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riental Mayor Bill Sage says that one benefit of a proposed land swap with Chris Fulcher is “the process of healing” the Town’s “ruptured relationship” with the fishing plant owner, whose gray block structure has stood roofless at the Oriental harbor entrance for more than a decade.

In comments to the public at Tuesday night’s Town Board meeting, the Mayor suggested that Fulcher’s roof might be finished “within two, three years.”

A dock behind the cluster of pilings and a lot on 46 feet of waterfront is what the town would get in exchange for giving up 14,000 square feet of right of way. At right is Chris Fulcher’s roofless building. If the deal goes thru, Fulcher would own all of the point from the white building (photo, center) to Wall Street.(not visible)

The Land Swap: The Tangibles

A few weeks ago Fulcher proposed a land swap in and around the harbor that would give him 14,000 square feet of right-of-way on all of Avenue A and part of South Avenue, as well as 90 feet of harborfront at the end of South Avenue.

In exchange Fulcher would give the town a 4,100-square-foot lot with 46 feet of harborfront. In the water there are pilings in place for a dock.

If the deal that Oriental’s mayor and town manager are championing goes through, it would consolidate Fulcher’s real estate holdings. With the streets and rights of way gone, he would lay claim to all of the land between Wall Street, on the Neuse River, south around the point of the harbor and much of one side of the harbor to a point that is past what is now South Avenue.

Mayor’s View Of Benefits To The Town

Moments before the Town Board went in to a closed door session to hammer out the Town’s negotiating position Tuesday night, Mayor Sage touted the swap. In his 16 minutes of commentary, Sage did not address what Fulcher would gain in the deal, but rather promoted the advantages he saw for the Town.

Diagram of the proposed swap. Light green represents Chris Fulcher’s existing property. Yellow is the 4100 square foot lot and dock he’d give the town in exchange for the town giving up its rights of way at South Avenue and Avenue A, depicted here by dark green. Source: Town Manager Bob Maxbauer

As has been reported, the Fulcher lot would be a “fee simple” property where the town could build restrooms, something it couldn’t do at the South Avenue right of way it now controls. Instead of dredging and building a dock from scratch as the town has planned to do off of South Avenue, the Mayor said that the dock at the lot Fulcher would give the town was “92%” completed, needing only planks and that the bulkhead was “built to last many, many years.”

Land Swap Intangibles

Further, the Mayor said, there were “intangibles…of significant value to the Town.”

The intangibles the Mayor spoke of had to do with what is a very visible and tangible presence on the Oriental harbor: The roofless building where Chris Fulcher’s Point Pride Seafood operation is based.

A powerboat heads out of Oriental’s harbor whose entrance is marked by the roofless building owned by Chris Fulcher.

“Many of you will recall,” the Mayor told the audience, “the rather painful process of the roof that still remains a skeletal structure out there.”

Even before the Mayor’s mention of it, that roof — and the controversy around it — were already being talked about in town, as news of the proposed land swap spread. A not uncommon reaction was wariness of the deal as proposed, given the track record.

(A History in Shorthand: Fulcher erected the gray building on the edge of the harbor over a decade ago, amid questions about whether it had been permitted. On it, he put the framework for a roof that reached 7 feet above the Town’s height limit, for which he was fined thousands of dollars. He opted to tear down that roof and the fine was waived. In 2004, the then-Town Board voted to raise the allowable height limit by 5 feet. When another board was elected in 2005 and was about to return the height limit to where it had been, Fulcher put the Erector-set style of beams on top of the building, but never finished the project with a roof.)

In the Mayor’s recounting of the history Tuesday night, Fulcher “didn’t get permits that maybe he should have gotten,” for that construction. Then the Mayor added, “the Town did little to accommodate it, maybe.”

The result, Sage said, was that the town had “a ruptured relationship …with probably the largest employer in Oriental, and a very important part of our waterfront.” Sage cited the Town’s Vision Statement and its mention of preserving the working waterfront.

Fulcher, Henry: Friends and Neighbors and Pride In Oriental

The Mayor praised Town Manager Bob Maxbauer for working to “repair those relationships” not only with Chris Fulcher with the land swap, but with Lacy Henry.

For 15 years, Henry had denied the public access to public land on the harborfront end of South Avenue. In the mid-1990’s, he erected a chain-link fence across the right of way and claimed the waterfront land as his. The Town successfully fought that in court and established its rights to the right-of-way. It was at that end of South Avenue that the Town has been planning to dredge and build a 100 foot long town dock. It is that land which would go to Fulcher in the deal he proposes.

Henry has since challenged the Town on another right of way issue. (more below)

Tuesday night, the Mayor spoke glowingly of reaching out to Henry, as well as Fulcher. “The Town Manager being new on the scene here, was able to begin the process of healing that relationship… and to begin the process of bringing the Henrys and Fulchers back in to the community as friends and neighbors and not as begrudging neighbors with some bitterness involved.”

View that visiting boats see on entering the channel to come in to Oriental’s harbor.

“And that process,” the Mayor continued, “I’m absolutely convinced, opened up the possibility of getting to this kind of proposal which gives us this kind of intangible of having a neighbor to a vital area of our town waterfront who is on board with Pride in Oriental, is on board with being a friendly neighbor to the town. And that, I am convinced will pay dividends far in to the future.

“I can envision that within two, three years the roof will be finished and the place will be vastly improved in appearance and it will have the effect of maximizing the ability of the beleaguered fishing industry in staying here and continuing as part of the Oriental character for years to come. It’s something that might have been made more difficult but for that kind of repair. So I wanted to throw in some of the intangibles involved in this whole process and we wanted to preserve those kinds of intangibles and continue the process of this healing relationships and make us a better community as a result.”

Avenue A: Give It Away?

During the public session Tuesday night, Commissioner Sherrill Styron spoke favorably about the Town giving up its right-of-way to Avenue A, a stretch of mainly dirt road that extends more than 200 feet from South Avenue toward the Neuse. The public currently has access to walk or ride on it. On county maps, Avenue A shows up as a 30 foot right of way. If the town were to abandon it, more than 6,000 square feet would become Fulcher’s, as he owns the land on either side.

Styron said that for more than half a century he’d never viewed Avenue A as a road. He said that “you can’t even turn around” on the 30 foot wide swath. Also, he said that it would be a liability for the town to keep because Fulcher might demand it be paved.

“I see personally, very little value to the town in Avenue A,” Styron said. “I think it’s more value with Chris owning the property and paying property tax to the Town.”

The dirt road of Avenue A. Years ago a fence was put across the Avenue A right of way. While it gives the impression of private property, it is not and the public currently has a right to access it. That would end if the Town abandons it and in effect gives it to Chris Fulcher.

In his remarks, Mayor Sage also spoke favorably of giving up Avenue A. He said that after losing his lawsuit with the Town over the harborfront, Lacy Henry complained that traffic — largely in and out of Chris Fulcher’s seafood plant — has encroached on the corner of his nearby property at the intersection of South Avenue and Avenue A.

Chris Fulcher in January bought that property from Henry, nevertheless, the Mayor added this to the list of things that made the land swap laudable. If the town had to fix that corner of South Avenue and Avenue A, he said, it would cost money. (He did not say how much sodding that corner would cost.) But if the town turns over the street and right of way to Fulcher, “that problem goes away…”

Also, he said, it wasn’t clear that Avenue A went all the way to the water. (By one account the right of way ends 6-12 feet away from the Neuse.) He said it might take a court decision to determine it.

No other commissioner spoke at the open session of the meeting.

Public Comment

There was no opportunity for public comment after the mayor and commissioner’s remarks. In the public comment period before they took up the subject of the swap, Grace Evans said that decades ago, she recalled that the Town resolved not to give up any more rights of way.

Carol Small said she liked the idea of bathrooms and a dock. She urged the commissioners to negotiate with the knowledge that giving up the rights of way would give Fulcher an even larger expanse of land than he has now.

The Board met for 2 hours and 20 minutes Tuesday night and on Wednesday afternoon, the Mayor called a special meeting for 4p on Friday February 10 at the Baptist Church.

The Mayor’s press release said the session was “for the purpose of considering terms of property acquisition transaction at Raccoon Creek.”

Stories On The Land Swap Proposal

Chris Fulcher Proposal To Town – January 31

Questions Arise On Fulcher Land Swap Proposal – February 7

Mayor Says Relationship With Fulcher A Benefit Of Land Swap – February 9

Town Board Accepts Fulcher Land Swap In Principle – February 12

Letters On The Land Swap

Posted Thursday February 9, 2012 by Melinda Penkava