Homes built, but no street: Did city goof?

What do you do when the developer who built your house goes out of business before he builds the street your house is supposed to sit on?

A group of homeowners caught in this mess wants the city to help them get their street built. (It probably doesn't hurt their ability to get the city's attention that they've hired former Mayor Richard Vinroot to be their attorney.)

Deputy City Manager Ron Kimble gave City Council a briefing Monday night. Some of the homeowners were in the audience. The street was to be an extension of Wright Avenue, which now dead-ends at a creek. The houses are near the Lomax Avenue entrance to the Charlotte Swim & Racquet Club off Sharon-Amity Road. Seven houses are built and have been sold. They have an alley in back, and they can roll their garbage bins to Lomax Avenue. The folks living there say their addresses are on Wright Avenue (the phonebook confirms this), and that GPS shows the street having been built. That tends to confuse the police and FedEx. They worry about whether emergency services could find them quickly in the event of a fire, crime or health problem.

But because the subdivision was laid out before the city's subdivision ordinance was adopted, Kimble said, it didn't fall under the ordinance's rules, and the builder, Mick El-Massri, didn't have to put up a street bond – to ensure the street got built. Now, the developer has defaulted and may be facing bankruptcy, Kimble said. (Locust Lumber Co. now owns some of the unsold property, but a court records search finds dozens of civil suits but no bankruptcy filing for the developer.) The houses are built – and there's no street.

A second clump of houses by the same developer, Mick El-Massri, sits on another section of unbuilt Wright Avenue off the dead end of Delane. Lisa Hunter, who's lived in one of the streetless houses for almost three years, said the developer had told her he was going to use the money from selling two of those empty houses to finally build their street. But the city wouldn't issue a certificate of occupancy – because there was no street built.

I went for a look after the council meeting. The situation is, truly, a mess. Multiple property owners are affected. The city's street policies call for Wright Avenue to connect over the creek, which will drive up the cost of building it. But the homeowners prefer that to a dead end, they say.

"It was in our contract that the road would be built within a year," Stacey Searson said. She and her husband Tom have been there about 2 1/2 years. "We thought we were legally protected."

City officials said they'll look into the quickest way to get the street built, and into preventing this situation from happening again. Indeed. Here's the scary part: Kimble said there are little infill lots all over the city that might fall into this same Catch 22.