Map mixup became Audubon site’s official zoning

Ike McRee, the county attorney for Currituck, has been responding to media inquiries since the potential developers of 13 oceanfront acres now owned by the Audubon Society first applied for permits.

The county’s role in this endeavor begins sometime before 2004, when Currituck converted its zoning maps from paper to a digital database.

When the new digital maps were finished, the oceanfront land owned by Audubon was shown with an LBH — Limited Business Hotel — designation. But the land was supposed to be zoned R-01, or residential.

In a recent interview at the old Currituck courthouse, McRee recounted the county staff’s efforts to determine when the error occurred and how the property became LBH. Ironically, the most likely explanation is that when one of the current opponents of the proposed development on the Audubon tract asked for a zoning change, the line on the paper map in use at that time was accidently drawn too far north and included the Audubon tract.

In and around the year 2000, Turnpike Properties, which operates the Hampton Inn hotel site just south of the disputed tract, applied for a zoning change from R-01 to LBH. It appears one of the county employees who drew the newly rezoned property on the map included Audubon’s land in the new zone. Today, Turnpike has joined the Pine Island Property Owners Association in seeking a reversal of the LBH zoning.

The error went unnoticed and was transferred to the digitalized system in 2004. In 2007, the county government decided to officially adopt the new digital zoning map and published its intentions in the county’s paper of record, The Daily Advance, on Nov. 23 and Dec. 2, 2007.

A hearing at the Board of Commissioners meeting took place on Dec. 3, 2007 to give the public an opportunity to view the maps and address concerns to the board. No one spoke in opposition at the public hearing, and the Board of Commissioners adopted a text amendment designating the digital maps as the official zoning maps for the county. In that process, the original paper map error designating the Audubon tract at LBH became part of the official county zoning maps.

When Turnpike Properties and the Pine Island Property Owners voiced opposition to the planned development on the tract once the new developers unveiled plans for the hotel-retail-condo complex, McRee contacted David Owens at the UNC School of Government, one of the state’s foremost zoning experts. According to McCree, Owens said the 2007 text amendment “cured” the zoning error from 2000 or 2001 and the LBH zoning designation was valid.

The story takes yet another turn at this juncture. In 2006, the property went on the real estate market and was advertised as an LBH tract. But Bob Sprague, president of the Pine Island Property Owner’s Association, has been quoted as saying the homeowners “were blindsided” when a developer later asked for permits to construct the hotel-retail-condo project under the LBH zoning.

In a letter dated May 14, 2010, Chris Canfield, executive director of the North Carolina Chapter of the National Audubon Society, reminded Paul O’Neal, chairman of the Currituck County Board of Commissioners, that the “southern beachfront tract (owned by Audubon) was sold in 2001,” and that prior to the 2006 listing of the now-disputed tract, “we (Audubon) informed our neighbors in the Pine Island Property Owners Association and hoped to work out mutually beneficial arrangements that proved unsuccessful. Next, we publically listed the tract for sale in 2006 and put signs up on the property to that effect. We heard no adverse comments from the public on the proposed sale until recently.”

The lack of reporting on this contact between Audubon and the property owners is one of the many aspects of this controversy that bothers McRee. Sprague said Audubon basically told the property owners association “give us the asking price — take it or leave it.”

A television reporter also asked Sprague if the “county pulled a fast one.” It was not clear if the suggestion was that the county had made the zoning error official as a way to generate more tax revenue, or that the county failed to correct the error to protect a potentially higher revenue source.

“The error might have been accidental, but when it was noticed, why wasn’t it fixed?” Sprague said in an interview with the Voice.

We asked McRee to address both issues. McRee points out that “a county employee would have to anticipate 10 years ago in 2000 that there would be an application coming forward to convert land owned by a non-profit into commercial land that would be taxable.”

As McRee points out, in 2000 Audubon had not indicated any intention to sell the land, either for residential or commercial use, and he scoffs at the idea an employee in the mapping department possessed some motivation to self-create a hotel district on the Audubon land in order for the county to grab property tax dollars 10 years after the fact.

But what about not fixing the error, once discovered? McRee again expressed some frustration.

“As I told other media, the applicant has rights under the law also,” he said.

The error came to light when the developers applied for the permits to construct the project, and by then, not only had Audubon entered into a legal contract with the applicants, but the county zoning maps clearly showed the property as LBH zoned. McRee finds himself walking a tightrope between the rights of Audubon and the developers on one hand, and a zoning error he feels was legally “cured” three years ago, even if the zoning change was unorthodox.

McRee said Owens told him that these types of errors creeping into official maps are more common than one would think and he advises all counties and municipalities to review their maps for errors every year or so.

Part One: Audubon’s benefactor in Corolla wore two hats »

Part Two: Pine Island leads the fight against hotel project »

Part Three: Huge preserve is Audubon’s main focus in Corolla »

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