THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 22, 1994 TAG: 9412220523
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH THIEL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
School and city officials put up a bigger stake Wednesday in a dispute over valuable land for a new elementary school.
City attorneys offered more money to the property owners, who this fall refused to sell. The offer for 6 acres owned by an 80-year-old widow jumped from $260,000 to $1 million. The bid for an adjoining 9-acre site owned by three brothers shot from $800,000 to $2.7 million.
School Board Chairman James R. Darden said he believed the new offers were fair.
But Margaret E. Johnson, who has lived on her property for 44 years, was less than jubilant.
``They're not treating me right,'' she said.
The higher prices were based on an independent appraisal, which established the land's worth according to zoning for office space, the most valuable use. Many of the buildings around the property on First Colonial Road near Virginia Beach General Hospital are office complexes.
The lower offers were based on the property's current residential zoning, a less valuable zoning.
An attorney for the three brothers, John Ray Potter, Dean S. Potter and Gordon B. Potter, said they were pleased that the offer went up. The Potters are conducting their own appraisal and will decide whether to sell to the city after that. The City Attorney's Office had filed in Circuit Court to take the Potters' property for the lower offer, but will put that on hold during the new negotiations.
Johnson, who was offered a little more than half what the Potters will get per acre, said she still feels cheated.
``I should be offered the same thing they offer the Potters,'' she said. ``My land is just as valuable as theirs.''
Johnson's property, the city real estate agent has said, is worth less than the Potters' land because about three acres of Johnson's tract is classified wetlands, and is unusable for building.
The property is classified as wetlands, however, because city officials took Johnson to court nearly two years ago and won the right to put a drainage pipe on her land, Johnson said. The pipe pumps water from a subdivision and a shopping center onto her land. She got $40,000 from the city for the pipe.
But now she believes it's costing her a great deal more by detracting from the value of her land.
The School Board is expected to consider filing in Circuit Court to take Johnson's land for $1 million, if she does not accept the offer voluntarily.
The board wants to use the site, a total of about 15 acres, for a replacement school for Linkhorn Park Elementary, which is in Oceana Naval Air Station's crash zone.
The board and City Council agreed to move the school so it would not count against Oceana when the federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission decides next year which bases to close.
Board members said they had a difficult time finding suitable sites in the highly developed Linkhorn Park area, near the oceanfront. ILLUSTRATION: Map
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