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Get Out of theWay!
Brian Robinson -- the mover who stranded a house on Providence Rd. -- is back on the streets
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Robinson's version of those facts, the version he presented to Goins, is different from Denning's. He claims that he didn't falsify his permit to move the house 1,000 feet down the road to Providence Presbyterian Church, that he got permission to put it there from a church official who later changed his mind.
That's part of the problem with state law on house-moving, said Denning. It doesn't require movers to get written permission to move a home onto a particular piece of property before they can obtain a moving permit. This had never been a problem with other movers until Robinson began moving homes onto land not zoned for it or land owned by people who later said they never gave him permission to put the homes there.
Robinson disputes that he caused the now-legendary rush-hour traffic jam, which he blames on NCDOT and CDOT officials who would not let him move the house once it stranded on the median. It would have taken him 10 minutes to get it out of the road, he says, if they had let him use his equipment, but they instead forced him to wait two hours while they sought official approval to use the equipment, which held up traffic. Robinson also said that from what he could tell, it wasn't necessary for them to have closed both lanes of traffic either, since the house was only blocking one lane.
But whatever the case, Goins apparently bought Robinson's arguments. Robinson still contends that Denning withheld his license for personal reasons.
"She doesn't like me, so she held my license," said Robinson. "She was trying to destroy me."
Now that Robinson has his license back in hand, he seems unconcerned about misdemeanor charges he faces in Union County related to the illegal house move in October.
"I had a court date for that, but I missed it," said Robinson. "They sent me a letter saying if I didn't do something, I can't remember what, they would fine me, so I knew it was no big deal."
Whatever the facts, Robinson, who has held an official mover's license for a total of four months, has had a profound impact on his industry, say folks who've been in the business for years.
"This has caused us to take two to three more days to get a permit because of all the red tape they've put on it now," says Emory Stephens, president of Crouch Brothers. "He's bad news. I feel sorry for a person that doesn't have any more judgment. We couldn't believe it either when he got his license back."
Reverend Tan Lee of St. Joseph Vietnamese Church on Sandy Porter Road was dismayed to learn the full details of Robinson's career last week. Lee, a Catholic priest who was supposed to live in the house Robinson stranded on Highway 84, said that the house, which now sits on church property, is still uninhabitable because Robinson has not completed work he was supposed to do on it according to a contract between Robinson and the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte, which purchased the house from Robinson months ago.
"Please tell him he needs to finish," said Lee, who paid for the move and the footer under the condition that Robinson would make the house livable after it was moved.
Pat Morgan, who issues house-move permits for the Charlotte Department of Transportation, has his doubts about whether the work on the house will be completed. "It will rot there, " said Morgan of the house.
Robinson has a more positive outlook on the current status of his business relationship with the diocese than Lee and Morgan do. "They want me to move as many houses as I can get moved," he says.
Trouble with neighbors
The residents of Tarawoods subdivision in Mint Hill were determined to keep a house Robinson moved onto a lot in their neighborhood from dragging down their home values. The homeowners' association raised money to sue Robinson, which forced him to bring the house into compliance with neighborhood standards, move it or demolish it. Or at least, that's the way the neighbors tell the story.
Robinson, again, tells a different version. It wasn't his fault that the house he moved to the neighborhood didn't meet the restrictive covenant standards, he said, because his lawyer gave him bad information. And though he did add on an addition to the house, he says he never had any intentions of allowing the neighbors to force him to move the house off the property.
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