Property owner says county not being honest

Carla Urff told Historic City News Editor Michael Gold outside this morning’s County Commission meeting that she heard Chairman Ken Bryan and Commissioner Mark Miner say “St. Johns County is open for business” — she says that is not the truth.

Urff, and her husband Bruce, own just over 1.5 acres of vacant commercial land located at 1925 CR-210 West; at the intersection of Sampson Way.

According to Clerk records, they purchased the vacant parcel as an investment from Edgar W. McCurry Jr, G. Frank McKeown and Carol A. McKeown on January 21, 1997 for $90,000; giving the sellers a mortgage for $73,000 of the purchase price.

Fourteen years later, the Urff’s want to sell or develop the commercial lot but can’t; despite the fact that they have received contract offers in the millions of dollars for the property.

According to Urff, the County says they have not met “transportation concurrency requirements” needed to pull construction permits themselves, or, to satisfy conditions of sales contracts the Urff’s have received since putting the property on the market.

“Nobody will buy our property,” Urff told Historic City News. “They can’t build on it until the County approves concurrency — and it doesn’t look like they are willing to.”

Urff made her impassioned plea to the commissioners this morning for help — she says that she has received no response from the county attorney, staff or the commissioners since she delivered a letter to the County on August 11, 2011.

In that letter, a copy of which was obtained by Historic City News, the Urff’s point out that the land is already properly zoned for commercial uses, no amendment to the comprehensive plan is required, nor is there a need for rezoning.

Urff’s say that they paid a traffic engineer to submit a report in support of their request to build a 4,000 s.f. drive through restaurant on the site. The request was denied because officials said the road is overcapacity based on their traffic counts. The land owner’s say they have been presented offers for everything from food service to commercial offices, several in excess of $1 million dollars but construction can not start due to the concurrency issue.

The Urff’s live and operate a business in Jacksonville. This morning they told Historic City News that they have struggled to make mortgage payments on the property and have always paid the property taxes. When they invested in the vacant lot in 1997, the property taxes were $991.72 each year. They doubled to $3,260.32 each year in 2005, then, doubled again to $6,443.21 in 2009. When they paid the property tax in May of this year, the bill was $7,006.19.

“This vacant lot has never had an impact on county services in the 14 years that we have owned it,” Urff said. “If we had a home or business on the land, we would have kids in the school, require police and fire protection, garbage collection, water and sewer — we need none of that stuff because it is a vacant lot.”

In August, Urff told commissioners and she repeated this morning that the only way to achieve the concurrency needed to obtain permits was to apply for a “proportionate share” agreement.

The owners said they paid the planning department $7,880 as an application fee. They claim they were told that their “proportionate share” would be $270,715.

The Urff’s have pointed to the recently enacted “Community Planning Act” that can safely be described as the most sweeping change to the state’s planning law since the creation of the modern Growth Management Act in the mid-1980’s.

The statute requires local governments enforcing roadway concurrency in the future to permit an applicant to pay a “proportionate share” contribution in the event that capacity is not available to serve a project.

However, applicants are expressly not obligated to pay for existing deficiencies. Roadways that are below capacity before a new development is factored cannot be part of the proportionate share calculation.

The legislation makes wholesale changes to the requirements imposed on local governments and the scope of state review of local planning decisions.

Among many aspects of growth management covered in the Community Planning Act include:

– Concurrency for roads, schools, and parks is optional.
– Roadway concurrency programs must allow a proportionate share mitigation program to overcome a lack of capacity.

The Community Planning Act makes it optional for local governments to apply concurrency regulations to roadways, parks, and schools. The law does not mandate the dismantling of these systems, but no longer makes the imposition of concurrency a state mandate.

Carla Urff says that there are dozens of out-of-work people who will gain much needed employment by building on their lot.

The Urff’s have hired the law firm of Quintairos, Prieto, Wood and Boyer, PA, to represent them. They were originally advised by Isabelle Lopez at the firm; Lopez has since been hired as the Assistant City Attorney for the City of St. Augustine. They are now represented by attorney Michael Barker at the firm.

“Our attorney wrote a letter to the County Attorney on July 18th asking him to comply with the new law or to officially tell them why the County would not give them concurrency,” Urff told the commissioners as she tried to conclude her remarks within the three minutes she was allowed to speak.

“Ms. Lopez called Mr. McCormack’s office on August 5th and again on August 8th; leaving messages with his secretary and on his voicemail,” Urff said. “We still have not received any responses from the county commissioners or the county attorney.”

Urff’s calculations are that she and her husband have paid St. Johns County $1,800 in concurrency application fees and $7,880 in additional fees — “that’s $9,680 just in application fees”. She went on to say that they have spent roughly $25,000 in attorney fees and that they have lost sales on approximately ten solid purchase contracts because the County wants to fight.

Unless the Urff family is made whole, they say that they will sue to protect their investment in the property, some $30,000 in property taxes paid, application fees pressing $10,000, as well as what they see as their right to build on their vacant commercial lot.

“Does that sound like a County who is trying to attract businesses and jobs to you?” she asked rhetorically.

Photo credits: © 2011 Historic City News staff photographer