News

Homeowner mourns loss of buffer for trail

Roxy Goodwin looks out at her front yard.

By Bill Moss, Published: February 14, 2024

Roxy Goodwin pines for the days when she could look out at her flower garden, stone wall and gravel driveway, all safely buffered by a towering hedge of Leyland Cypress trees.

The trees are gone now. They were chain-sawed and hauled away one morning in December by the contractor building the Ecusta Trail, one day after a worker knocked on the door and told her husband that they had to go. Although she does not dispute that the trees were in the rail corridor — now owned by Conserving Carolina and leased to Henderson County for 150 years for the trail — Goodwin still mourns the loss.

“I am not a crier, but when I left this house the morning after it happened I just cried the whole way to work,” she said. “Now, every morning I start my day with resentment.”

The resentment is fueling Goodwin’s one-woman campaign to publicize what she calls “the dark side” of the Ecusta Trail.

“Since this happened on Dec. 12, I have been spending all my time trying to get the reality out there to the public, so that that will put some pressure on the developer to offer more consideration to the landowners that are farther down the trail,” she says.

County responds to concerns

Henderson County’s response is handled chiefly by the two-person team of Marcus Jones, the county engineer, and Christopher Todd, director of business and community development.

“Any complaint that we’ve received right now we’ve triaged to either myself or Marcus,” Todd said. “Most of those complaints have resulted in us — because we’re very willing to —going out to meet on site with the homeowner. We’ve talked with them and we’ve tried to come to a response that we can stand by under the restrictions that we have as property lessee on the corridor.”

In meetings with the Board of Commissioners and the Rail Trail Advisory Committee, Jones and Todd routinely emphasize their willingness to meet with property owners that have questions, concerns or complaints. Those have been rare, Todd says, even as the rails and ties were removed and, in recent months, construction activity begun.

“We’ve not received a huge amount of complaints, in all fairness,” Todd said. “We’ve removed trees for three primary purposes: for the need for drainage, for easements, for viewsheds to make sure all the intersections are clear where there’s conflict points between cars and pedestrians, and for construction for the alignment of the trail.”

In Goodwin’s case, the tall buffer between her driveway posed a hazard for sightline reasons, he said.

“That one had to be done because the cypress hedge was so close to the intersection there was a conflict point with traffic,” he said.

Notice of encroachment

Chuck McGrady, who until recently was chair of the county’s Rail Trail Advisory Committee, said he was familiar with Goodwin’s case.

“She got a notice from the county that she was encroaching and she did absolutely nothing,” he said. “When she came home one day and the trees were gone, she exploded. … Ultimately this is a property issue here. Maybe they could have provided better notice but bottom line is the trees were in the right of way and needed to be moved so they can build the trail.”

The letter — actually from the subsidiary Conserving Carolina formed to purchase the trail — notified Goodwin in August 2021 and her husband that their stone wall and driveway were within the right of way.

“This letter hereby provides formal notice that Ecusta Rails2Trail LLC grants permission for the encroaching items on the property until further notice,” it said. “You need not take any steps regarding encroaching items at this time.”

“We never got written notification that the trees were going to be removed,” Goodwin said.

If she and her husband had been given more time, she believes they could have hammered out a compromise.

“We could have met, we could have talked about a plan, we could have collaborated,” she said. “In my mind all they had to do was put up a stop sign (on the trail) and have the pedestrians stop and make sure it was clear before they crossed the driveway.”

It’s possible the county could still remedy the damage.

“I have been in contact with Marcus Jones and he has said that they are working on a plan to try to plant something for me,” she said. “I feel like if I had not raised my voice about this nothing would be done.”

And she said she continues to hope that the contractor will put more emphasis on communicating their plans when landowners’ encroaching trees or structures have to be removed.

“What’s happened to us can’t be undone. So what I ask is that it be better for those” in the next 14 miles, she said. “That’s why I’m doing putting in all this work — to try to advocate for all the landowners who are coming after me.”

Collaborating on a solution

McGrady emphasized that the few property owners who remain aggrieved after meeting with Jones or Todd are the exception. A more typical example, he said, was the collaborative effort of the county and Agudas Israel, which lost a major sound and sight buffer along White Pine Drive.

Temple leaders “suddenly realized those trees were going to be coming down with the Ecusta Trail and my sense is they worked it out,” he said. “They understood they were in the right of way and the trees needed to go. They were going to be unsafe.”

Todd confirmed the temple’s barrier had to go.

“They had to be removed for trail alignment,” he said. “The trail is so close to White Pine that it’s requiring a guardrail for safety. And so the trail is getting realigned away from that, which is why those trees had to be taken down. We are going to look to see if there’s an opportunity to help restore that buffer as we move through construction.”

Claims proceeding toward trial

Goodwin and her neighbors, Andy and Colleen Braznell, are among hundreds of property owners who have claims for payment for property the trail is taking. The St. Louis-based law firm Lewis & Rice, which specializes in getting landowners compensation in rail-trail projects, represents many of the plaintiffs.

“The attorney appraised ours at almost $20,000, and then the government appraisal was $6,000,” Goodwin said.

The Braznells received news of a wide gap, too.

“The attorneys are saying roughly $50,000 for all three parcels and the government comes back and says $10,700,” Colleen said. “So our attorneys are not accepting that, and they’re probably going to go to trial in June of this year.”

In a letter to the Braznells on Jan. 31, attorney Lindsay Brinton said the firm is currently in the process of reviewing the work files of the government’s appraiser for the purposes of challenging the lower amount. “During this time, the government may approach us with a settlement offer,” she said.