County Requests City to Pursue Land Swap with Coleman
by David Morgan

Continuing to try to deal with the rather tricky situation resulting from their sale of a 3,153 square foot piece of property adjacent to Pack Square Park to Stewart Coleman, the Buncombe County Commissioners voted unanimously to uphold their resolution requesting the City of Asheville pursue a land exchange with the developer. The property involved sits at the southeast edge of the Park and represents less than one and one-half percent of the Park’s total area of 226,500 square feet.

The resolution came in response to the City’s recent request that the County try to buy back the property that it had sold to Coleman in late 2006. The County once again offered to pay some $540,000 for the land that would be added to the Park as a result of any such swap.

At the urging of City representatives in 2007, Coleman, on July 24, 2007, had provided the City with a rather detailed plan in which this goal could have been accomplished at a cost to him of some $9,250. However, the City spent less than ten minutes discussing the proposal, and the entire matter was dropped.

Tom Israel, vice-president of real estate development for S.B. Coleman Construction gave an extensive presentation of the entire project. A highlight in the presentation was the fact that the available property of S.B. Coleman for the ParkSide building consists of 17,865 square feet and the fact that the footprint designed for the building is only 12,581 square feet and sits back 25’ to 29’ farther south than the current Hayes & Hopson building. As a result, the Park will be given back some 5,281 square feet. In addition, only 1,900 square feet of the land in question will be built upon. The net result is that the Park will be gaining almost 4,000 sq. ft. of space, which is more space than was sold to them at park level.

He reiterated that the building would provide a vast improvement to the current site by adding a number of trees in the front, widening the sidewalk on both Spruce St. and Marjorie St and adding trees on both sidewalks, leaving plenty of room for a road in front of the building that was pre-approved by the City, the County, and the Conservancy in their Development Plan of 2003, and providing Park level retail shops and restaurants.

It was noted by some that the County had offered Coleman $2.8 million for both the land that the County sold him and the Hayes and Hopson tract. However, upon further analysis it appears that this offer consisted of $1million cash and a 1.65 acre piece of land sitting off Merrimon Ave, behind the old post office where the old Armory was located. The $1.8 million value of this piece of land is questionable. In 2005 the piece of property was assessed for tax purposes at $221,000. Two years later, in 2007, it was assessed at $1,725,000, an increase of almost 800%.

A small number of people who normally speak out against the project did so at the meeting. They urged the County to condemn the land and to take it back. However, the Commissioners said they did not intend to pursue that course of action.