Hotel to get easement to river within days

An easement to the Trent River will belong to the owners of the Sheraton hotel in a matter of days.

"The Council of State did approve issuance of the easement so it's just a matter of working out the final details to get that document to move forward in the process," said Jill Lucas, spokeswoman for the state Department of Administration. "That should happen in the next several days and when the owners receive it, it will be on them to record the easement with the Craven County register of deeds."

The owner of the easement will be Marina Business Ventures, a limited-liability corporation that is backed by Dicky Walia. Walia is the founder and developer for the Soleil Group Inc., the Cary company that owns the Sheraton.

Because the city owns the 30-foot strip of waterfront land that has been tied to the easement, just who gets the water-access rights has been controversial. Those rights may play a part in whether boat slips at the hotel's New Bern Grand Marina can be marketed for sale or long-term lease.

The easement will be granted under a state statute that is different from the one usually associated with riparian rights - the rights of access or use that come with owning riverfront land.

The easement will be granted under a more general state law that says the state Department of Administration "may grant easements ... for the purpose of cooperating with the federal government, utilizing the natural resources of the State or serving the public interest."

The easement does not require transfer of any property between the city and the developer, Lucas said.

But beyond that information, there are more questions than answers.

It isn't clear when the easement will be final. It isn't clear what kinds of conditions the state may attach to the easement.

The State Property Office, an agency of the Department of Administration, is working on the easement. But Lucas said the specific conditions that are attached will not be available until the document is final.

"The rights and privileges of the citizens to use the waterfront are the same as they always were," Alderman Max Freeze said this week. "The land is still the property of the people of New Bern. The Sheraton doesn't own it. It doesn't own one single foot of it."

The state sought the city's approval before moving forward with issuing the easement to the hotel owners. Though the hotel's associates have held an easement to the river for some time, the state ruled in April that the original easement was issued on the basis of a "mistake of fact" as to who owned the waterfront land that the original easement went with.

New Bern Citizens for Active Waterfronts and Recreational Environments is prepared to challenge the state's actions. That organization is the one that asked the state to investigate the easement matter.

"This statute that the state is using has nothing to do with riparian rights and nothing to do with settling this thing," said Lee Bettis, a spokesman for the group, which calls itself New Bern AWARE.

"Doing something like this sets a dangerous legal precedent," said Bettis, who is also a lawyer. "It sends a signal that I can go apply for an easement to the public-trust waters sitting in front of the mayor's house and then put up a marina there, even though I don't own the waterfront land. He wouldn't like that, because I'd be encroaching upon his riparian rights."

"In this case, the Soleil Group is doing the same thing to the people of New Bern," Bettis said. "When one of those slips is sold, it's game over."