Greensboro council votes to settle suit with Cone Denim ... - Greensboro News & Record

GREENSBORO — The cost of the $30 million parking deck on South Davie Street just went up $735,000.

The City Council voted 8-0 late Tuesday to settle with Cone Denim Entertainment Center, an entertainment venue on South Elm Street.

Councilman Justin Outling, an attorney with the Brooks Pierce law firm, didn’t vote because of a conflict with the firm.

The settlement frees the city to build the deck on South Davie Street, the public part of a $70 million project that includes a privately owned Westin Hotel.

The project has been held up because of a dispute over an easement - a sliver of asphalt behind the venue. The city needs the property to build the deck.

But Cone Denim’s owners, Rocky Scarfone and Jeff Furr, had argued that the deck would interfere with tour bus access to Cone Denim’s back-stage area. Entertainers demand convenient backstage access, they owners said.

Without it, those acts would go somewhere else.

Under the terms of the settlement, Cone Denim will give the city its easement. in exchange for a driveway next to the building. The city will pay Cone Denim $650,000 plus $85,000 in legal fees.

Amiel Rossabi, Cone Denim’s attorney, said Tuesday that the owners are “pleased to have reached an amicable resolution with the city and very much appreciate the hard work and initiative of Mayor Nancy Vaughan, (interim) City Manager David Parrish and City Attorney Tom Carruthers that brought us to this resolution.”

Late last year, Rossabi petitioned the court for a preliminary injunction halting construction. On Jan. 29, Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Anderson Cromer heard arguments from Rossabi and city attorneys in Guilford County Superior Court.

But Cromer never issued a ruling, creating a defacto preliminary injunction.

In the interim, the city tore down one nearby building, but kept its word not to perform work that would interfere with Cone Denim’s back-stage access.

Cone Denim issue is one of several controversies surrounding the 850-space deck that the City Council agreed to build on South Davie Street and on either side of February One Place, in conjunction with a Westin Hotel behind Elm Street Center.

The hotel project involves several developers, led by local attorney George House and Randall Kaplan, a local businessman and philanthropist.

The city will reimburse the developers up to $30 million for the two-halves of the parking deck, which will be connected by a bridge over the street.

The Westin will be built on top of the south side of the deck. The other will include retail space that the developers will own.

For that to happen, the city must condemn the alleyway Cone Denim owns behind its venue at 117 South Elm Street.

Rossabi negotiated with the city for much of 2017, asking for design changes to the deck that would give tour buses the space they need. The city offered a concession that would have forced buses to back out onto busy East Market Street, something the venue’s owners called unacceptable.

The city had said it was too late in the design process to make more substantial changes to the deck.

But as recently as Feb. 28, the city proposed redesigning the portion of the deck underneath the Westin, according to a document the News & Record received through a public records request.

The $141,000 change includes eliminating support columns to add more parking spaces.

The Westin developers, who also are developing the parking deck, will earn a project administration fee of $12,840 for the design.

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