It's a Conspiracy!

The 1996 settlement agreement governing development on the site of the now-abandoned Wal-Mart project at MoPac and Slaughter Lane -- a deal now at the heart of a conspiracy-themed lawsuit by the site's owner against the city and Stratus Properties -- was subject to just two minutes and 30 seconds of public discussion before the then City Council approved the far-reaching agreement on a 5-0 vote.

The two council members at the time most likely to have opposed the deal -- Max Nofziger and Brigid Shea -- were both missing in action on Feb. 1, 1996, a day that's remembered more for the ice storm that paralyzed the city than for the land deal that would later become City Hall's albatross. Now, S.R. Ridge LP, the Arizona-based partnership that owns the environmentally sensitive land, has filed a lawsuit claiming that both the city and Stratus schemed to thwart Wal-Mart and Endeavor Real Estate Group's plans to buy and develop the tract as a retail complex anchored by a 206,000-square-foot Supercenter -- a project that united Stratus with its former foes in the environmental community and with Southwest neighbors appalled at the potential impact of a friendly neighborhood big box.

In the suit filed Nov. 20 in federal district court, S.R. Ridge levels breach-of-contract charges against the city, claiming that Mayor Will Wynn threatened to hold hostage two other pending Wal-Mart zoning cases -- for Supercenters at I-35 and Slaughter and on Ben White between the interstate and South Congress -- until the retailer and Endeavor agreed to drop the plans for a superstore over the Edwards Aquifer. The lawsuit further accuses Council Member Daryl Slusher of conspiring with Stratus to help fuel (and fund) environmental and neighborhood opposition efforts; the suit charges that Stratus was actually interested in protecting the competitive value of its own nearby property as a potential site for an HEB supermarket. The suit also states that Stratus sought to buy the S.R. Ridge property on the day after Wal-Mart pulled the plug on its plans.

Many of the lawsuit's allegations rest on a series of e-mail exchanges between Slusher, Stratus, and environmental and neighborhood leaders and consultants. These files were obtained from the city through an open records request filed by the plaintiff's lawyer, Brian Cassidy, the same attorney who helped broker the original agreement on the landowner's behalf. (Cassidy has also worked for the Texas Department of Transportation and is currently legal counsel to the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority -- whose future toll-road plans could conceivably be affected by the viability of development in the environmentally sensitive areas along South MoPac.) These same documents were then obtained by the Austin American-Statesman, which has devoted a great deal of coverage to the revelations they supposedly contain.

The terms of the 1996 agreement left the city with little bargaining power as it tried to convince Wal-Mart to either downsize its proposed development or abandon the MoPac/Slaughter site altogether. The tract already has commercial zoning in place, and the agreement allows for three times the impervious cover that would otherwise be allowed on the site under the 1992 Save Our Springs Ordinance. Those entitlements could have allowed S.R. Ridge to fetch a tidy $8 million sum had Wal-Mart and Endeavor moved forward on the project and acquired the land.

At the time Wal-Mart pulled out, it seemed clear that they were bowing to community pressure, but the grassroots opposition effort is given short shrift in the lawsuit. Instead, it paints a picture of collusion and conspiracy between city elected officials and Stratus, which, the lawsuit points out, even paid one of its former opponents, environmental and political consultant Mike Blizzard, to add juice to the ongoing opposition efforts.

Like S.R. Ridge, Stratus has been the beneficiary of a land development deal approved by the City Council. That 2002 agreement, however, was subject to a very public airing that ultimately forced Stratus, after months of hearings and negotiations, to make a number of environmental concessions -- including overall impervious cover limits much more stringent than those in the S.R. Ridge deal, as well as a ban on big-box retail on Stratus property. Even at that, the 6-1 vote to approve the Stratus deal -- the culmination of a series of council hearings with more than 700 speakers -- was roundly booed by those in the audience.

By contrast, a videotape of the Feb. 1, 1996, council meeting shows that there were few people on hand to witness the vote on what was then called the Monaghan agreement, after S.R. Ridge principal Jim Monaghan. At the time, former City Attorney Andrew Martin noted that the final draft of the deal was still in the tweaking stages. Mayor Bruce Todd held up a copy of the resolution and joked, "it's not a secret agreement," before noting with more seriousness that what council members were about to vote on was an "important, policy-setting" document. With that, the council sealed the deal in one swift and final vote before moving on to the next item on the agenda.