Abersham deal was no walk in the park

The purchase of the collapsed Abersham subdivision site has got to be one of the most unusual and complicated real estate deals in Mecklenburg County history. And most of those involved in the sale agree that they’ve never seen anything like it.

But just because the deal has been finalized doesn’t mean the weirdness has ended: As a result of all the legal and real estate wrangling, there’s now a family living in a county park, a first in the county’s history.

It all started routinely enough in 2006 when Frank Jacobus, a Davidson College professor and developer, purchased about 243 acres in northeast Davidson with plans to develop a 59-home luxury community called Abersham, said Ann Pilkington, an attorney for Charlotte-based Horack Talley.

Jacobus completed some initial infrastructure and roads. But then, like so many other development projects, the community got caught up in the recession.

The two investors in the property were Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank, which held a $6 million mortgage on 150 acres, and Asheboro-based CommunityOne Bank, which held a $3 million mortgage on the remaining 93 acres, Pilkington said. When the project stalled, both banks foreclosed on Abersham last year.

During that time, only three lots sold, and only one home was built, a 6,000-square-foot stucco-and-stone house Rachel and Jason Karo purchased for $875,000 in April.

Mooresville-based Marble Properties bought the second lot, and Raleigh-based RBC Bank bought the third. But both lots were never developed.

By the time the Karos moved into the house, the community had been neglected for years, and the property was stuck in limbo, with Fifth Third and CommunityOne trying to unload the depressed land.

Jim Garges, director of the Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation Department, said that before Jacobus purchased the land to build Abersham, the county had been eyeing the acreage as a possible park but at the time couldn’t afford it. Now that the land was available again at a lower price, Garges said he reached out to the Charlotte office of The Trust for Public Land, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that helps agencies and communities conserve land for public use.

TTFPL entered into negotiations for the purchase of the land about a year ago, said Saxby Chaplin, senior counsel in Charlotte for TTFPL.

“I was involved with trying to figure out how to make the deal work from a legal standpoint,” Chaplin said. “And it was not at all apparent that it was going to work. It was very complicated.”

Also involved in the negotiating process: Slade Gleaton, senior project manager for TTFPL, who works out of the nonprofit’s Charleston, S.C., office and whose role was to “package the deal for the county.”

There were other moving parts in the deal, Gleaton said. For one, TTFPL had to negotiate with four different property owners: Fifth Third, CommunityOne, Marble and RBC.

Further complicating the deal was that the land had already been plated and recorded as a subdivision, and several lots had been sold, including one that contained a luxury house.

“That created a class of property owners that had vested interests in seeing those (subdivision) restrictions and plats continue,” Chaplin said. “We had to figure out how to create a new arrangement that would accommodate the interests of both the lot owners and the county.”

For help on the complicated deal, Chaplin said he turned to Pilkington, who specializes in commercial real estate and litigation at Horack Talley. Pilkington, who spent about 100 hours working on the case from July to October, said she worked pro bono, including title searches, document preparation and drafting. Her regular fee would have been $20,000, she said.

“I didn’t realize at the time it was going to turn into something this massive,” she said. “But it was fun. It was a very intricate deal with a lot of complications.”

As the negotiations progressed, the Davidson Town Board and Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners also got involved. For the Karos, whose home was going to be a public park, Mecklenburg County commissioners in September approved two easements that allowed the family access to their home. The county also created a 100-foot buffer to prevent park activities from getting too close to the house.

Also in September, the Davidson Town Board voted to terminate the former Abersham master plan, including property lines and public streets, so the county could use the site for park land and open space.

Getting rid of plats hardly happens, Pilkington said, adding, “but it’s one of the new realities of the recession.”

Garges said that, originally, the plan was for TTFPL to purchase the land and lease it back to the county. As the economy improved, the county would eventually purchase the land. But then in July of last year, the county released $6.5 million in bonds for land acquisition, he said.

TTFPL moved forward and purchased the 243 acres for $3.7 million in September, then turned around and sold it to the county for the same amount, Gleaton said. The deal was finalized Oct. 14. The park has not yet been named.

“I’ve been with the Trust for about 15 years and have encountered a number of tricky transactions, and this was really complicated,” he said.

Pilkington called it one of the most unusual cases she’s worked on.

“There were so many people involved,” she said. “It only would have taken one small kink to make the whole thing fall apart, but thankfully everyone cooperated.”

Boykin can be reached at [email protected].