It seems negotiations between the Cheetah Premier Gentlemen’s Club and New Hanover County may be coming full circle, but it took almost $100,000 in taxpayer money to get there.
Last month, the county told media it spent $25,695 through Dec. 12 on legal counsel to exercise eminent domain over its neighbor, Cheetah strip club. Turns out the total number is nearly four times higher: $95,027.61. Not all of October, nor any of November or December invoices were included in the $25,695 amount previously sent by the county.
Read the story at Port City Daily: County’s eminent domain billing ticks up to $95K, Cheetah parking agreement back on table
Related:
- New Hanover County says "no additional information" on strip club acquisition, property owners blindsided (WHQR)
- The Dive: Does NHC actually need those strip club parking spots? (The Assembly and WHQR)
- County rescinds Cheetah eminent domain authorization, wants to negotiate buying the property (PCD)
Ben Schachtman: Alright, Peter Castagno, thanks for being here.
Peter Castagno: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
BS: Okay, so for people who have not followed this story – I don't know how that would be – what is the situation going on between New Hanover County and the Cheetah Gentlemen's Club?
PC: Absolutely. So New Hanover County authorized a resolution, declaring its intent to purchase the Cheetah Premier Gentleman's Club via eminent domain on November 6. In the past few months, there's been a lot of controversy surrounding that questions as to if that is the optimal solution to solving the county's parking scarcity or the parking issues that they've been having since moving to the new government center in April 2023. That project was a $52 million partnership with Cape Fear FD StoneWater, a partnership between Cape Fear Commercial, locally based, and Virginia-based real estate firm FD StoneWater. So in December, the county rescinded that authorization after a lot of public pushback. And in the period since we've learned that the county spent $95,000, approximately, on retaining legal counsel for that with Ward and Smith.
BS: So Port City Daily, WHQR, and some other outlets also inquired late last year about the legal bills and we got a much lower number than that. Can you explain the difference as you write, you know, it's almost four times what we were initially told – what's going on here?
PC: Yeah, so that's a bit of a confusing one. We were originally told us around $25,000. After filing a public records request, asking for all the invoices up until December 12. My editor Shea [Carver] found invoices, more detailed invoices, which were previously not given to us, we were given a full figure, showing the expense higher to be around $31,000. But, it included that those fees go back to May of 2023. So for nearly six months beforehand, Ward and Smith have been working with the county on appraising the property and developing a strategy for property acquisition, studying eminent domain law, all of this type of thing. And what we found was the $25,000 figure that we were given, only went from May until the end of September. So it did not include October, November, and December, which ended up being the bulk of the fees paid to Ward and Smith. The county told me that the discrepancy was caused due to stalling of the invoices being paid for that October fee, which was around $5,000. And they just sent us the full amount without detailed invoices for November and December this past week on Friday.
BS: And there's some dispute about how transparent the county is required by state law to be when it comes to these legal Billings. I've seen it argued that in various legal cases and reporting around town that you can go so far as to get a detailed line-by-line invoice. The county doesn't agree with it.
PC: That's right. Yes, the county says that it's their authority to be exempt from public records law on the specific invoices due to it being a litigation matter. We've heard a different interpretation of the law through Ms. Amanda Martin of the Press Association, and she cited a legal case in which all the fees were necessary with certain aspects written out that might have issues as far as lawyer and client communication.
BS: And we'll have links on the page to some of that backstory, because that's a whole weedy world we could spend an hour talking about. Okay, so we've spent $100,000 as a county and we're basically back to where we started. What comes next?
PC: That's a great question. So right now the county is reviewing a shared parking agreement. That's the latest update I've been given from the Cheetah legal team, they've submitted a parking agreement and said they do not require reciprocity. So, they're putting forward the same offer, it's circling back, the same offer they put forward about two months ago, to use Cheetahs spots for free – the county already owns 30 of those spots – which are about 74 spots. So they will now have full access if that shared parking agreement is agreed to to those 44 spots during the day because she doesn't open until 6 p.m., which also raises the question as to how much parking the county would have been gained if they had demolished the property, which would was estimated to be in a memo from the county in August to be about 113 spots. So there wouldn't be a large amount of spots gained from demolishing a property as well for a $2.36 million purchase and then however much extra costs to demolish.
BS: All right. Well, we will certainly follow your reporting on this interesting story. Yes, it is a crazy story. But for now, Peter, thanks for being here.
PC: Absolutely. Thank you And I also have to say, you know, my name is on the byline. But the team helped a ton on this. So I have to give credit to my editor and co-workers who really helped me.
BS: Well, thanks to the whole team at Port City Daily – and Peter we’ll have you back on soon.
PC: Absolutely. Thank you.