THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 24, 1996 TAG: 9603240041
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM HOLDEN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 169 lines
It would be easy to overlook the property that Margaret E. Johnson has called home for 45 years. Hidden behind trees and overgrown bushes, Johnson's home Hugs the curb on First Colonial Road like some forlorn outpost of a bygone era.
Windows are broken. The soffits hang down, unpainted and leaking water from eaves that need repair. The living room has no wallboard or insulation; there are simply studs and exposed wires. The place, filled with boxes and discarded effects, looks abandoned.
But in the back, in a corner of the rundown home, Johnson lived a quiet life until the city came calling two years ago, asking to buy her land for the planned relocation of Linkhorn Park Elementary School.
In the battles that have followed, Johnson has gone through two attorneys, three property appraisals, received a $1 million check from the city, and is now planning to send her attorney back into court on June 11 to claim that the property is worth still more.
In dispute is whether there are wetlands on Johnson's 6.5-acre property. If there are, the property would fall under the protection of Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act, which could limit its development and value.
If there are no wetlands, as her attorney claims, then the appraised value of her land could increase by $800,000 - an amount the school district would have to pay but could ill afford during its severe budget crisis.
If the Circuit Court agrees that wetlands prevent developing parts of the land, then the amount the city paid for her property - and an adjoining parcel - will stand as the down payment for a new $12 million, 750-student elementary school the district hopes to open in the fall of 1998.
To Johnson, the battle represents an intrusion into a secluded life by an uncaring, overly ambitious city government that recklessly promised to move an elementary school without having a place in advance to build one.
``It was my house,'' Johnson said. ``It was my world. It was so convenient to everything. Like me, it's run down and it needs some repairs. It really does look abandoned, but I was living in it, in a little place out back.''
To her lawyer, R. Edward Bourdon Jr., it is a case of a city exercising ``its most important power outside the criminal justice system: the power to take someone's land.''
To the School Board, it is a difficult decision, but one that is, above all, fair to Johnson and to the community.
``The city has been fair to her,'' said Elizabeth E. Fox, a senior city attorney. ``We hired an independent outside appraiser who looked at her property and appraised it not under its current zoning but at the highest and best use of her land.''
In the meantime, Johnson is packing her belongings and moving into a new $380,000 home in Chesapeake's Greenbrier section that she will share with her daughter. She has until the end of this month to leave.
The struggle dates to 1993 when the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission was considering closing or paring back military bases nationwide. A potential target was Oceana Naval Air Station, with its 11,000 workers and $392 million payroll.
Worried that Seatack and Linkhorn Park elementary schools were too close to Oceana and at risk if a jet crashed, the commission asked the city to move them as part of a complex deal to keep Oceana open.
Mayor Meyera E. Oberndorf, who served on a 24-member civic task force to save the base, promised the schools would be relocated. The commitment set in motion a frantic search for two sites in some of the most congested areas of Virginia Beach.
The city is still negotiating with the state for land near Camp Pendleton for Seatack Elementary. But the search for Linkhorn Park's new site has proven far more nettlesome.
On July 28, 1994, a school site selection committee settled on the Johnson property and an adjoining parcel owned by the Potter family, a group of businessmen whose Hilltop shopping centers are among the city's most successful. On Aug. 2, the board voted to acquire the properties through negotiation or condemnation.
By Sept. 15, the city's real estate office offered Johnson $260,000. Based on the land's ``highest and best use,'' the appraisal assumed the property would be converted into homes. But if the land, along the commercial district of First Colonial road, was used for commercial development, its value would increase substantially.
Johnson argued that her property was worth far more.
By December, the city unexpectedly agreed and increased its offer to $1 million based on a new appraisal. Through her attorney, state Sen. Ken Stolle, Johnson told the city she wanted her own appraisal and refused to accept the money.
On Jan. 17, 1995, the School Board declared a public necessity to acquire the Johnson land and, by March 3, placed a $1 million check in custody of the court. Not long afterward, Stolle excused himself from the case.
Negotiations with the Potter family hit a similar snag. At first the city offered $800,000, and only after a second appraisal did the city and the family settle on $2.8 million for the 9.68-acre parcel next to Johnson's.
Fox said the Potter appraisal went up for the same reason Johnson's did.
``We have exactly the same appraiser,'' Fox said. ``The value assigned to her land is exactly the same as to the Potter land, and the Potters accepted,'' she added. ``They're pretty savvy businessmen. They pretty much set the land value around First Colonial Road. They own a significant amount of property. They would not have accepted an amount that was not fair.''
Perceiving a quick reversal, Johnson became suspicious of the city's motives while the city's chief real estate officer, James C. Lawson, admitted the first offer of $260,000 was a mistake.
``I wish that letter never went out,'' he said.
Former School Board Member Robert Hall, the site search committee chairman, said recently that the district has few options in a section brimming with development.
``Land is scarce there,'' he said. ``You can't go south. You can't move east because that would be closer to Oceana. And it was nearly impossible to move north because it's all housing.
``It is normal for property owners to say, `You're not paying me enough.' We were in this before in another case. And that owner filed suit. We subsequently reached an agreement with the owner, and that's where Larkspur Middle School now sits.
``Mrs. Johnson was definitely not in a bargaining mood. I thought it would make her happy. I was surprised we could not settle on that amount.''
In its search for land, the committee had come across a 19.4-acre plot owned by the former Hillhaven Corp., which owned a series of nursing homes nationwide. The plot was adjacent to Virginia Beach General Hospital and large enough for the new school.
It would have cost $231,958 an acre, about $70,000 an acre less than what was being contemplated in the Johnson-Potter deal. It contained no wetlands. City water was available, and the land did not abut busy First Colonial Road.
But Hall said the deal was not clear-cut. He said that before broker Sam Scott began representing the company, it would not subdivide the land, which also was the site of a building that could not be converted to the school's uses. It was not until the day after the city reached an agreement with the Potter family that a second offer came from Hillhaven to subdivide the land. By then it was too late.
``It's amazing, isn't it? A sad coincidence, but what can you do?'' Fox said.
One might argue that Johnson would be happy with the $1 million. But to the 81-year-old widow, the money is not the issue.
``The whole thing has hurt me deeply,'' she said. ``It just wasn't fair. I could not let my land go for that price. The claim of 3 acres of wetlands is an injustice. If I had been a Potter, I would have gotten full value.''
To Bourdon, the city's claim that Johnson's property contains wetlands is a convenient dodge to cover past admissions.
Running through the Johnson property and along other parcels next to it is a drainage ditch that once looked more like a stream. But in 1991 the city dug up a large section of it and replaced it with a drainage pipe that ended at Johnson's property. It was called the Wolfsnare ditch project.
At Johnson's property line, a terminus for the ditch project, the city built a culvert that let the piped water drain onto her land. Johnson sued then, arguing the setup damaged her property. The city settled, by agreeing that a drainage pipe could someday be run through her land, thus setting the stage for full development, her attorney said.
``That's exactly what they told her at the time,'' Bourdon said.
Bourdon contends that, since the city agreed then that the land could be developed, the property is worth the additional $800,000.
But Fox challenged Bourdon's claim, saying that environmental law allows for exceptions under the preservation act when the city needs to control stormwater.
Lawson, the city's real estate agent, was sympathetic to Johnson's perceptions.
``It looks like a convenient dodge on our part, but it's also the law and that's the unfortunate part of it. The act is state-mandated. It's not something the city dreamed up one fine day.
``We have an honest difference of opinion as to what is affected by the Bay Act. Bourdon has cited instances where he thinks there can be variances, and we have cited just as many where we think there cannot be.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/The Virginian-Pilot
Margaret Johnson, 81, owns 6 1/2 acres. The city has offered $1
million, but she's going back to court, seeking $800,000 more.
Map
VP
POSSIBLE RELOCATIONS
by CNB