Prime land divvied up for homes and church

After years of family disagreements, the Messinger homestead in Safety Harbor is sold for development.

By DEBORAH O'NEIL

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 16, 2000

SAFETY HARBOR -- Symbols of suburbia sprout along McMullen Booth Road north of the Bayside Bridge: parks, shopping centers, a new elementary school and tidy neighborhoods enclosed by walls.

In the middle of all this development is a rare find in Pinellas County: a grassy, oak-dotted expanse of vacant land, the largest in Safety Harbor and one of the largest in the county. For years, developers have coveted this strategically located slice of real estate, but walked away when they discovered what it would take to buy it.

But now the final 60 acres of the original 80-acre Messinger family homestead is set to become the site of a new subdivision and the home for a fast-growing church.

As for the rest of the land, the city of Safety Harbor snatched 10 acres for a city park, and a developer is building Cypress Hollow subdivision on another 10 acres that was separated from the whole many years ago.

So what has taken so long for such a large piece of land in the heart of Pinellas County to be developed?

"Usually the more difficult parcels to develop are the last ones to go," said Mark Klein of Klein & Heuchan Realtors of Clearwater. "It's an investment in time and probably a worthwhile investment in time if one put his mind to it."

This story involves three brothers, each with an equal interest in the land, who couldn't agree on its future. The latest chapters involve a church's tenacious effort to make the land its home and the last-minute change of heart by a developer that cinched the deal.

"I've spent most of my career in commercial real estate all over the United States, and I've never seen anything like this," said Tom Heironimus, president of Lehigh Properties, which is building Cypress Hollow and recently completed the deal that will give him 20 acres more for another subdivision.

"From the viewpoint of how it all came about, this was the most unique thing I've ever been involved with."

A tale of three brothers

The Messinger family moved to the land north of Sunset Point Road when the three brothers, now all in their 40s and 50s, were children, said Don Fletcher, a former Safety Harbor city commissioner and close friend of Bruce Messinger, who declined to comment for this story. The other two brothers, Jay and Grant, could not be reached.

"They grew up there," Fletcher said. "They worked cattle on it. It's just such a nice place."

Their father, John B. Messinger, left each of his sons an undivided one-third interest in 60 acres of the land. While Bruce and Grant moved elsewhere in the county, Jay has continued to live on the land.

Over the years, McMullen Booth Road grew up around the homestead. The road was widened from two lanes to six and the construction of the Bayside Bridge in 1993 secured its destiny as a major north-south corridor in the county.

Unlike the strip-mall clutter of U.S. 19, much of McMullen Booth Road would develop a more residential character. Neighborhoods with names such as "Weatherstone" and "Homestead Oaks" appeared, and a state-of-the art elementary school opened.

Naturally, the Messinger property, already zoned for residential construction, caught the attention of home builders. Marvin Rose, whose Tarpon-Springs Rose Residential Reports tracks construction trends, said the land's location with easy access to both Tampa and southern Pinellas makes it a very desirable location for single-family homes.

"There was tremendous interest in the property," said Clearwater Realtor Marshall Harris of Harris & Company. "It's a great site. It has great exposure on McMullen Booth Road. . . . There's not 60 acres south of Tampa Road."

Both U.S. Home Corp. and Centex were interested, said John Gerlach, vice president of Colliers Arnold real estate, which tried to help the brothers market the property.

"We worked on that for quite some time, and we had a number of offers on the property and even went to contract on some of them," Gerlach said. "All the big developers looked at."

The problem always came down to disagreements among the brothers about whether to sell the land and how much it was worth, Gerlach said.

No one could ever get all three brothers to agree to a sale, which had to happen for a deal to work. Potential buyers walked away exasperated.

"I used to drive by the land and think, "I wish I could get that, but I know I can't,' " said Heironimus of Lehigh. "It was a piece of property no developer wanted to touch."

Plotting to divide

In 1997, when Harborside Christian Church began to take interest in the Messinger land, the congregation had overgrown its State Road 580 complex.

The church sold its property for $2.75-million to Bayside Community Church of God in September 1998 and began worshiping at Countryside High School while it looked for a new home.

In the meantime, Bruce Messinger filed a lawsuit against his brothers in November 1998 asking the courts to deem the land indivisible and order it to be sold in a public auction so the proceeds could be divided between the brothers.

The courts appointed a lawyer, a real estate broker and an engineer to figure out if the land could be divided into three 20-acre parcels.

But it didn't work.

The three experts -- including Harris, the Realtor; engineer Michael Lloveras and attorney Patrick McGuire -- determined it would be "virtually impossible" to split the land equitably so all three would end up with the same amount of wetlands and developable land.

Dividing the land also would lower the value per acre, they noted. In December 1999, the three experts recommended against breaking up the land.

As this was happening, the church was negotiating with Bruce and Grant Messinger to try to buy their interest in the land.

Eventually, the negotiations were successful, and on March 29 the church paid $2.3-million for a two-thirds interest -- or 40 acres -- of the land.

But because no agreement had been reached about how to divide the land, the entire 60 acres headed for a public auction.

A judge set the auction date for April 26 at 10 a.m. on the courthouse steps.

As word spread about the sale, the church stood to lose everything, said Mike Osborn, Harborside's minister of administration and missions.

"'We heard there were developers coming from as far away as Fort Myers and Daytona to bid the property," Osborn said.

Enter Tom Heironimus.

The developer heard what was happening and saw an opportunity.

"What I truly planned to do was go the (auction) and bid it away from the church and take the whole thing," Heironimus said.

Then, three days before the auction on Easter Sunday, Heironimus was at his church, Espiritu Santo Catholic Church in Safety Harbor, when he decided on a different path.

"I felt I didn't need to be greedy," Heironimus said. "I don't mind having a church as a neighbor. It kind of came to me. I called some folks I knew at Harborside, and I said, "I've got an idea of how we can all be happy.' "

The idea was simple: If Heironimus could persuade Jay Messinger to sell his remaining interest in the land, there would be no need for the auction.

The new property owners could tell the courts there no longer was a dispute about division of the land.

With three days to go, Heironimus began talking with the last Messinger brother; and the day before the auction, they came to an agreement: Heironimus would pay just over $1-million for 20 acres.

"I just treated him with respect and recognized he actually loves the land," Heironimus said.

The morning of the auction, lawyers rushed around looking for a judge to stop the sale set to begin at 10.

"It was like something on television," Heironimus said. "About 30 minutes before the auction was to start, they got it before the judge and got it signed. If it had started, there would have been no stopping it."

And so there will be no public auction of the Messinger homestead. The church and the developer are drawing the lines that the brothers and experts could not. Initially, they have agreed Harborside will have the acreage on the west side for a new park-like campus with several buildings, and Lehigh will take the east side for a subdivision he hasn't named.

The two are talking about how to divide up 40 acres in the middle.

"We consider it a God thing, divine providence," Osborn said. "God has led us to the promised land, so to speak."

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