What’s the holdup?

But the developer said no one will place take-out orders anytime soon, not if the city of Comer continues issuing its own “nit-picky” orders, which he says have been a not-so-veiled campaign of harassment from a couple of council members.

“The more I do, the more they work against me,” said Seymour, whose 15,000-square-foot shopping center with a turn-of-the-20th-century motif has sat empty for months. “Had this been somewhere else in Madison County, I could have started work in the building three months ago, but Comer is different.”

Comer council member Howard Threlkeld said Seymour should only blame himself for delays in opening his shopping center.

“He turned in a set of plans and they were approved and he has not built to those plans,” said Threlkeld. “Until he builds to those plans, they’re not approved.”

The ongoing conflict may have reached at least a temporary resolution Tuesday morning after Seymour received a “Certificate of Occupancy” or “CO” for the shopping center from Jim Baird, a county building inspector who also contracts with Comer.

The approval of the CO followed a tense Comer council meeting Monday night in which Baird and Seymour expressed their thoughts on The Markets controversy, but a number of local residents who attended the meeting to show support for Seymour’s development were not allowed to speak.

AN ONGOING SAGA

Comer leaders say Seymour is inexperienced in commercial development and has repeatedly deviated from his plans for the shopping center. They say they have had to continually steer him back in the right direction.

Meanwhile, Seymour says that the city’s “steering” is just plain meddling, with personal vendettas the only objective actually served.

Seymour said the latest order from Comer came Monday, a requirement for a comprehensive sign plan, including dimensions, lettering, lighting and material for each business sign at the shopping center. Seymour plans to have eight businesses in center, including a Mexican restaurant, barbecue restaurant and nail and tanning salon. However, not all businesses have been determined. And the developer said he doesn’t know how he can be expected to provide detailed plans on signs for businesses that haven’t been determined.

“They’re just digging and digging for anything they can find to hold me up,” said Seymour. “They’ll just use this (the comprehensive sign plan) later to say that I didn’t follow the plans when a business wants to do their own sign. It will limit what businesses can go there.”
Seymour said Tuesday that he was issued a CO. However, he is still expected to turn in a comprehensive sign plan.

“I’m thrilled to get the CO,” he said, adding that he hopes businesses that locate in the center won’t face trouble when they apply for COs.

WHAT’S BEHIND THE CONFLICT?

Seymour says councilman Kevin Booth has fixated on his development and pushed to block his progress at every step of the way. He says Booth’s opposition to his development is rooted in personal animosity, not concern for the city.

“I’m trying to do something that’s going to benefit Comer,” said Seymour. “But nothing is good enough for them. If these were life-threatening issues, that would be one thing, but this is a heck of a project and they’re just focused on simple, minor things.”

Booth said he has no personal grudges toward Seymour.

“How could it be personal?” said Booth. “I have no interest in it. I used to be in construction and I guess that’s why he feels that way. But I don’t build houses anymore. I haul asphalt for a living. He’s just got to build by his plans.”

Booth says the problems with the development aren’t “major things.”

“It’s just simple things,” said Booth. “The building is fine, the building looks good.”

But he said Seymour didn’t know what he was getting into when he decided to construct a major commercial development.

“I’ve got no reason to hold him up,” said Booth. “I think he just got in a little over his head; he don’t know much about commercial. We got plans submitted that we gave approval to and he’s not going by that.”

For instance, Booth said Seymour still needs to put in an elevator to meet federal handicap-accessibility requirements. Seymour said the elevator will serve his wife’s office and will cost roughly $30,000.

“We could play this game forever,” he said.

NOT THE FIRST CONFLICT

This is not the first conflict between Seymour and the council. Last year, the council objected to his Halloween haunted house on Gholtson Street, saying it was an unauthorized commercial endeavor in a residential area. Seymour donated the proceeds to youth groups at Comer Baptist Church.

The council took the matter all the way to the Georgia Supreme Court, arguing that allowing the house stripped them of their ability to keep businesses out of residential areas. Seymour contended that the city wasn’t consistent in how it applied its zoning laws.
The highest court in the state ultimately sided with Seymour.

Now, the developer says the council is bitter about losing the haunted house case. He says the city has not applied the zoning statutes fairly, issuing site-work directives to him that other businesses in the city have not faced.

At the city’s instruction, Seymour moved the parking lot curbing off the Department of Transportation right of way, reducing his parking spaces from 58 to 48. He added a three-foot “berm” or mound of dirt and planted trees to block the view of the parking lot from the roadway. He said he has repeatedly honored city directives and that he has “unnecessarily spent $140,000” trying to carry out city orders.

While he has made site-work changes in recent months, Seymour has been prohibited from doing any work inside the building, such as plumbing and electrical work. He says he doesn’t see why requirements to plant trees should hold up work inside the structure. Seymour said he could have started work in the building three months ago. Even if he gets the go-ahead now, it will be at least two-and-a-half months before business can open, which may lead at least one commitment to back out.

CO ISSUED, THEN REVOKED

Seymour received a “certificate of occupancy,” or “CO,” for the structure last Wednesday, but the CO was revoked the following day after Seymour was informed he would have to get a sign permit for a sign that is not yet in place and that he would have to post handicapped signs on the brick building in front of marked handicapped parking spaces.

“It (the CO) was issued by mistake, due, to a large degree, to my wish to be done with the project that was great as anyone’s,” said building inspector Baird in an emailed response to Journal questions. “Approvals issued in error are not valid. I realized after leaving the site that I should not have issued the document and rescinded it by phone message to Seymour before the start of the next business day. The reason the CO was a mistake was that I had forgotten to check off on certain site and zoning related items that he should well have known about himself. They included the correction of some non-conforming parking spaces, the lack of adequate accessibility signage and Seymour’s failure to have submitted a sign permit application.”

Seymour said he has faced hassles at every step of the way, including a three-month wait for a hookup to the city sewage system.
But city clerk Steve Sorrells said the city didn’t hassle Seymour in any way regarding sewage.
“We handled that right,” said Sorrells.

The clerk said the city took necessary precautions to ensure that the opening of a commercial development with restaurants wouldn’t hurt the city sewage system in years to come.

BUILDING INSPECTOR SPEAKS

Baird says Seymour doesn’t understand the processes involved in commercial developments. He said he is “a house builder who has never before so much as dipped a toe into the deeper and more professionally demanding waters of commercial development.”

“I think that his failure to understand the process, as well as difficulties he may have encountered therein might stem directly from his lack of experience,” said Baird. “On a separate note, however, I find it difficult to believe that his numerous and substantial deviations from the approved plan did not result from an intention to deceive and to proceed without permit as far as the changes he made, with an eye, perhaps, to begging forgiveness as an alternate to seeking permission.”

Baird said Seymour should understand that “all site work has to be completed prior to issuance of certification of occupancy.”

“Planning and zoning professionals nationwide know that once a building CO is issued, any leverage toward assurance of site work compliance is lost,” said Baird.

The building inspector says Seymour fails to understand that the burden of compliance with city codes rests on his own shoulders.
“One problem that is common, especially among inexperienced contractors, is a failure to understand that the burden of compliance rests wholly and solely upon the shoulders of the building practitioner and the permit holder,” wrote Baird.

He said the local authority is “never under obligation to inform a permit holder of every item of any code that must be me.”

“Permit holders who do not know what to do or how to proceed are encouraged to hire state licensed professional designers, whose job includes guaranteeing their clients that the products of the design work will meet all applicable codes, be they local, state, or federal,” wrote Baird. “Permit holders who are cited for failure to meet any codes are fond of crying that the local authority did not tell them what they must do, but those kinds of complaints are misdirected and are the product of ignorance and inexperience.”

SUPPORT SHOWN FOR DEVELOPMENT

Seymour said he has a similar development underway in Winterville and that the leaders in that city have been eager to help him. He says the Town Center development in Danielsville — which he was not involved with — was met with a warm embrace by Danielsville leadership. But he says he has received the stiff arm from Comer, even though he continually receives compliments about the brick structure.

“As far as what he’s done, it’s a real asset to Comer,” said Tom Hancock of Chicken Alley in Comer. “Comer needs all the growth in the city we can get because of the economy. And Tim is creating jobs and helping us stay here instead of going to Athens to buy products and eat. This has gotten down to petty stuff and they (the council) need to let him go ahead and do business, because it is going to benefit Comer.”

Marvin White, president of the Madison County Chamber of Commerce, said Seymour has done everything asked of him by the city.

“He (Seymour) did deviate from the plans, but he went back and did everything exactly according to the plans,” said White. “If there was a problem with the plans, it should have been specified at the beginning. They should have said, ‘look, you got to do something else,’ but that wasn’t done until we get ready to get tenants in here and get things working.”

White said Comer leaders need to keep the big picture in mind.

“This is a great development that really looks good,” he said. “It’s first class and it needs to be opened up. We need business in Madison County. We try to get business for this county and every time we get somebody to come, whether it’s Ingles or Fred’s or Dollar General or whoever, then they get hassled about things and we don’t need that in our county. If they’re locating in all these other counties, then obviously, there’s something wrong here.”