One house that's long overdue
Jim Wise, Staff Writer, N&O, Nov 18, 2006
Durham County took another step this week toward a new courthouse, exercising its right of eminent domain (not, of course, to be confused with the right of prima nocte) to grab the requisite U-Haul property on Mangum Street.
Latest estimates seem to put the courthouse's price at around $122 million (about twice what was estimated just three years ago) and occupation around 2011. Start dates and completion dates are pretty fluid where our town's public works are concerned. Just think of your favorite pothole. But whenever Durham County's fourth place of doing its business gets finished it will already be 30-some years overdue.
That's because the current courthouse -- aka Judicial Building -- was out of date already when it opened, a year late, in 1978. Or so had said a local committee of the bar, which determined soon after construction was under way that the place wasn't going to be big enough.
So much for good intentions.
It was 119 years ago -- Nov. 17, 1887 -- when Durham began its first courthouse. The state's good Baptists were convening in town (the same town they would declare, less than five years later, was not a fit place for young women and so located their Meredith College in Raleigh), so there was a good crowd on hand when Durham's dignitaries paraded from the Claiborn Hotel (present site of a parking lot at Corcoran Street and the Loop) down Main Street for laying of the cornerstone with all due Masonic solemnity.
Great oratory, of course, was de rigeur, and attorney James S. Manning rose to the occasion thusly:
"We are assembled today to dedicate a temple of Justice. ... to regard as supreme, to revere as sacred, that law which is the protector of our lives, our liberties and our property."
Such sentiments, no doubt, are comforting to U-Haul. Citizens with a decent respect for property rights can only hope it does as well with its 2.3-acre plot by us taxpayers as the Scarborough & Hargett Funeral Home, which got $3.75 million for its 2.17 acres next door.
Property rights aside, the new courthouse can't get there a minute too soon. Not just because the price of steel goes up every time the Chinese build another skyscraper, but because a six-story building ought to help block the Durham Freeway's view of our other temple of Justice, the county jail.
Lawyer Manning spoke of "the majesty of the law." Somehow, when you have to explain why that Stalinesque monstrosity is our town's most prominent landmark, blind justice is a better idea.
http://www.thedurhamnews.com/109/story/13083.html
County settles with funeral home
Author: Eric Ferreri; Staff Writer, N&O, March 14, 2006
DURHAM -- The county avoided a court battle with a longtime local business owner Monday night, agreeing to pay more than $3.7 million for a key piece of downtown property where it will eventually build a new courthouse.
The county will pay $3.75 million for the Scarborough & Hargett Funeral Home property, a coveted piece of real estate on South Roxboro Street. The unanimous approval by the Durham Board of Commissioners ended several months of negotiations and allows the county to avoid taking the land through eminent domain proceedings, which it had planned to do if an agreement wasn't reached.
Eminent domain is a power governments can use to acquire private property to use for the public good.
"Scarborough & Hargett is a unique business, being in this community so long and being moved around [twice before]," said Commissioner Michael Page, who along with Philip Cousin cast the dissenting votes last month when the board decided to move ahead with the eminent domain proceedings. "I certainly didn't want to be the one to make them move."
Officials declined to discuss the negotiating process, but the sale price is significantly higher than a $1.52 million appraisal done recently for the county.
The county actually needs two land parcels to build its next courthouse and has started the legal process by which it plans to take ownership of adjacent land now home to a U-Haul rental agency. U-Haul officials have not responded to the county's attempts to negotiate a purchase price, officials have said.
County officials plan to finalize the purchase later this month, but since the new courthouse project is still in its infancy, the funeral home will be allowed to rent the property for $1 a year and continue operating until September 2007.
The sale price includes costs the funeral home's owner, J.C. "Skeepie" Scarborough, will incur upon closing the business and moving, as well as lost revenue during the transition. It isn't clear where the funeral home will relocate.
"We're just relieved that this process is over in a favorable manner for Mr. Scarborough," said James "Butch" Williams, one of five attorneys on Scarborough's legal team.
[Scarborough & Hargett, founded in 1871 to serve African-Americans, still has deep roots in the community. Before agreeing to buy the property, the county had started legal action against Scarborough & Hargett as well, angering some residents.]