Durham has already invested more than $7 million in redeveloping the Rolling Hills site where two earlier developers tried and failed.
Now it turns out the city has to spend $68,257 more that it had not counted on.
The money is going to pay off a loan that Rolling Hills's first developer, NCM Development Corp., made to the second developer, the Southeast Durham Development Corp., in 1995.
The city sold the Rolling Hills site to NCM in 1985. After NCM gave up on building and selling a residential subdivision, it sold the undeveloped property to SEDDC. In 2003, the city repossessed the remaining property for SEDDC's failure to finish.
Now, the city plans to sell part of the 20-acre Rolling Hills site to developer McCormack Baron Salazar for $1. That requires the city to have a clear title, but when community development staffers did a due title search they discovered that, when the city repossessed, it acquired an unpaid debt of more than $91,000.
According to Community Development Director Reginald Johnson, NCM representatives agreed to settle for $68,297. The City Council gets to discuss the arrangement at its work session Thursday.
