By: Robin Ford Wallace, Staff Reporter

Dade County businessman Eugene Johnson confirmed last week that he is stepping in to give the Southern Group’s luxury second-home development at Rising Fawn, Wild Moon Ranch and Resort, formerly called the Preserve, a financial shot in the arm.

“The economy is bad but I’m not foreclosing on nobody,” said Johnson in a telephone interview Friday.  “I’m going to try to help people hold on to what they got and try to help them do it.”

Johnson, who sold the Johnson’s Crook property to Marion (Tenn.) County-based Southern Group in 2006, explained that he still had a proprietary interest in the project as a result of other financial dealings with the company.  “They gave me that for security on the Sawmill Trace and stuff, and the golf course and things,” he said.  “We’re delaying all payments on that for at least 24 months.”

Johnson’s aim, he said, is not to take the Crook back but to help the project go forward.  “I’m an old man,” he said.  “I think that other people may be a lot better to do things than me, so I’m going to try to help as much as I can as long as I think everybody is working together to develop this, the arena, the golf course and Johnson Crook, the whole thing.”

Interviewed the day before, Tommy Dobson, patriarch of the Southern Group, which otherwise consists of his son, Josh, and son-in-law, Travis Shields, also described Johnson’s role in the venture as infuser of much-needed cash.  “He stepped in in order to help us finish amenities and improve the property and that sort of thing, but we still are the owners of the property,” he said.  “It takes a lot of money in this economic time to finish amenities and pave roads and that kind of stuff.”

Dobson said he had stayed out of the company’s business since a recent stroke and preferred to defer questions to his son, but the younger Dobson did not return the Sentinel’s phone calls.

 “We want to make sure all of those things get done,” said the elder Dobson, “and so we may have to borrow money on our property in order to do that, and Eugene may be a source of that money.  But he wouldn’t take title to the property, he would just be placing a mortgage on the property to ensure us that we have the money to do those things.”

Johnson, meanwhile, said he would have to ask an attorney if he was legally entitled to reclaim the Crook, but stressed he had no interest in doing so.  “I’m interested in seeing it develop and be good for Dade County,” said Johnson.

What’s good for the county has always been a matter of lively debate among its citizens and leaders, but there will likely be little dissent as to the goodness of one of Johnson’s intentions:  to pay off the development’s back taxes.  “I’m going to make a deal to pay the real estate taxes, help them get the real estate taxes paid, but I surely will be appealing the taxes Jan. 1 on the next batch that they’re sending through,” said Johnson.

Johnson said that though he may pay the 2008 taxes the way the county has them figured, he finds them unreasonable and hopes to cut a better deal going forward.  “Right now, to pay the taxes due in Dade County on a piece of property that I was paying $14,000 a year on three years ago is $1,800,000, if you paid all the taxes owed on the lots and things here, and some of them you can’t even get to,” he said.  “So what do they expect people to do here?”

Actually, the Preserve’s 2008 tax liability on unsold lots was originally around $300,000, though the amount swells daily with additional penalties and interest.     

And what Dade County Executive Ted Rumley expects people to do is: pay up.  “Those taxes have got to be paid no matter what, I don’t care who owns it,” he said.  With the new tax bills going out next week, he said, Southern Group’s debt will shortly burgeon to nearly $700,000 if the older taxes aren’t taken care of now.

Tax valuation on the unsold lots, explained Rumley, is based on the prices fetched by the ones that did sell.  It was to Southern Group’s advantage early on for assessments to run high, he said, because it made the $125,000-250,000 price tag of the two-or three-acre lots appear more reasonable to investors; now that sales have slowed, it is not so advantageous in that it makes the taxes harder to pay. 

But going forward, said Rumley, foreclosure auctions and tax sales of Preserve/Wild Moon lots may well bring down their valuation for tax purposes.  “You know, a $125,000 lot, or $250,000 lot, according to the way it’s appraised, it might not bring $20,000,” he said.  This, he said, could affect future valuation of the lots.

The unsold lots belonging to the Southern Group are not currently eligible for tax sale, said Rumley, but some of the sold ones are.  “There’s several people out of that 100 lots that they sold, there’s several of those people that haven’t paid their taxes,” he said.  So Preserve/Wild Moon lots will be among those auctioned off in Jane Moreland’s annual tax sale slated for early November, he said.

Ms. Moreland said she does not yet have a list of the properties to be sold.

Meanwhile, two Preserve/Wild Moon lots were listed in The Sentinel’s legal ads as foreclosure properties last week, meaning that the buyers of the lots have failed to satisfy their mortgage obligations.  Those properties are available to be auctioned off on the courthouse steps this Tuesday, though legal sources explained that the more usual outcome in such cases is that the properties are simply repossessed by the financial institutions through which they are financed.

In any case, a courthouse search revealed that Dade County is not the only creditor hounding Southern Group for payment.  Liens for debts to a smattering of suppliers remain unsatisfied, most noticeably one from Wild Moon’s architect, Louis Wamp, whose $27,000 bill for design of a wellness center has never been paid.

Contacted for comment, Wamp confirmed his bill was in fact outstanding but said that he is still contractually bound to the project until it is completed or until he is formally released.  Architectural guidance, he explained, is required by building regulations.  “We’re licensed to protect the health and well-being of the public,“ he said.

Wamp said he hadn’t been to the Preserve/Wild Moon since a last site visit in November 2008.  “We got about halfway done and they closed it down,” he said. 

He wishes that the Southern Group would either pay up and release him or, by preference, go ahead and finish the project, which he describes as a spectacular building amid a spectacular setting, one which he and the general contractor would love to see through to fruition.  “It’s a double whammy, not to be paid and not to see it finished,” he said.    

By all appearances, another concern that may not see the project through is CW Craig and Associates, the Florida marketing firm that this year rebranded the second-home community, the Preserve, into the tourist-rental resort, Wild Moon Ranch, and has for all practical purposes managed the place since. 

Not anymore, perhaps.  “We’re kind of under some new management,” said Tommy Dobson Thursday.  “We’re taking more hands-on.”

But the Craigs, C.W. and his wife, Keren Davies, though noticeably absent from the resort during the Dobson interview, insisted when contacted via telephone in Florida, where their firm is headquartered, that their contract with the Dobsons is valid and their absence temporary.

“It’s hard to separate fact from fiction when you’re dealing in small-town politics,” said Craig.  He said he talked daily with Josh Dobson and was planning to return to Rising Fawn this Friday.  “The only thing we said we’re going to do is exactly what we’re doing, turning it into a resort and rental community, but it’s going to need the financial support and it’s going to need the local support of the community to make that happen.”

Whatever the Southern Group’s present relationship with the Craigs, Tommy Dobson also stressed the importance of community involvement.  Currently, he said, the company is hoping to incorporate a charity event to benefit the Food Pantry and needy children into the “Horse Whisperer” equestrian show, starring John Lyons, it has planned for the weekend of Oct. 30-Nov.1.  The benefit will be in conjunction with the Baptist church in Rising Fawn and in honor of Dobson’s late friend, Rex Wallin, he said.  Details will be announced as they materialize, he added.

“The business is really looking up for us now, I think,” he said.  “We’re making arrangements to pay the taxes and we’re trying to work with the community and just hope that we’re good citizens.”