| Viewing Single Post From: Blog and Media Roundup - Monday, June 29, 2009 | |
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| abb | Jun 29 2009, 04:22 AM |
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http://heraldsun.southernheadlines.com/durham/4-1176330.cfm Site clearing for new courthouse delayed By Ray Gronberg : The Herald-Sun gronberg@heraldsun.com Jun 29, 2009 Bookmark and Share DURHAM -- County Commissioners have given the Scarborough & Hargett Funeral Home a two-month extension on the lease of its current home on South Roxboro Street and signaled that another could follow later this summer. The funeral home was supposed to be off the property by Tuesday so officials could begin demolishing the existing building to make way for a new county courthouse. But work on Scarborough & Hargett's new quarters along Martin Luther King Parkway in the UDI Industrial Park is stalled. The funeral home's owner, J.C. "Skeepie" Scarborough, recently asked the county for a lease extension that would run until March 2010. County administrators have said that's not possible, as it would undermine the construction schedule for the courthouse. They hope to take bids for the work in October and start building the facility in January, Deputy County Manager Wendell Davis said. Workers have already demolished the other business displaced by the courthouse project, a U-Haul rental center that fronted South Mangum Street. Davis and County Manager Mike Ruffin recommended extending the funeral home's lease to Aug. 31. The commissioners went along, but said they want to be kept up to date about how Scarborough & Hargett is doing in establishing new quarters. Ruffin said that if "satisfactory progress is made," his government would likely recommend offering the funeral home an additional two-month extension. That would give it until the end of October to move out. But it's not clear whether they'll be much further along by August. Work at the UDI site stopped in October and to date has not resumed. Contractors erected some of the building's framing and stacked pieces of its ceiling truss on site. But the site was deserted Friday afternoon, even as about a dozen laborers were busy across Industry Lane expanding a storage center. Scarborough in his letter told county officials that the contractors found bad soils on the property that would cause structural problems, and the remains of an old dump. The discoveries -- surprising because "appropriate testing had been done prior to any construction activity" -- have added about $412,000 to the cost of the project, Scarborough said in his letter. The delays are worrying UDI officials, who sold the property to the Scarboroughs in September 2007 for $303,000. "I know from UDI's standpoint that we have a concern because nothing's being done on the site," said Mayor Bill Bell, who's also the nonprofit's chief operating officer. "The concern is the appearance of the property and the effect it has on the park." Scarborough seems confident that the facility will be completed, eventually. "Normally, if the economy and the system had worked its way through, we should have been in that building last November," he said in an interview. "Right now, we're waiting for the air to clear." The funeral home owner is pursuing stopgaps. He met recently with city/county planners on Wednesday to gauge the chances of getting permission to use a family-owned mansion near N.C. Central University at 1406 Fayetteville St. as a temporary funeral home starting Sept. 1. The answer wasn't encouraging. According to a report sent afterward to Ruffin and City Manager Tom Bonfield, planners determined the site would need a rezoning and that the City Council would have to change Durham's land-use policies to accommodate one. Those plus the usual permits would take a minimum of six months and more likely 12 to 16 months to process, Assistant Planning Director Patrick Young said in the report. But officials nonetheless "offered to assist the Scarboroughs in any way allowed" by local and state law, particularly by helping them assess the legalities involved with other fallback possibilities, Young said. Young and Davis also said the Scarboroughs are looking into using the old Carolina Times building, which is close to downtown along the Fayetteville Street corridor. Scarborough sought a reduction in his $9,250 monthly lease payments in parallel to the extended deadline. County officials, however, didn't go along with that. |
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| Blog and Media Roundup - Monday, June 29, 2009 · DUKE LACROSSE - Liestoppers | |
4:28 PM Dec 3
