Dozens of residents showed up to Savannah City Council’s regular meeting on Thursday, July 11 to voice concerns about the council’s vote on a proposed petition to allow a storage facility to be built on the property at 2180 E. Victory Drive. Council members were confronted by the residential opposition, who pressed their desire for multifamily housing on the property instead of a self-storage facility. After almost an hour of discussion and debate, the vote resulted in a 4-4 tie, meaning the petition to rezone the property from residential to commercial was denied. Alderwoman Alicia Miller-Blakely was not at the meeting; a majority vote is needed to pass motions through City Council.

The 1.77-acre property in question is owned by a member of the Chatham County – Savannah Metropolitan Planning Commission (MPC), Jeff Notrica. It is adjacent to the administrative buildings for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Savannah.

Connect Savannah has previously reported on the property’s future. Thursday’s vote was preceded by plenty of conversation and opinion coming from some of Savannah’s primary decision makers.
“The decision we have to make is this: Do we want this to become a city of storage facilities? We have to be careful about the precedent we are setting,” said Mayor Van Johnson. He voted “nay” on the motion to approve the petition brought forth by attorney Joshua Yellin. Nick Palumbo, Kurtis Purtee, and Carol Bell were the other votes against.

“I support more time (before a vote),” Palumbo said. “I think a move away from multi-family housing is a mistake.”

Lina Wilder-Bryan is the Alderwoman representing District 3, where the property is located. She was one of four approving votes on Thursday, along with Dr. Estella Edwards Shabazz, Detric Leggett and Bernetta Lanier. The proposed plans for the property once involved the building of a 79-unit apartment complex (see below). Those plans, Notrica says, involved the preservation of an 86-year-old building already on the property. The house at the address is historic for many; it was built by a prominent local black dentist named Dr. Nathaniel Collier in 1938. It became the residence of the Toomer Family in 1988 until Notrica purchased it in 2018 in an estate sale.

Notrica says a Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) study into the traffic along Highway 80 (Victory Drive) prevented the addition of a “cut-in” on the median dividing Victory Drive’s four lanes in half. The City of Savannah traffic department would not move on the traffic adjustments needed for a new apartment complex, Notrica argues.

“It’s just not possible (to keep the Collier-Toomer home) there,” he said during a phone call with Connect Savannah on Thursday evening. “I came up with a plan that would put 79 units of apartments there and save the original structure. It was recommended for denial by the MPC staff. It was approved by the MPC board, but the condition was that it had to go and get a traffic study to get the City of Savannah to approve it. But I never could get the City of Savannah Traffic Department to sign off on it, so I was never able to bring it to the City Council myself. Effectively, we were going to attempt to save that house, but it never happened because I couldn’t get through to the city traffic department.”

Since then, he says the plan was to find something that won’t attract as much traffic: Enter the self-storage strategy.

“You can’t find anything that has (a) lower traffic impact than self-storage,” Notrica told Connect Savannah in June. “A 36-unit apartment building will have about 10 times the traffic count of the self-storage.”

Brooke Powell, a local real estate professional and resident of the area, said she started a petition against the proposal (using the website Change.org) and it received more than 1,800 signatures in just two weeks time. She, like Victory Heights Neighborhood Association Vice President Lynn Adams, argued that there have been offers to Notrica for buying the house.

“It’s only vacant because the developer wants it vacant,” said Adams during a phone call with Connect Savannah after the council meeting. “I mean, through this process, we have found multiple people that have made offers and want to restore that house and use it. He has said no to every one of (the offers).”

Notrica adamantly denies the claims.

“Absolutely no one has approached me to live in the house,” he said. “They are going around saying that, but it’s just not true.”

With City Manager Jay Melder unable to attend, Assistant City Manager Heath Lloyd aided council in his stead on Thursday. The City Manager’s recommendation was to delay the vote on the petition (made by Yellin) to rezone the property from residential-general to commercial-suburban.

“I do not think that is the right way to go,” Lloyd said. “I recommend delaying the vote, at least another 30-60 days.”

A text message asking for comment was sent to Yellin’s cell phone on Thursday evening but he did not reply. Melder said earlier this month that Savannah “does not have enough housing.” Many residents who spoke at Thursday’s meeting cited the housing issues as a primary reason for being opposed to the storage facility.

“Our community needs housing, not more storage facilities. It would be an ideal place for residential development to expand housing opportunities in Savannah,” said one male resident.

MPC board members, on June 11, narrowly passed a vote (6-4) for recommendation of approval to the City Council, which then voted on the motion to rezone one month later, on July 11. Notrica recused himself from that June 11 vote at the MPC, and he did not speak at Thursday’s City Council meeting despite being there. He still owns the property and therefore can seek other avenues for utilizing it, but 2180 Victory Drive LLC, the company owned by Notrica and represented by Yellin on Thursday, cannot bring the matter back to City Council for another 12 months.

“I don’t know where we go from here to be honest. I have to think about that,” said Notrica. “This version of the petition is dead. It’s not going to happen.”

The MPC hears and makes decisions on zoning-related petitions in unincorporated Chatham County and the City of Savannah. Its board is composed of 12 members, each appointed by Chatham County and the City of Savannah, as well as two ex-officio members: the County Manager and City Manager.
Notrica began serving on the board two years ago after being a selection of the County. The same year, on April 28, 2022, he was appointed to the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) by Mayor Johnson.

“It’s disappointing, but this is the way the system works. It’s just very challenging to move the ball forward,” Notrica said. “I think a key takeaway that nobody talks about is, you know, the current property taxes on this property are $6,000-$7,000 per year. The self-storage property would have been paying in excess of $200,000 a year. That money would’ve gone to the county and the city. No one has brought it up. They don’t even think about it.”

City Council meets again on July 25; MPC meets next on July 23.

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This article appears in Connect Savannah I July 2024.