Commissioners, Mayor and Manager, Town of Davidson;

For the third time in 15 months, the Town of Davidson has solicited an appraisal of the Beaty Property without providing the appraisal firm with the required land use assumptions to put forth an accurate appraisal. In the case of the recent appraisals conducted in July and August, the Town failed to disclose the fact that there is a pending contract on the land, which would impact the appraised value. Thus, this resulted in a third flawed appraisal which is significantly lower than the appraised value of $4.6 million obtained recently by Save Davidson using the Town’s own land usage assumptions per the RFP to developers of August 2016 and the resulting “Luminous” commercial, mixed-use development plan, as well as disclosed the fact that there is a pending contract.

Below are the appraisal values obtained by the Town of Davidson, which reflect the fact that town staff withheld critical land use and pending contract (July & August appraisals) information on the property, resulting in artificially low values.

1.$1.62 million – T. B. Harris, May 2016

2.$1.91 million – T. B. Harris Update, July 2017

3.$1.77 million – Fortenberry Lambert, August 2017

If it weren’t so outrageous, it would be comical to note that the third Town appraisal represents an exact average of the first two appraisals. In contrast, the independent appraisal paid for and solicited by members of Save Davidson reflects the “Luminous” commercial, mixed-use development plan as desired by the Town, resulting in an appraised value of $4.6 million for the Beaty Property.

Interestingly, the recent Fortenberry Lambert appraisal notes that the highest/best use for the Beaty Property is residential, not commercial/retail/hotel per the DDP “Luminous” plan. For the Town to accept this appraisal figure and argue that it supports their defective RFP process and glorified DDP “Luminous” plan (which differs significantly with respect to proposed land use) is false and misrepresentative.

There are numerous valuation issues in this third appraisal, such as the fact that there is no mention of a hotel or similar use anywhere, which we would be happy to elaborate and discuss with you. However, the following questions must be addressed by the Town Board and senior staff and communicated to citizens of Davidson:

1.Why did Town staff fail to provide the appraisers with the required land use assumptions, especially since this important issue was raised by citizens in advance of the July and August appraisals?

2.Why is the Town rushing this important process? For the third appraisal, a key selection criterion was speed – why not accuracy? What is there to gain by rushing and potentially making errors?

3.Why would the Town accept a price of $1.77 million for the 19+ acres of valuable land in the heart of Davidson, knowing that the developer, DDP plans to sell the land for the hotel, retail, townhomes and villas but not the condominiums for $4.26 million? Citizens of Davidson – the owners of the Beaty Property – deserve the best price for our tax monies paid.

4.Why doesn’t the Town Board insist that this flawed process be abandoned, allowing the intended use of a “central park” for Davidson, or at least started over with full transparency and adherence to the Town’s own processes?

The citizens of Davidson deserve and expect answers. Will you provide them?

Respectfully,

Denise Beall on behalf of Save Davidson