I’ve never been shy about calling out Vero Beach City Councilman Joe Graves, whether for his misguided, blindside attack on a now-former airport director, his wrongheaded opposition to a mask mandate or his thin-skinned threat to resign over public criticism.
This time, though, he gets the benefit of the doubt.
It simply doesn’t make sense that Graves, whose Vero Beach roots run deep, would attempt to use his teenage son’s tragic death as a prop to get a sweetheart of a land deal from the county, merely so he could later abandon plans for a youth-activities complex and flip the property to a developer for a tidy profit.
He lives here. He has a law practice here. He has family and friends here.
His son’s foundation is here.
Do you really believe Graves would sell his reputation and forever soil his name in a community he loves for $500,000?
“I will not profit one penny off this land,” Graves told me last weekend, referring to the 11.6 acres of fields across 16th Street from Vero Beach High School.
I have no reason to doubt him, even as he continues to negotiate with county officials who want Graves to honor the spirit of the good-faith agreement they made in March 2017, when the county sold him the land – its appraised value was between $500,000 and $725,000 – for only $250,000.
For those who don’t remember:
County commissioners agreed to sell the land to the Jimmy Graves Foundation at the discounted price only because Graves promised to accept a deed restriction limiting the primary use of the property to recreational and youth-related activities.
However, that restriction was not written into the deed for some reason. After failing to establish the private-public partnership needed to create the sports and recreation complex he envisioned – and sinking what he said was “hundreds of thousands of dollars” into maintenance and improvements to the land – Graves transferred ownership of the property from the nonprofit foundation to a for-profit company he founded and owns.
Graves then put the property up for sale and now has a contract to sell it for $1.1 million to an Orlando-based real-estate developer.
That’s a nice profit, considering what Graves paid for the land, and the county believes it is entitled to some of that money. In fact, the county has proposed that, once the sale is completed, Graves keep $250,000 to cover his initial investment plus reimbursement for any money he spent maintaining and improving the property.
The rest of the proceeds, potentially more than $500,000, would go to the county and be used to fund recreation activities and build new ball fields at Hobart Park, which would be named after Graves’ son.
Also, the county would agree to release Graves from the deed restriction prohibiting development of the land and any commitment to limit the property’s use to recreational activities.
Graves countered with an offer to pay the county $200,000, recover his costs and use the remaining $400,000 to build a regulation-size track at the high school – something he said his son, who was an athlete, would’ve wanted.
With the issues unresolved in June, the County Commission voted unanimously to hire an attorney to pursue litigation to protect the county’s interests.
“We were concerned that the transaction would occur without Mr. Graves making a deal with the county,” County Administrator Jason Brown said.
Since then, the parties have continued to negotiate. Neither Brown nor Graves would divulge specifics of their conversations, saying they’ve agreed to keep them confidential, but both described their talks as “very productive.”
County Attorney Dylan Reingold went so far as to say he expects to present county commissioners with an “agreement that would resolve the issues” at their Sept. 15 meeting.
Neither side accepts responsibility for omission of the restriction prohibiting development of the land from the deed, which could become an issue if the matter gets to court – the restriction does appear in the sales contract. But no one wants to go there.
No one should need to.
This saga started with a rare, feel-good moment in which our local government embraced a family’s efforts to honor their 15-year-old son who died in a boating accident in 2016. Everyone had the best of intentions. All of us were filled with hope.
“Everyone was of the mindset that this was a wonderful thing for the community,” Brown said.
There’s no reason for it to end badly, even if those fields are eventually used to build multi-family housing, which would require the property to be rezoned by the city.
Whether a profit from the sale goes to baseball fields at Hobart Park, or to a regulation-size track at Vero Beach High School, shouldn’t be a deal breaker. If the sale to the developer goes through, Graves should get the $250,000 he paid for the property and be reimbursed for his maintenance costs, and the county should get the rest of the money, $500,000 or more.
Then everyone should gather at the new facility, wherever it is, and celebrate the life of Jimmy Graves.
