SAVANNAH ― Two signs front the vacant lot a block from this city’s favorite recreation space, Forsyth Park.
One advertises the nearly half-acre corner of real estate for sale. The other promotes the weed-infested expanse of cracked asphalt for paid parking.
Both signs went up last year, some months after the property’s owner, Jeff Notrica, bought three land parcels and proposed a professionally designed, 45-space, paved-and-lined surface parking lot complete with trees and other landscaping.
The juxtaposition between what was promised and what has been delivered so far is plain to see — and has inflamed long-simmering contempt for Notrica, a controversial player in Savannah real estate.
Critics call Notrica, whose local portfolio exceeds 40 properties, the worst sort of neighbor. The type that buys distressed but well-located properties, boards them up and then often waits many years for a market shift that brings a windfall, staining the neighborhoods around them in the meantime.
It’s a reputation that followed him a generation ago from Atlanta, where, as founder of Inman Park Properties, he was a polarizing figure from East Atlanta Village to Little Five Points and Virginia-Highland to Midtown. Some of his properties thrived, such as the abandoned machine shop on Moreland Avenue that became home to eateries Front Page News and Tijuana Garage, but his buy-and-hold investment strategy left many eyesores to age in place.
Credit: abcutrer@gmail.com
Credit: abcutrer@gmail.com
He is still active in Atlanta, recently purchasing one of Coca-Cola’s early bottling plants on the edge of Georgia State’s downtown campus. But he now calls Savannah home, and the coastal city has been the focus of his business activities since the Great Recession.
Just as in Atlanta, many of Notrica’s Savannah holdings are being called blights on the cityscape, angering residents who live next to his vacant buildings and unkempt lots. Those neighbors expect Notrica to fix up, or at least maintain, his properties.
Neighborhood associations have mobilized against him by successfully challenging rezoning requests and coaxing the city to fine him for advertising barren parcels as paid parking lots.
Protests have grown in recent years after Notrica joined two quasi-government planning and zoning boards. The commissions review development projects and proposed policy changes; their recommendations go to the Savannah City Council and Chatham County Commission.
In those roles, his detractors say, Notrica is like a fox in a henhouse.
“He’s not a good steward of his properties, which hurts the vibrancy of our neighborhoods, and his presence on the planning boards taints the process,” said Nancy Maia, neighborhood association president of the Victorian District, home to Notrica’s controversial parking lot.
Credit: Sarah Peacock
Credit: Sarah Peacock
Such rebukes sting Notrica. He said there’s “not a whiff of impropriety” related to his service on the planning boards, an assertion backed by the commission’s staff and other board members. He said few of his critics show interest in meeting with him and discussing concerns.
In a 45-minute interview, he also noted that “nobody talks about” his successful projects, such as a century-old bank building downtown now home to a boutique hotel and a former gas station that now houses a popular local eatery.
“We’re at a point in history where people like to vilify people and celebrate failure, which is sad,” Notrica said. “It’s hard to make things happen. (Property development) is not an easy process.”
Notrica’s defenders include restaurateur Gary Gordon. He is moving his popular chicken eatery, 520 Wings, into a property he recently purchased from Notrica after five years of on-again, off-again talks.
He describes Notrica as a tough negotiator with a “unique way of doing business” when it comes to long-vacant properties. He doesn’t deserve to be vilified, Gordon said.
“I do think he wants everybody to win,” Gordon said. “When we closed on the property, he took me out to a steak dinner. That’s the first time I’ve ever had a seller do that.”
But Notrica has many detractors, including more than a dozen Savannahians interviewed for this story who bemoaned Notrica’s business practices. Many also questioned his policymaking role. Critics included owners of properties that neighbor Notrica’s as well as lenders, public officials, neighborhood associations and onetime tenants.
A distressed property whisperer
Notrica began his real estate investment career four decades ago in Atlanta by buying, fixing and flipping small homes in the charming residential neighborhoods of Decatur, Inman Park and Candler Park.
He expanded to commercial properties with what a tenant once called “an eye for value.” Boarded-up East Atlanta Village storefronts. The Hilan Theatre in Virginia-Highland. The Hotel Clermont in Poncey-Highland. The Castle in Midtown.
Notrica stretched into Savannah in the early 2000s, just before the city’s historic downtown transformed from gritty to glitzy. He bought dozens of properties. Many of those acquisitions now house successful businesses — although Notrica can’t claim credit for some. The Great Recession decimated property values, and Notrica’s holdings were heavily leveraged.
He defaulted on and lost ownership of several and earned a nickname in Savannah’s lending community that stuck: Jeff He’ll-trick-ya, a rhyme on his last name.
His recovery mirrored that of the economy in the early 2010s. He eventually flipped several properties he was able to hold on to during the real estate crisis as the Historic District boomed.
Notrica reinvested in two adjacent neighborhoods, the Victorian District and Thomas Square, foreseeing that the downtown gentrification would spill south along the city’s central corridor, Bull Street.
“It’s real simple: If you see houses being renovated and neighborhoods being cleaned up, that’s where people are moving to and where they’ll need services. There’s nothing magic to it,” Notrica said.
Credit: Sarah Peacock
Credit: Sarah Peacock
In search of a property’s ‘next chapter’
Jason Combs of the Thomas Square Neighborhood Association says Notrica buys properties and gets permission to rezone them by promising investment and new development. But he doesn’t do the improvements.
“The neighbors suffer in the process,” Combs said.
Notrica’s first public firestorm in the Victorian District came in 2020 when he failed to follow through on plans to turn a shuttered firehouse he bought from the Savannah city government into a cafe. Instead, he marketed the property for sale. It sat vacant for five years before selling at a $1.75 million profit.
Neighbors allege Notrica never intended to redevelop the property and promised the cafe to satisfy the public bid process, which takes into consideration intended use as well as financial terms.
Notrica denies that speculation and says renovation costs, the COVID-19 pandemic and financing challenges doomed the cafe plan. He later pushed plans for a produce market before an Atlanta-based real estate investment group purchased the property and then flipped it to SCAD for an educational facility.
“What is a property’s next chapter? Often, I don’t know,” Notrica said. “Sometimes these buildings have to tell their own story.”
Poking neighbors in the eyes?
In Thomas Square, many of Notrica’s holdings are telling a familiar story: for sale, with paid parking in the meantime.
Multiple vacant properties in a three-square-block area abutting heavily trafficked U.S. 80 are Notrica’s. Some are barren lots; others closed-down and boarded-up businesses.
Credit: Sarah Peacock
Credit: Sarah Peacock
All but one, a recently paved lot, don’t resemble traditional car parks, and there is ample, free on-street parking in the surrounding blocks. Residents have cried foul, especially since last summer when Notrica purchased the site of a recently closed barbecue restaurant on Bull Street and put up his “for sale” and “paid parking” signs.
Notrica said he makes revenue off the parking — a music venue and the trendy Starland Dairy nightlife district are nearby — but Combs alleges another motive: to “poke his finger in the eye” of critical neighbors, a notion Notrica denies.
Board seats fan expertise-vs.-influence debate
Notrica’s appointment to the planning boards marked a tipping point in the public scrutiny of his business activities.
By his own admission, Notrica tried for 10 years to get on the panels, building political connections by being a consistent campaign contributor to local elected officials and by mixing with influential business and government leaders through participation in civic groups.
The Chatham County Commission named him to the Zoning Appeal Board in 2020 and later to the more influential Metropolitan Planning Commission. In 2022, Savannah City Council named him to a historic preservation board, which he now chairs.
His input is heavily scrutinized by at least one Savannah elected official — Mayor Van Johnson. He said he did not favor Notrica’s nomination to the city-controlled board but didn’t oppose it because Notrica had enough council votes to secure the appointment.
The mayor calls Notrica an “aggressive developer” who has an indirect influence on policies and projects through the commissions, even as Notrica recuses himself from discussions and votes where he has clear conflicts of interest.
“We have the power to act as a check on him, and we have done so,” Johnson said. “And there will be instances where we do so again.”
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
The council has denied Notrica property redevelopment petitions on at least three occasions.
Notrica’s allies among elected officials note it’s not uncommon to have real estate professionals on the boards and that he lends knowledge and expertise to the planning commissions’ reviews. They also applaud his eagerness to serve: Board service is unpaid and meetings take place during weekday work hours, so filling openings can be a challenge.
“I’ve been on the other side there, bringing things to the board, so I feel like I have an understanding,” Notrica said. “In my view, people coming in front of us at the (Metropolitan Planning Commission) aren’t our enemies.”
Critics aren’t assuaged. Sarah Cuda, a Victorian District resident, said Notrica is “changing the fabric of our communities and getting away with it.
“He’s just the worst.”
Notrica is accustomed to the criticism but not comfortable with it. His intention with every property he purchases is that it be approved, if not by him then by a new owner or lessee. The ire directed at him is misplaced, he said.
“It is easy to cast aspersion on people trying to do something,” he said. “It’s harder to actually do something right.”
About the Author
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
