Deed restriction kills plan for urban farm in Beaufort

A deed restriction on Beaufort's Southside Park has killed a plan for a proposed nonprofit urban farm, a plan that might have been doomed anyway as city leaders learned about its director's legal tangles.

Paul Brody, an Okatie resident and director of Beaufort Community Farm, faces civil judgments in at least three North Carolina counties and is being sued by the golf community where his wife owns the couple's home. His proposed farm met its end Friday, when city attorney Bill Harvey told Mayor Billy Keyserling that a covenant on the park restricting its use to recreation would preclude Brody's ambitious design.

Keyserling told Brody on Monday.

"Garden plots would be considered recreation, but this has grown to such a point that it is beyond garden plots," Keyserling said.

Brody said in an email Monday that he would continue to look for a home for the farm. Attempts to reach him about his civil cases were unsuccessful.

"This will not deter us from looking elsewhere and are confident that this project will be an asset to any community where it finds a home," Brody wrote.

The farm is the third nonprofit the 60-year-old Milwaukee native has started in two years in South Carolina as creditors in North Carolina seek his assets.

Brody and his wife, Pamela, were ordered by a Rowan County Superior Court in March to repay $36,400 to the Historic Salisbury Foundation related to a lease-purchase agreement on a home the nonprofit preservation group owned, according to the lawsuit.

Brody asked for an extension on the original two-year agreement, that $30,000 he paid as part of the agreement be temporarily returned and that his rent be reduced and the difference kept in a personal account to show proof of funds needed to finance and purchase the home for $299,000, according to the complaint. In June 2013, a month after Brody formed a mediation business in South Carolina, he told Historic Salisbury director Brian Davis he was ending the lease-purchase agreement because of his wife's job transfer and never returned the money, the complaint reads.

"They left town with that downpayment assistance," Davis said Monday.

The Brodys told Davis the lease extension was necessary to satisfy lending criteria after the couple filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy because of personal loans used in Brody's construction business. In a 2011 letter to the foundation's board of directors about the Chapter 7 filing, Paul Brody said a slack real estate market led to him owing creditors $600,000 instead of making an expected $400,000 profit from selling four properties.

Davis said the home in question was donated to the foundation and that the Brodys had lived there. The couple bought a house on Callawassie Island for $152,752 in Pamela's name in May 2013, Beaufort County property records show.

Brody also had judgments against him in Gaston County and Union County, N.C., according to the Union County Clerk of Court.

A court employee said Brody also has a lien against him in Union County from Love Plumbing and Air Conditioning.

Callawassie Island Members Club is suing Brody and his wife for $5,931 in unpaid dues and assessments as of January, including interest, according to Beaufort County court records. Civil cases are first subject to mediation, per Beaufort County law.

Since moving to South Carolina two years ago, Brody formed the nonprofits Beaufort/Jasper Conflict Resolution Center, S.C. Mediation Network and Beaufort Community Farm, originally named Beaufort City Roots, according to state records.

In North Carolina, according to Secretary of State records, Brody started the following businesses:

• Opportunity Homes Inc. formed in Charlotte in 1989. The business was suspended by the state Department of Revenue in 1991 and dissolved three years later.

Pamela Brody filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy in North Carolina in 2004, according to court records.

Brody said during an interview about the farm Friday that his past experience also included owning his family's grocery store chain and screenwriting. He said he bought the movie rights to a book for $75,000, wrote a script himself and eventually found a buyer for $750,000. Sony shut the project down because of raised sensitivities after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Brody said.

Brody's proposed plan for Beaufort Community Farm spanned about 6 acres and included greenhouses, raised beds, chickens, a demonstration kitchen for teaching food preparation and a sample backyard garden.

Keyserling said the proposed deal would have fallen through because of the deed restriction, regardless of considerations of Brody's history.

"That would obviously paint a different picture," Keyserling said. "... It needs an explanation, as would all of that before we moved forward, but it's sort of a dead issue."

As for Southside Park, a planned dog park and walking trails are in early stages. A youth leadership group made up of area middle schoolers will plant the first seedlings of a city tree farm in the park Friday.

Follow reporter Stephen Fastenau at twitter.com/IPBG_Stephen.

This story was originally published May 18, 2015 at 8:27 PM with the headline "Deed restriction kills plan for urban farm in Beaufort."