Butternut Investments must pay half of $48,900 in accrued penalties and finish long-delayed permitting under firm deadlines, or the permit can be sent back to the board for possible revocation.
By Staff
LINCOLNTON, N.C. — The Lincoln County Board of Commissioners on Monday approved an amended special use permit for a marine construction company’s property on N.C. 16 Business, but attached conditions requiring the owner to pay $24,000 in zoning fines and bring the site into compliance on a fixed timeline.
The case, SUP #508-A, involves Butternut Investments LLC, which county staff say has used a building permitted only as a residential storage barn for commercial purposes. The board first heard the request in September and reopened the public hearing Oct. 5 after asking staff for the structure’s permit records.
Vice-Chair Bud Cesena made the motion to adopt the applicant’s findings of fact with conditions read into the record by County Attorney Megan H. Gilbert. The board approved it without dissent. A follow-up motion by Commissioner Mark Mullen to approve the permit amendment also passed with no audible opposition.
Under the conditions Gilbert read, the applicant must:
- Submit all documents needed for zoning and building permits for the first phase of the project within 60 days, and a final, fully revised set of civil plans, architectural drawings and applications within 120 days.
- Pass all required inspections for phase one within 240 days.
- Pay $24,000 of the outstanding fines and fees within 180 days as full settlement of past and current zoning and code violations on the property.
If the development services director later finds the applicant in violation of the county’s Unified Development Ordinance or the conditions, the permit is to be referred back to the commissioners for review and possible revocation.
Fines totaled $48,900
Planner Jeremiah Combs told the board that fines on the property had reached $48,900 and could continue to grow if the owner does not move forward with permitting. He said staff learned in July 2023 that the site had been developed without permits and that the barn was being used commercially, and that the county has since sent a notice of violation, three citation letters and a status letter to the owner of record.
Combs said staff has not received a complete set of phase one drawings. The most recent submission lacked a landscaping plan prepared by a registered landscape architect or licensed engineer, which the ordinance requires, he said.
Asked by a commissioner whether the applicant was, in effect, “asking for forgiveness as opposed to permission,” Combs said that was “a fair statement” as a generalization.
Cesena initially said he did not want the board to act until the owner paid. “We don’t do anything until he pays his $48,000 fine,” he said. He then proposed requiring half the fines as a condition of approval, pointing to an earlier case involving a car lot on Highway 16 in which the board required payment of half the accrued fines.
Owner disputes county’s account
Dean Fischer, who identified himself as the primary member of Butternut Investments, told commissioners he was not aware of any violation until mid-2023 and that the original 2019 rezoning was a land-use approval that did not require a building.
Fischer said he received a certificate of occupancy for the barn in May 2020. “It plainly says certificate of occupancy,” he said. He told the board he has repeatedly asked county staff to explain the difference between a barn used for residential storage and one used for commercial storage and has not received an answer. He said his plans have been submitted for preliminary review and that he would provide sealed, engineer-certified drawings once staff comments are resolved.
Fischer described the business as a marine construction company that stores its own equipment and materials at the site and is not open to the public.
Combs disputed several of those points. He said the 2019 conditional rezoning allowed contractor’s offices and retail sales, including boat lifts, but not a contractor’s yard, which is not a permitted use in the General Business district. He said the barn was applied for, inspected and certified under the residential code as an accessory storage building, and that the “certificate of occupancy” label Fischer saw online is an internal inspection step, not a certificate the county issued.
“Even if a certificate of occupancy had been issued for this structure, it was permitted and inspected and would have been certified as a residential structure, not a commercial structure,” Combs said.
Before the vote, Combs asked whether the board should amend one of the applicant’s proposed findings, which stated the site “has been functioning since 2019 without any adverse effects.” Gilbert said she did not think a change was necessary, noting that no one had come forward to say the use harmed neighboring properties.
Leave a Reply