.
Asked about the difference, Jim Farrell of Chicago's Urban Retail Properties  
said the larger figure represented the total investment in the mall, not the tax  
value of the property.
Elected officials acknowledged in interviews they must pay better attention  to 
all the pledges they're offered before voting.
"The lesson," council member Thomas Stith said, "is to get things in  writing."
Reckhow, Stith and others are especially concerned about the school site that  
would have accompanied Village Creek. While Raleigh, Chapel Hill and Cary  
already persuaded developers to donate land for schools, it was a first for  
Durham.
But Jack Markham, a Durham attorney for Rhein Interests who handled the  
negotiations about Village Creek, said he didn't feel his client could legally  
commit to giving the school location as part of the rezoning, which he said  
should be focused on the use of land.
The school acreage was promised before the June 2001 rezoning vote, he said.  
But Markham said a written commitment would have constituted "contract zoning,"  
where a condition beyond the use of the land is attached to the rezoning  
decision, which is illegal in North Carolina.
"I do think that whatever happens there, it should include a school," he  said. 
"That's the right thing to do."
The same month Village Creek was approved, Cincinnati developer John Silverman 
asked council members to allow an office, hotel and  shopping complex called 
Renaissance Center across from the new Southpoint  mall.
He said it would have "high-end" and "upscale" shops and would be "unlike  
anything that has happened in this market in the past." The rezoning passed  
8-5.
"It will bring us top-flight, high-quality development," council member Floyd  
McKissick Jr. said on June 18, 2001, just before he punched a favorable  vote.
This month, council members were puzzled as Silverman announced some tenants: 
Linens 'N' Things, a World Market store and a Jared  jewelry store -- standard 
fare at strip shopping centers across the country.
"I was expecting something more upscale," McKissick said. "I was. But you  know, 
there are no guarantees. That's the nature of the beast."
In an interview, Silverman said he had those stores in mind  all along. "It's 
not a Saks or a Tiffany's," he said, "but it's upscale."
Silverman had also gained at least one yes vote for  Renaissance by saying that 
his next venture would be "philanthropic" --an  affordable-housing project in 
central Durham. So far, there's no sign of the  housing plan.
"It's still an idea," Silverman said.
Raleigh Lexus dealer David Johnson had an idea, too. He told council members  he 
wanted to put a job-training "institute" at the center of an auto park he  
wanted at Interstate 40 and N.C. 751 in South Durham.
Drawings showed it as a free-standing building, and several council members  
mentioned its importance just before they approved the auto mall in August  
2001.
Now, the job-training institute is slated to go inside Johnson's Lexus  
dealership. Eventually, it would move into a single room in a proposed hotel at  
the project, said developers who disclosed the changes to council members as  
part of a second rezoning.
"We showed it as a free-standing building on the earlier drawing so we could  
point it out to elected officials," said George Stanziale, a Durham land planner  
and architect who designed the auto mall. "But we've always viewed it as a  
program within the site rather than a facility. It's the programming that is  
important, and that will continue."
Jackie Brown and Steve Bocckino, two members of the city-county planning  
commission who have been critical of development, said it's time for Durham  
officials to wise up.
"It happens all the time, on big things and small things," Brown said. "They  
get in trouble on this all the time. Unless it's committed, I mean stamped on  
the documents, most of the time it's not going to happen."
Bocckino, who heads Durham's zoning advisory panel, said he doesn't think  
anyone checks to see whether all the promises are kept.
"I have become so cynical," Bocckino said. "I used to believe some people.  But 
now, I think it's an incredibly rare person who comes in and actually does  what 
he says he's going to do." 



      
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