April 5, 2006

Published in Wake Forest, NC

            “We’ve gone to the table [for closing] three times. We’ve had the bank send the money three times,” Adams said during the board’s work session. “We cannot get clear title from our title insurance company. They will give me title insurance for the purchase price but they won’t give me insurance for past that.”

            The problem, he said, is there is the question of what happens four or five years from now, after he has completed the upscale shopping center he plans, when a new town board says “don’t we have some interest in that shopping center out there?”

            Adams asked the board for a resolution stating the town has no financial interest in the property, and the board sentiment was that his lawyers would craft a resolution which would then be scrutinized by the town’s lawyer, Eric Vernon, and be on the agenda for the April 18 regular meeting.

            The property is owned by the Industrial Development Commission, which was established by the town board in 1964 as a separate entity to issue 20-year bonds. Those bonds paid for the land that was once part of the Jenkins farm and built the existing building for Schrader Brothers, the first industry to locate in Wake Forest. (After some mergers, Scovill purchased Schrader-Bellows and in 1985 was itself purchased by Parker-Hannifin. Parker-Hannifin closed its operations in 2002.)

            Schrader and its successors paid off the bonds and paid all taxes. In 1984, the IDC was ready to give the deed to the town, but the commissioners refused because the $1,000 monthly rent “paled in comparison to the amount the town could get from the property taxes,” Town Manager Mark Williams said. The renegotiated lease between the IDC and Schrader was renewable annually for 40 years, with Schrader paying the $1,000 rent, taxes, insurance and maintenance. Parker-Hannifin inherited the lease.

            Between 1984 and 2002, the IDC’s only function was to receive the rent and turn over most of it to the town for economic development. Since 2002, it has been marketing the property through Eaton Commercial Properties. Glenn Boyd, owner of Crossroads and Wakefield Ford, had an option in 2003 but the deal fell through because of disagreements between him and town about street requirements.

            The IDC once had five members, but only two remain: local attorney John Rich and John Wooten Jr., who is retired.

            Once one of town’s top 10 taxpayers, Parker-Hannifin was ranked number 31 in 2005 and paid $23,401.67 to the town, $49,576.87 in combined town and county property taxes.

            Adams is paying $2.9 million for the property on Wake Union Church Road just off Capital Boulevard, and he said he would spend $600,000 to demolish the building. “It cannot be salvaged,” he said. Wake County tax records show an appraised value of $4.3 million for the land and building.

            Parker-Hannifin is spending bigger bucks than Adams. The company has put up an $11-million-plus bond with the state under a brown fields agreement to assure it will carry out its obligations to clean up the trichloroethylene (TCE), an industrial solvent used to clean the machines, which was dumped by Schrader-Bellows in the 1960s and 1970s. Parker-Hannifin has been spending $150,000 or more every year since 1991 in an effort to clean the solvent from the groundwater using a water remediation system. The solvent has migrated north and west, off the plant property.

            One concern of all local parties is to assure the obligation for the clean-up remains with Parker-Hannifin.

            Another is, as Vernon’s fellow attorney, Brady Shield said, to make sure everyone understands the IDC is an independent entity. “The IDC, not the town, owned the site when [here Shield incorrectly said Parker-Hannifin] contaminated the site. The IDC is not acting as the town’s agent,” Shield said.

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            Two other projects are underway along Capital Boulevard this spring south of the Parker-Hannifin site and the bypass. (The latest information is that work on the bypass will be complete in July.)

            Cornerstone Homes of Richmond, Va., has begun grading for the Villas of Wake Forest, 144 luxury condominiums that will sell for $200,000 and up. They are being built between Caveness Farms Apartments and Richland Creek on the east side of Capital. Access will be through Caveness Farms Avenue which will soon be linked to Ligon Mill  Road and thus to the N.C. 98 bypass.

            The 52 acres for the project were purchased last year by CH Construction of Richmond, a sister corporation of Cornerstone Homes, for $3.4 million from KF US-1 LLC, which owns and has developed Caveness Farms Apartments. KF US-1 was formed by David Falk of Raleigh and Bernard Kayden of Harrison, N.Y., and purchased the land for the apartments and villas for $1.6 million in 1994.

            The listed owner in the Wake County tax records is WF Villas LLC.

            Just a bit farther south and still on the east side of the highway, Hughes Baran Partners of Raleigh has begun clearing for the Shoppes at Caveness Farm. The original special use permit for the 45-acre shopping center was approved in 2004 when Realticorp of Charlotte was the petitioner and eventually won approval for the plans.

            Hughes Baran Partners asked for and won approval to have the permit extended to late this year after the group took over the project. The group is made up of Bob Hughes of Raleigh and Jeff Baran of Wake Forest; as Bob Hughes Associates they designed and built the Heritage Station Shopping Center (Harris-Teeter).

            Planning Director Chip Russell said the plans for the shopping center have not changed from what was approved in 2004.