Big box beaten at cost of $200,000

The state Supreme Court recently handed Bob and Beverly Murdock a final victory in their long legal battle to prevent a large plot of land behind their Chatham County home from becoming a big-box store.

But here's what a victory looks like after three years in court.

The land, just over the Orange County line, is not home to a Walmart or other big-box store. That much is true.

But the so-called County Line Plaza site was long ago denuded of its dense woods. Now the visitor's first glimpse of Chatham County sits vacant with signs and construction barrels and roads leading ... nowhere.

Meanwhile, the Murdocks and another couple are out nearly $200,000 for their efforts.

"Unfortunately, that seems to be the price of justice in our society," Bob Murdock said.

The project was approved by Chatham County commissioners in November 2006, one of the final acts of the outgoing pro-development majority. Citizen outrage over how this and other projects were changing the character of Chatham County had led to the election of a new "managed growth" majority, which took office the following month.

In its haste, the exiting board majority left a few chinks in the approval process - not the least of which was the redrawing of the area zoned for business on the site from 20 acres to 29 acres. Just enough to accommodate a big box.

The Murdocks and their neighbors and good friends, Susan and David Keesee, were joined by several others in suing to stop the project - challenging the county, as well as the owners of the land, then called Lee-Moore Oil, now Lee-Moore Capital Co.

Little did they know how long it would drag out.

"We had money we'd put aside for retirement," said Murdock, a pharmaceutical company executive. "We won't be retiring anytime soon."

A community group held fundraisers to defray the neighbors' legal costs. The court sided with the neighbors in their first courtroom test. But Lee-Moore kept appealing the case to a higher court. Long after the fundraisers ended, the bills kept coming.

The Murdocks and Keesees have shouldered the vast bulk of this expense.

Not that it's been cheap for the other side.

Lee-Moore president Kirk Bradley said he was disappointed by the state Supreme Court's final ruling at the end of July. He says his company has been the fall guy in a larger political battle in Chatham, when his company's primary error was missing a paperwork deadline by a day.

He noted that the court took issue with the county's actions, not those of Lee-Moore Oil (now Lee-Moore Capital).

"The crux of what the court ruled was that the county got it wrong and the company got it right," Bradley said.

But George Lucier, a member of the managed-growth majority and vice chairman of the Chatham board, said Lee-Moore brought the extended battle upon itself by fighting the neighbors' lawsuit even after the commissioners voted not to defend the rezoning decision.

"We voted not to spend county money to defend actions we could not in good conscience defend," Lucier said. So while the county's name remained as a defendant on the suit, only Lee-Moore continued to fight back.

Lucier noted that the original 20 acres of County Line Plaza land remains zoned for business and could long ago have been developed.

Bradley, who said his family has owned the parcel for more than 35 years, hopes the economy will improve enough to enable him to develop the land as early as this spring.

"We have always had a plan to put a commercial property on that site," Bradley said.

The Murdocks and Keesees have always known that land would one day be home to some sort of commercial project.

But it will not be a Walmart or some other big-box store.

That is their victory. Such as it is.