A Tale of Two Towers: Atlanta & Charlottesville both dealing with Dewberry eyesores

Could city officials in the two cities work together to help solve this problem?

According to this Atlanta-Constitution Journal story, the city of Atlanta and Charlottesville appear to have the same John Dewberry problem.

Both cities have multi-story downtown buildings owned by Dewberry that have sat unfinished for years. Dewberry bought Atlanta’s Campanile office tower at Peachtree and 14th streets in 2010, and Charlottesville’s unfinished “Landmark Hotel” building in 2012, after CNET founder Halsey Minor abandoned the project. To put that in perspective, Savannah Sicurella, one of the ACJ reporters who wrote this story, was in third grade when Minor broke ground on the hotel.

I reached out to Atlanta and Charlottesville city officials in a group email recently, hoping they might communicate and brainstorm with each other about their shared problem.

“I am sorry this issue has connected our two cities,” Charlottesville Mayor Juandiego Wade responded. “Charlottesville would like to see the site redeveloped and hopes Mr. Dewberry would agree to an offer to purchase if he does not intend to invest in the property.”

”I’m happy to help however you think we could,” said Atlanta City Councilor Matt Westmoreland.

As this ACJ story mentions, Dewberry did put the Charlottesville property up for sale in 2024, received offers, but declined them.

However, while Atlanta official are trying to apply a hefty “blight tax” to the building, hoping to compel Dewberry to finish the building, Charlottesville city officials have mostly given up on efforts to get him to develop or sell the building. And they have not been willing to take action against Dewberry by deeming the building unsafe or blighted.

As councilor Lloyd Snook points out, applying a blight tax is something council doesn’t have the legal authority to do in Virginia.

“We can't tax property on the basis of what is planned — only on the basis of what it is actually worth right now,” he says. “ And at the moment, the fact that it is a half-built shell is actually holding the market value down, and therefore holding down his taxes.”

Still, as Snook points out, the tax assessment on Dewberry’s property has gone up 24 percent since 2020. He currently pays just over $90K in annual property tax.

As for taking action against Dewberry based on the condition of the building, Snook says the city “looked with some energy” at the question of whether Virginia law authorized them to take such action a few years ago.

“The problem was that the Dewberry didn't fit the definition in the Code of "blighted" or "derelict," he says.

The city can take action against a “derelict” building, as defined in §15.2-907.1(1):

The owners of property therein shall at such time or times as the governing body may prescribe submit a plan to demolish or renovate any building that has been declared a “derelict building.” For purposes of this section, “derelict building” means a residential or nonresidential building or structure, whether or not construction has been completed, that might endanger the public’s health, safety, or welfare and for a continuous period in excess of six months, it has been (i) vacant, (ii) boarded up in accordance with the building code, and (iii) not lawfully connected to electric service from a utility service provider or not lawfully connected to any required water or sewer service from a utility service provider.

“The structure has certainly been vacant, and it is boarded up, and while I think that it is connected to electric and water utilities, I don't know,” says Snook. “Most importantly, though, it is not a danger to the public's health, safety or welfare, again because it is not falling down.”

Actually, last year, Charlottesville’s Utility Billing Manager Richard Palumbo told me that the city didn’t have an existing utility account for the Dewberry property.

City Councilor Michael Payne sees things differently.

“I think we should learn from Atlanta and pursue a blight tax. And if authority doesn’t currently exist to implement that within Virginia, we should request authority from the General Assembly,” he says. Likewise, Paynes says the city shouldn’t abandon the previous effort to declare the property blighted.

“There is a legitimate basis for considering the unmaintained property a threat to health and human safety,” says Payne, “ given the large rat population and that seemingly no monitoring is taking place to know who might enter the structure, or what damage could have been done to the skeleton of the building.”

Indeed, I’ve wondered if the city code used to determine blight hasn’t been used broadly/aggressively enough. While the building isn’t crumbling apart, hasn’t there been “deleterious land use” that has been “detrimental to the safety, health, or welfare of the community”? I’ve seen definitions of blighted that include buildings that “attract crime, illegal dumping, or vermin.” As you may know, the building has been infested with rats. I’ve also seen definitions that say “boarded-up structures that threaten public safety or lower surrounding property values” are considered blighted. I’m sure the property owners at 109 Second St. SE and 115 East Water Street would say it adversely affects their property values. Indeed, it adversely affects the downtown mall’s general attractiveness/value.

Also, what about the weed ordinance? There are trees literally growing out of the side of the building!

Payne also thinks the city should take advantage of new legislation passed into law earlier this year that allows Virginia localities to tax land at a higher rate than buildings. The so-called land value tax law, which goes into effect July 1, is designed to lower the property tax burden on residential home owners, reward the construction of multifamily housing, and raise taxes on vacant and/or underutilized land.

“Which could at least create a small incentive for land owners to develop properties rather than leave them undeveloped for years,” says Payne.

Also, according to Payne, the summary of some of his thoughts in the ACJ article were “slightly off.” Particularly this one:

“Payne doesn’t believe a hotel is the best use for the site. There isn’t a huge tourism market in Charlottesville outside of the university or President Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello, a few miles southeast of downtown. In the years following Dewberry’s acquisition, other hotels were built in the city.”

“I didn’t mean Charlottesville doesn’t have a tourism industry,” he says. “ I think UVA is a primary driver of that industry, along with Monticello, wineries, weddings, hiking…. likewise, I didn’t mean a hotel couldn’t be economically viable. I just think apartments at that location would provide greater community benefit versus a hotel.”

Many people like to blame 2017’s newly elected Charlottesville City Council, and councilor Michael Payne specifically, for reversing and voting down a plan to offer Dewberry tax incentives and guaranteed parking spaces to build the hotel project, but Dewberry was given a tax incentive deal in 2017 for his Atlanta project and that still didn’t get built. Also, Dewberry bought a building in Charleston, NC for a hotel project (which was finished in 2016 but took 8 years to build) and the Atlanta building before he bought the Charlottesville building, so the Charlottesville building is still waiting in line. And as the ACJ article says, the pandemic halted the Atlanta project, as it did many developments. Might have Dewberry built the Charlottesville hotel project if the tax incentives weren’t voted down? It seems unlikely.

Lastly, I love these photos in the ACJ article by Kirsten Luce, a photojournalist who grew up here, and has since returned, and whose work has appeared in the The New York Times, The Washington Post and National Geographic. They really capture the dark, dilapidated, and foreboding presence of the building on our downtown landscape. And one properly illustrates the sad attempt to cover it up with an artistic wrap and call it a music box.

Also, nice to see that my use of the term “Rat Hotel” and the ticker clock I created got some attention!