Record Editorial Wrong on 7-ELEVEN Lawsuit?

The St. Augustine Record editorial board reckons that the City of St. Augustine would have lost in Circuit Court on 7-Eleven's lawsuit about the denial of zoning for the May & San Marco intersection. The Record has asserted no facts to back up this errant opinion. Having heard the testimony and spoken before PZB, I reckon the Record is wrong (again). Its earlier opinions on the subject were the sequelae of talking to attorney JAMES GEORGE WHITEHOUSE a lawyer with the law firm headed by the son of the former commanding general of the Florida National Guard.  This opinion was rooted in a hireling of DOUGLAS NELSON BURNETT's ST. JOHNS LAW GROUP, counsel for the rich and greedy, including 7-Eleven.  Nothing more, it wold appear.

To shed light on the subject, I have earlier today requested the City provide the transcript of the Shade Meetings on the subject. More later.

Here's the Record's editorial in quo:

Editorial: At San Marco and May Street, a little loss is a big gain
Posted: April 26, 2016 - 11:41pm | Updated: April 27, 2016 - 12:01am

There are a lot of eyes on the May Street/San Marco Avenue intersection these days. Last night the Florida Department of Transportation hosted a community meeting about the future of the intersection.

Earlier in the week the city announced it’s looking into changing the ingress and egress elements of the main branch library and Davenport Park: moving the entrance away from West San Carlos Avenue to U.S. 1. That move certainly seems like it would help traffic flow at the May/San Marco light. But, like most engineering efforts, there could very well be a downside to traffic flow on U.S. 1.

The intersection is also the impetus of an effort by Nelmar Terrace residents to persuade the city to close off side streets to traffic off May Street, because so many motorists are using the neighborhood streets to circumvent the backups at that light.

The city has now signed the contract for the FDOT to purchase almost all of the former 7-Eleven property. In May 2015, the city paid $1.4-plus million for the property. The city was heaped with praise and buried in complaints about the purchase, depending upon residents’ philosophical bent and, more to the point, geographical proximity to that traffic light.

At the time, the city hoped that the land, or part of it, might be bought by the FDOT, but the agency spokesperson told The Record then that it had no plans to purchase any of the land, and no money was allocated in its construction budget to do so.

City Manager John Regan called after we published the comment in an editorial that week and insisted that the spokesperson was missing information above her pay grade. Talks, he said, were underway on some sort of land deal.

Guess he was right. The FDOT has now signed the contract and paid about 1.1 million for the land. The city still owns a small piece of the property on which an older home is located, which it will sell. It may be worth $200,000 tops, when it’s fixed up.

So the bottom line is that the city will be upside down between $200,000 and $300,000 on the deal.

But is it really? No.

First, it never made subsequent sale of the property part of the purchase deal. It was about to lose a court battle with the convenience store giant over its refusal to permit construction. [Ed's note: This opinion is inexplicable.  It once again shows the Record's unadorned opinion on a legal issue, uninformed at best -- if  not prejudiced against the public interest in holding developers accountable -- developers that buy ads. ] 

The only way to keep the property from morphing from a vacant corner with big traffic problems into a 12-pump convenience store/gas station with massive traffic was to buy it.

Regan told us at the time that the city would certainly look at selling to a private buyer, and said there were interested parties. But it’s difficult to see what kind of business could have paid that kind of money and put in a business that didn’t need to drive traffic to the site in order to make it profitable.

We think few buyers would have looked seriously at that piece of land, knowing the potential pushback from the neighbors who battled 7-Eleven tooth and nail. Neither would it seem likely that any serious buyer would consider a site with so many commercial restrictions tied to it. And the city could have, and likely would have, added more in order to protect the entry corridor status of San Marco.

So, taken as a whole, we think the city, the neighbors and the motoring public got lucky with the way things turned out.

The city ends up eating a couple hundred thousand dollars in the deal. But the FDOT’s design options blossomed with the purchase, making much better options available than were being considered with a 7-Eleven mucking up the corner.

All’s well that ends well. That’s what happened here.