Griffith Hotel saga not over...Defendants to appeal

aShortChronicle has learned that Defendants in the Griffith Street Hotel lawsuit have given notice they plan to appeal the court order handed down by Judge W. Robert Bell nullifying the rezoning decision allowing the project.

No details are available at this point as to exactly what will be appealed.  The notice from Roy Michaux, the attorney for the developer and land owner, simply indicates that an appeal is on the way.  Defendants will submit a brief at some point in the near future with the details of exactly what they are appealing.  Then, the Plaintiffs will have a period of time to respond - likely 30 days.  At some point after that, this will be heard by the NC Court of Appeals in Raleigh.  This update was received in a conversation with Luke Charde on Thursday.  Charde is the lead plaintiff in the case.

Here is what is known at this point.

In the Order submitted by Judge Bell on July 9th, it indicates the Developer and Land Owner defendants instructed the Court to assume the Plaintiffs had standing for the motions being heard at the May 22nd hearing that resulted in the Order.  The Order also states that "as a result of the Town of Davidson's failure to comply with applicable procedural requirements, the Rezoning...is hearby declared invalid and void ab initio, and the zoning immediately prior to the Rezoning shall remain in effect."  Ab initio is Latin for "from the beginning", or in this case it means as if the Rezoning never happened.

In practical terms, what the Order means is that to build the hotel, the project would have to go back through the rezoning process, and the Town would actually have to follow its own rules - rules the Town acknowledged in court filings it did not follow correctly the first time.  The fact that the defendants would rather appeal this in Court than go through a process that simply follows the rules says quite a bit.

Regardless of how this case ultimately turns out, it has already revealed how flawed things were at Davidson Town Hall when it came to Town Staff's handling of this matter.  To date, nobody has been held accountable for that.