Former sales manager says loop notice stifled by Keystone
GREENSBORO — A former sales manager for Keystone Group says the company stopped her from giving potential customers an early warning of the Urban Loop’s impact on a town house community in northwest Greensboro.
Former Keystone employee Betsy Lamb was told to remove a “disclosure statement” about the road from sales packets given to first-time visitors at Keystone’s Liberty Square neighborhood off Old Battleground Road, she said.
Lamb inserted the statement after learning that recently updated plans for the Loop could take out three of Liberty Square’s 12 buildings, including six newly built town houses worth about $1.5 million, Lamb said.
“The statement just said the Urban Loop was coming through and it could affect the area. He made me pull that,” Lamb said of Keystone’s president, Scott Wallace. “He thought that was a negative early on (in the sales process). He thought we should get them locked into the community first, then tell them.”
Keystone executive Wallace said Lamb’s charges are false but declined a request to address them specifically.
“Keystone vehemently denies her accusations, and is handing this matter over to our counsel for further review and appropriate legal action,” Wallace said by e-mail Friday afternoon. “We have never asked Ms. Lamb or any other Keystone employee to withhold Urban Loop information from our customers or potential customers.”
Keystone Group has been in the news recently because another of its developments, the Quail Oaks subdivision in northeast Greensboro, also is in the Urban Loop’s path.
In that case, the state Department of Transportation will have to spend millions of dollars buying about 15 new homes in Quail Oaks, relocating the displaced owners and rebuilding part of the new subdivision’s road system to make way for a newly expanded exit ramp.
Some residents of Quail Oaks said they were not fully informed by Keystone, even after Wallace and a partner in that project attended a January meeting at which DOT unveiled maps showing the larger ramp.
Several Liberty Square residents said last week they knew the Urban Loop would come through their part of town, but were not told how close it could be.
If the Loop continues on the course shown now in DOT’s construction-ready plans, taxpayers would have to buy the three duplexes, demolish them and help relocate any owners.
Five of the affected town houses remain unsold; neighbors said the sixth belongs to a disabled woman and her adult son, who lives overseas. Efforts to reach her for comment last week were unsuccessful.
Liberty Square is a development of 25 town houses on a small piece of land that housed the Battle Forest Friends Meeting until several years ago, just north of Guilford Courthouse National Military Park.
But like Quail Oaks:
l Liberty Square is being developed right next to land identified as part of the Loop as far back as 1996.
l It sits on property rezoned more recently by city officials with little, if any, discussion of the future interstate highway’s potential for disruption.
l It is now jeopardized by relatively recent changes in DOT’s 13-year-old plans for the last, three segments of the 44-mile Urban Loop to eventually encircle the city.
Plans for the Loop through northwest Greensboro veered into Liberty Square last spring as road engineers in Raleigh fine-tuned the design for that section of the Loop, which will go from Bryan Boulevard to Lawndale Drive.
That segment is not scheduled for construction until sometime after 2015. But it is often mentioned by local political, business and transportation leaders as a high priority they hope to put on a fast track.
In fact, money is about all that stands in the way, said Craig McKinney of Greensboro’s municipal department of transportation: “These plans have gone far enough, they are ready for construction as soon as funding becomes available.”
Lamb said she was picked to manage the sales effort at Liberty Square last fall after performing similar duties at another Keystone development.
She said it’s fair to describe her as a disgruntled former employee. She worked for Keystone from July through February, when she was fired for reasons that she said are not clear to her.
Lamb said she checked the status of Liberty Square with local transportation officials in October because she wanted to be knowledgeable.
Real estate agents must tell buyers of any significant fact, such as future road plans, if the issue is serious enough a reasonable person would want to know it before buying. Agents can lose their licenses if they don’t.
Another reason for putting the warning in sales packets was it allowed her to live with a clear conscience, Lamb said. “If I work in that community, I have to see these people on a daily basis. I have to live with whatever I’ve done.”
It caught her off guard, Lamb said, to learn the Urban Loop might intrude on the development. Before informing her superiors, she asked transportation planners to send her a copy of the official map showing the right-of-way’s new course.
She placed it in Wallace’s hands at an Oct. 10 sales meeting, Lamb said.
“When I approached Scott about the Urban Loop, he said we thought it was not affecting Liberty Square,” said Lamb.
So she added the disclosure statement to her brochures. She heard no more until Dec. 19, when another Keystone employee told her on Wallace’s behalf to remove it, Lamb said.
A different employee called several days later, again at Wallace’s behest, to remind her the warning needed to go, she said. She meant to follow the company president’s directive, Lamb said, but had not gotten around to it.
“He went by there (Liberty Square) that weekend and found that it had not been pulled,” Lamb said of the statement. “I didn’t understand how passionate he was about it. I didn’t understand the urgency he felt.”
The issue was not whether to disclose that the Urban Loop existed, but when to let the cat out of the bag, Lamb said.
Keystone preferred to do it as a sale moved forward, often when interested buyers met with company representatives to put together a contract to buy one of the units, Lamb said
In her opinion, she said, it was more fair and aboveboard if the issue was laid on the table right at the get-go.
Liberty Square residents Lester and Debbie Jones said they did not learn about the Loop until they were finalizing their purchase contract last May and noticed, among papers to be signed, a statement that the Loop would be “in the vicinity of Cotswold Avenue” nearby.
The Keystone representative did not volunteer an explanation, the Joneses said Friday.
“I asked,” Debbie Jones said. “She was like, 'No, I don’t think you have anything to worry about.’ ”
“It was just a brush-off comment,” Lester Jones said.
They went ahead and signed the statement acknowledging their awareness of the road, which will be Interstate 840 through that area.
Their neighbor, Rob Moore, remembers learning about the Loop not from Keystone but from a separate real estate agent who was representing him and his wife, Marcia, in their purchase.
Moore went to the state DOT’s local office and met with a highway planner who told him it would be years before the road is built and it would stay clear of Liberty Square.
That was about 18 months ago, Moore said Friday.
The information was accurate then, but the road’s path has changed because DOT engineers took the unusual step of routing it slightly outside the official corridor identified in 1996, said Mike Mills, DOT’s divisional engineer for Guilford and four other counties.
Highway designers almost always stay within such corridors, and he’s not sure why they didn’t this time, Mills said.
Meanwhile, Lamb said she is not cowed by the thought her former employer might take legal action against her.
“I have kept very accurate and specific notes,” she said.
Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com
Accompanying Photos
Photo Caption: Some Some Liberty Square residents say they did not learn about the loop until they were finalizing their purchase contract. The agent told them they had nothing to worry about.
Liberty Square chronology
SUMMER 1996
- Landowner Charles E. Nelson deeds a 5-acre tract at the edge of the Battle Forest neighborhood to the Battle Forest Friends Meeting.
- NC DOT engineers file plans for the western Greensboro Urban Loop along the northern edge of the Friends’ property.
SPRING 2005
- Would-be developer Dixie Hull has a contract to purchase the land from the Friends group.
- The Greensboro Zoning Commission approves Hull’s plan to build 25 town houses on the 5-acre site, over the objections of some nearby residents worried about traffic congestion. Vote: 8-1, with one abstention.
- Site loses previously planned sound barriers under federal rules banning noise protection for new houses along a corridor for a future road.
FEBRUARY 2006
- North Carolina Yearly Meeting of Friends, recipient of land from discontinued Battle Forest Friends Meeting, completes sale of land to Hull for $375,000.
MAY 2006
- Hull decides not to develop newly bought land, sells instead to Keystone Group for $512,500 .
2007
- Keystone Group builds 25 town houses in a 12-building layout similar to original design, units selling $224,000 to $290,000 .
2008
- May 15, roadway engineers in Raleigh finish construction-ready design for Western Urban Loop.
- New right-of-way line runs south of original plans, cutting through six units of Liberty Square development.
Sources: Guilford County Register of Deeds, N.C. Department of Transportation, City of Greensboro, Interviews
Completing the loop
About 25 miles of the Greensboro Urban Loop’s 44 miles have been built. Here’s the outlook for the last three segments:
- Next, from U.S. 70 to U.S. 29 on the city’s eastern side: Final land purchases start this year, construction beginning in 2012. Estimated cost: $132 million.
- From Bryan Boulevard to Lawndale Drive, the last leg on the loop’s western side: Final land purchases and construction sometime after 2015. Estimated cost: $213 million .
- From U.S. 29 to Lawndale Drive across northern Greensboro. Likely last section built, not scheduled. Estimated cost: $115 million .
Big Changes Ahead
- The area north of Guilford Courthouse National Military Park will see some of the Urban Loop’s most profound changes in local traffic patterns. When built the project will:
- Turn the lower part of Old Battleground Road into a cul-de-sac, just south of what is now Cotswold Avenue .
- Link the northern part of Old Battleground to extended Lake Brandt Road, which will go over the Loop on a bridge and link with what remains of Cotswold Avenue on the other side.
- Provide a pedestrian bridge over the new road network for the Bicentennial Greenway through that area.
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