County Commission Requests Hold On Permits For University Beach Project

TUSCALOOSA, AL — The Tuscaloosa County Commission on Wednesday unanimously voted to send a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers requesting a temporary hold on any permits issued to the developers of the controversial University Beach resort development in Northport.

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As Patch reported in September, a public notice was issued by the Army Corps of Engineers saying the University Beach developers have petitioned the agency for clearance to discharge fill material into 12.42 acres of forested wetlands, along with smaller parcels of non-forested wetlands and streams in the area of Mill Creek.

The public notice says University Beach LLC's initial construction plan was re-evaluated and modified to "minimize impacts" to nearby waterways, including changing the building and parking lot layout, incorporating a bottomless culvert and realigning internal roads.

What's more, University Beach developers have proposed the use of stream and wetland credits from an approved mitigation bank to allow for approved discharge — meaning, in theory, they could be allowed to pollute local waterways so long as they purchase offset credits.

The Commission was approached about issues over permits and District 1 Commissioner Stan Acker, whose district includes the proposed site of the resort, told Patch that for the Commission to make informed comments, leaders felt that they needed to have an actual copy of the permit application.

"I requested such a copy from the City of Northport along with copies of all relevant impact studies for this site regarding environmental, watershed, endangered species, flood plan, water quality, etc.," Acker told Patch, "which are all normally fairly standard practice. The City of Northport informed me that they did not have a copy of the permit application and as best we can determine there are also no impact studies, or at least none have been provided. In the absence of information, there is no way to make informed and intelligent comments on such a project."

Indeed, the City of Northport is also involved in a civil lawsuit over such feasibility studies for a project this size, with the city insisting that it has provided all of the documents requested that are in City Hall's possession.

Due to the absence of any studies being made available to public officials outside of Northport, Acker said there is no way at this point to determine what impact this will have on county properties both upstream and downstream of the location.

In response, the Commission voted to send a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers requesting that the federal agency withhold all permit approvals for the project until county leaders can receive all detailed permit applications and impact study data.

The latest development for the project comes after Patch reported in September that the project saw a split City Council vote 3-2 in favor of the creation of a University Beach Improvement District that the developers' legal counsel said would now be used to assess and shop out the property.

District 4's Jamie Dykes and District 5's Anwar Aiken were the two votes against the creation of the University Beach Improvement District.

The Northport City Council reportedly considered only three appointees, all of whom are closely involved on the developer side of the project: Texas developers Kent Donahue and John Hughes, along with investor Katie Le of San Marcos, California.

The next step in the process for the City of Northport will be its contractual obligation to vote on the creation of a Cooperative Improvement District that would oversee the flow of sales tax revenue from City Hall to the developers on the project.

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