Report from July 18th BOA Meeting for 908 Williamson

Eventful hearing with lots of fireworks and some big Hayes Barton wins that is set to wrap-up Tuesday July 22 at 1pm.

This was my first Board of Adjustments (BOA) and I have to admit it was much more interesting than I expected. In this post, I’ll provide a short executive summary and then a more detailed account of what happened at the hearing.

As a reminder, like you I am a fellow Hayes Barton neighbor who has a strong vested interest in making sure we win the battle for 908 Williamson and for the character of Hayes Barton. But, I am not a lawyer and all these opinions are mine and you can assume I will either avoid legal jargon or give you my layman’s version that may not be technically true and certainly not what a lawyer would use.

If you are new and want some background before jumping in, in the last post, I covered the players and and the timeline we got to this second developer plan and appeal that landed us up in the BOA a second time.

Executive Summary

• Win: Biased Board member recusal - BOA member Suzanne Prince made obviously pro-developer social media posts which were discovered by the Solics and used by our counsel to force her recusal with a surprise motion to start the hearing. Note: Great video included in detailed portion. Ms. Prince literally said: “Good on Chappell for pressing on” and expected everyone to believe that she’s totally impartial.

• TBD: Motion to Dismiss - The Developer’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss arguing that all the points had been argued and supported by Judge Collins except the TPV argument. Hayes Barton counsel pointed out that it’s an entirely new plan and this was a restart. The board didn’t officially vote and decided to hear testimony. The fact we got our testimony in felt like a win, but this one is still open and may come up again.

• Loss: Parking - This was new to me. The Town of Raleigh has removed all parking requirements for subdivisions like that proposed at 908 Williamson, so the developers, not wanting to lose a single townhome, removed a ton of parking. Guess where they are going to park? You can expect Williamson and Iredell to be full of 20-50 cars if 908 Williamson moves forward. 🤦‍♂️ To handle the Motion to Dismiss, Hayes Barton counsel conceded this one.

• Win: Legal Standing - I’ve read the prior minutes and in previous hearings the opposing lawyers spent a lot of time challenging the legal standing of the Bennets and Solics in the case. Justus went through this quickly without objection from the opposition.

• Win: Technical expert testimony - Our expert, Jose Martinez did a great job. The city’s experts were Justin Booker and Keegan McDonald. Justin Booker didn’t say much other than he was there from Planning and Development. McDonald, from the planning office made it seem that the city had to do lots of ‘triangulation’ and ‘interpretation’ of parts of the UDO that, to me a layman, don’t really leave interpretation for this. It seems like ‘contiguous open space’ is pretty well defined.

• Time ran out Friday, continuing Tuesday 7/22 : Finally, at 11:30 time elapsed and a part 2 had to be scheduled, which is Tuesday July 22 at 1pm. My understanding is what is left is some final questioning of the experts, and closing arguments. I’m sure there will be more talk of this motion to dismiss and finally a board vote.

Personal observations:

When you read the minutes or email updates you don’t get a lot of the body language and nuance.

• Our expert, real estate appraiser Nick Kirkland, did an analysis that the 5 adjoining homes to 908 will suffer at least a 6% property value impact due to the 17 townhomes, the traffic and chaos this project brings to our neighborhood making it less desirable. I 100% believe this and I think it’s going to be 10%, but outside of what Mr. Kirkland was asked to do, I think it has a bigger impact including surrounding streets beyond Williamson Dr. and Iredell Dr.

• It’s clear that the city and the developers are very aligned here.

• BOA member Ms. Prince is clearly aligned with the developers and was very disingenuous if not outright lying when she stated she had no bias in the case. Her hypocrisy and duplicity was embarrassing - I don’t know if there’s an ethics board for city employees and BOA members, but if there is, someone should make sure they aware of her shady behavior.

• I was pleased that BOA chairman Swink and member Butler were paying attention and didn’t show any partiality.

• Member Midgett wasn’t paying any attention, slumped in his chair and just played with his phone the whole time. Member Midgett (not 100% sure as I couldn’t see his name tag) was paying attention the first hour and then as we got past 9, he was increasingly on his phone. Were I chairman of the BOA, I’d remind members that there breaks for checking your phone and this matter requires 100% of your attention, or step aside and let a board member that wants to do the job, do the job.

• The developer’s counsel are several tiers below our counsel in professionalism, preparedness and understanding this part of the law. The developers are very rude to our witnesses and our counsel, Justus. Ignoring that, Justus was able to slice all their motions, arguments and objections to shreds, blow up their case law and run circles around them. It’s clear to me we have great representation - thanks to Frank for finding and recruiting Justus.

• The biggest suprise to me is seeing with my own eyes how obviously aligned the city and the developers are to make 908 Williamson townhomes a reality. I was especially disheartened to see that BOA member Ms. Prince clearly has bias and seemed to have communications with the developer and didn’t recuse herself. I researched and found the ethical standards that the BOA signs up for are in City Council resolution 995A passed back in 1988. They are part of the training handbook here:

Boards And Commissions Training Handbook

13.9MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

You’ll see that 955A clearly calls out Bias and ex-parte communications as important ethical considerations for the BOA.

• I feel the City and the developers see their own rules - all the way back to missing middle and now the UDO as being something they don’t have to follow if they don’t want to or, even worse, they can change things they want without citizen/voter input. The change of parking is a good example - it feels like they said ‘oh citizens are using this UDO parking rule to stop our steamrolling Missing Middle, let’s just remove that pesky parking rule too. ‘

That’s the highlights and some personal thoughts, now for all the details.

Detailed Account of 7/18/25 Board of Adjustments (BOA) meeting

Team Hayes Barton

On our legal team we have Craig Justus who sat on the right (from the rear perspective) of the room with Frank Gordon assisting.

pictured: Craig Justus at the podium and to the right opposing counsel Michael Birch and Robin Tatum

The Opposition

Opposing counsel

• Michael Birch (pictured above) - lawyer for the Developers. He was clearly out of his depth on mostly kept going to the developers and whispering like this→

He’s also the first lawyer I’ve seen not dressing appropriately for court.

• Robin Tatum - She was new to me and not listed in last week’s post. She’s with Fox Rothschild and was previously the City Attorney of Raleigh. My understanding is she was representing the City, but I could be wrong and she was for the developers. I’m 90% sure she’s for the City.

Developers:

• John (Johnny) Chappell - John is partners with ConceptEight CEO Shawn Donovan (who I did not see at the hearing) and he was there sitting next to Nathan Singerman.

• Nathan Singerman - Singerman made the trip up from Wrightsville where he moved to after throwing our neighborhood under the bus to watch the proceedings. Chappell is on the left, Singerman is on the right.

  

I had been assuming that Chappell is a small player in this, but given his rapt attention and other body language it now feels to me that he’s got some bigger economic investment in this deal.

The BOA Members

BOA Chair Swink

I wasn’t able to get a picture, he’s the chair and did a decent job running things. They do spend a lot of time asking the City’s counsel questions.

BOA Member Suzanne V. Prince, Recused 👋👋👋

More on Ms. Prince below, here’s her picture

BOA Member Torrey

Pictured: Mr. Torrey asked good questions and was engaged in the discussion.

BOA Member Midgett

Mr. Midgett did not move from this position - he’s looking at his phone if you can’t tell.

Opposing Experts

• Justin Booker - City of Raleigh, representative from planning and development.

• Jason Meadows - Civil Engineer for Concept Eight (908 Williamson lead developer)

• Keegan McDonald - City’s Land Development Manager

Booker is in the white shirt and tie, Meadows is in the upper left.

Acronyms reminder

That’s the players and the setup heading into the hearing, before we get into it, three acronyms that come up all the time are:

• BOA - Board of Adjustments - A quasi-judicial board that is part of the City that hears appeals.

• UDO - Unified Development Ordinances - Outside of zoning, these are the rules that govern developments in Raleigh. The builders and city seem hellbent on ignoring these rules now that they have essentially eliminated zoning.

• TPY - Transitional Protective Yard - Specified by the City of Raleigh UDO and not honored by the developer’s proposed 17 townhome project.

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Part I: Board Member Recusal Motion by Justus

The hearing started off with fireworks. Justus dropped a motion to recuse Ms. Prince from the hearing. It turns out she had been on social media (a facebook group discussing missing middle I believe) under the alias “svp” which, not too cleverly, are her initials. A Hayes Barton Neighbor saw this, did some investigation and realized that a BOA board member was actively discussing our case on social media and her comments clearly revealed her extreme bias for the developers.

There were many posts, but the most damning was where she said: “Good on Chappell for pressing on.” She also posted about the city fast tracking the approval of the new plan and had seen the plan before the public, which was asked and not clearly answered how she got this information.

Here’s the social media posts. These are Ms. Prince’s (under the svp alias) comments. BOA members are supposed to be an unbiased BOA members. What do you think?

In this first post, she is very aligned with the city and developer lawyers who, according to Justus, are misinterpreting what Judge Collins ruled (more on this later, this is quite important for us):

My read of this one is she’s very much on board with missing middle, thinks and wants this to move on and she’s eager to see construction begin. I’ll speculate why in a second.

This is the big one→

Yep, she’s 100% independent, no preference at all 🤣🤣🤣

I don’t know exactly, but this post basically reveals she’s in the BOA. In addition to not being good at pretending to be impartial, Ms. Prince is not good at anonymous posting. She also misrepresents the UDO here, so she’s also not good at understanding that.

There’s another participant in the forum that is somewhat anti-missing middle and you can tell that irritates Ms. Prince and she’s wanting to get into an argument on the benefits of the terrible missing middle policy, revealing her lack of indepence on this broader topic as well.

Ms. Prince declares independence, board votes to recuse.

After this shocking revelation, the lawyer for the BOA (City provided) asked three questions to Ms. Prince asking if she could remain independent and she swore up and down she was 100% independent (even though she did not dispute she literally said: “GOOD ON CHAPPELL FOR PRESSING ON!!!”)

The board discussed this, my notes;

• Butler: questioned ethics and ex parte communication

• Swink: not comfortable with situation

• Butler: doesn’t like the “encouragement to push on” statement

• Midgett: concerns about appearance of conflict

Prince’s response (note she did not at any time say she is not SVP)

• Claimed no fixed opinion, she made these statements made after thinking case was over

• Offered to recuse herself voluntarily

• Board voted to recuse Prince

  • Created potential quorum issues with remaining members, that somehow didn’t end up being an issue. That was a weird confusing discussion, but minor.

Ms. Prince then stomped out in quite a huff shooting daggers 👀 at our side of the room and Mr. Justus.

I captured a ~8m video of the courtroom drama that I think you’ll enjoy.

“Good on Chappell for Pressing On.”

Raleigh Board of Adjustments Member, Suzanne Prince

Before being recused from the hearing due to bias and ex-parte communications by the BOA

Part 2: City Motion to Dismiss

This one is important and it got super legal-ese so I’m going to do my best to explain it→

The city filed a motion to dismiss our appeal to the BOA. The City’s argument resides on a legal concept: res judicata and collateral estoppel

• Their argument is the case was already decided in previous 2023 appeal

• They argue that the Superior Court found developer plan correct except for B1 transitional protective yard requirement

• City then claims that since we are adding stuff or re-visiting (open area) that was not in the superior court that we’re trying to get 2 bites of the apple.

Justus Pushes back

Mr. Justus then argued that to solve the B1 problem, they changed everything in the plan, violating many new UDO rules.

This picture does a good job of showing the plans side by side - ignore the green dot - Ms. Tatum touched her computer’s touchscreen and it was there the whole time, I’m pretty sure she didn’t know how to undo that.

To Mr. Justus’s point, I’m not a land use expert but the left plan and the right plan are completely different. You can tell they moved the townhouse lots (the rectangles all intot he middle, getting rid of all that area in the middle and putting it on the edges. They also had to tilt and move every single unit. In fact the only thing not changes between the plans are the fixed items - Iredell, Williamson and the size of the lot.

Mr. Justus had a great analogy, he argued that this was like you went to buy a car and you realized it didn’t have a steering wheel. Then to get the steering wheel fixed, they had to take out the speedometer - even though you addressed one issue, your change in addressing the first issue still does not give you a working car.

Applying that here, in accommodating the Judge’s order to solve one major UDO problem, they have introduced many other problems - it’s a completely new plan that violates all new UDO rules, we need to restart the entire process, therefore it’s not a second bite at the apple, it’s the first bite of a plum.

Here’s a table (presented by opposition) that shows the 5 claims in the Hayes Barton appeal:

5 Items of appeal:

1. NEW Open space UDO issues created from plan 2

2. NEW TPY 10-ft border UDO problem created form plan 2

3. NEW TPY height UDO violation 1

4. NEW TPY height UDO violation 2

5. NEW Parking UDO violation

I won’t go into each of these as Mr. Justus made great arguments on all of them and the opposition just kept saying either, “two bites of the apple” or “you wanted a wall and now you aren’t happy” - clearly misrepresenting and ignoring Mr. Justus’ points that were very clear to me. (I’m clearly biased, but I think anyone would see this as a completely new plan).

The one that’s super annoying is parking. Turns out in March of 2022, the city updated the UDO (does this get voted on or the city can just change anything they want - maybe it’s a city counsel thing, idk) to eliminate any parking requirement - now reflected in UDO section 7.1.1. Also, no bicycle parking is needed.

The Version 1 plan had plenty of parking in the middle and that has now been totally removed in Version 2 (again illustrating this is a completely different plan).

Where are they going to put 15-23 cars?

Here’s what is really annoying - If there’s 17 units and they will have 1.5-3 cars per unit, that gives us a range of 25-35 cars that are going to need somewhere to park. I need to go measure the edges of 908 Williamson, but at most it can hold 10-12 cars, probably less with all the roads they are putting in. Where are the additional 15-23 cars going to go? They are going to be all down Williamson and up Iredell creating even more disruption to the character of our neighborhood on top of the dramatic increase in traffic, the AirBNB short-term renters coming in/out, etc.

Mr. Justus conceded this point given the UDO changes, so we are down to 4 areas we are righting in this appeal process with the focus now on open space and all the TPV issues.

Part III: Legal Standing Establishment

To avoid some cute trick by the opposition around an appeal, Mr. Justus insisted that the BOA hear the legal standing argument. This was a heated topic in past arguments by the city (that the Solics and Bennetts are impacted by this and thus have legal standing). This went quickly as the opposition seemed resigned that the issue was dead, but it was smart of Justus to put a bunch of nails in the legal standing argument coffin. My notes:

• Nick Kirkland (real estate appraiser expert)

  • Testified 5 adjoining homes would face 6% or greater negative property value impact

  • Includes the Solics and Bennetts as affected parties

• Samantha Solic

  • Lives directly next door on Williamson Drive side

  • Submitted affidavit on property impact

• Rebecca Bennett

  • Lives directly next door on Iredell side

  • Submitted affidavit on negative property impacts

• Board granted standing to all four appellants

Part IV: Technical Expert Testimony

After legal standing was confirmed, Justus presented our expert testimony:

• Jose Martinez (licensed professional engineer)

  • 25 years experience, multiple engineering degrees

  • Licensed in multiple states including North Carolina

  • Practice leader for site development at KCI

  • Hired to evaluate approved plans against UDO requirements

• Developer’s attorney objected to Martinez as expert

  • Argued lack of recent Raleigh residential project experience

  • No compact subdivision experience in Raleigh

  • Questioned expertise on UDO interpretation vs. city staff

After all that back and forth, Martinez shared his feedback on the UDO which basically re-enforce the Hayes Barton position in the appeal.

Part V: Open Space and Buffer Requirements Arguments

There were a lot of arguments around open space. As mentioned in the exec summary, the City’s planning and planning representative Justin Booker, did not seem to know much and there was more confusion than anything around this 50-ft square concept. Basically my conclusion was the city just put Version 2 of the plan through because they believe or want the Judge Collins ‘one minor change needed’ concept to be true.

The opposition continued to bring up the two bite at the apple argument, then argued that just because the moved the TPY to a B1 transition that even though they changed everything else, that’s all they had to do.

The original had an ‘Open Lot’ TPY and now they have a B1. this is all confusing so I read the UDO and it actually has a helpful picture:

You can clearly see here that our appeal (pictured earlier) correctly calls out the many area they are NOT following the B1 TPY rules as outlined in the 5 areas of appeal.

McDonald Testimony

Keegan McDonald, Land Development Manager, was an expert witness to discuss how the City approved ‘plan 2’ so quickly. Justus asked McDonald a series of questions about the UTO that got super technical, but my novice feeling was that there was a lot of ‘aggressive’ interpretation of the UDO rules and ‘triangulating’ to justify approving plan 2.

Conclusion

At this point it was 11:30 - 3.5hrs after the start. The hearing is set to continue Tuesday July 22nd at 1pm.

For Tuesday, opposing counsel will ask McDonald their questions and then both counsels will make closing arguments.