By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

COLUMBIANA – A developer must pay the city of Alabaster more than $56,000 to cover the cost of repaving roads in the Grande View subdivision after a Shelby County judge ruled this month in favor of the city in a 2011 lawsuit.

On Dec. 4, Circuit Court Judge Hewitt “Sonny” Conwill entered a judgment in favor of the city, ordering the South Grand View Development Company to pay the city $56,125 and pay for all court costs. The developer has 180 days from the time of Conwill’s judgment to pay the city.

Conwill’s judgment marked the end of a more-than-four-year legal battle between the city and the developer, which was filed in Shelby County Civil Court in October 2011.

In the lawsuit, the city claimed South Grand View Development, which developed the Grande View Estates subdivision off Shelby County 12 in southern Alabaster in the early 2000s, did not meet its obligations to the city’s subdivision regulations when it did not finalize and seal coat the subdivisions roads.

In 2010, the Alabaster City Council voted to declare all roads in Grande View Estates unsatisfactory, and agreed for the city to cover the cost of finalizing and seal coating the neighborhood roads.

When South Grand View began developing the neighborhood, it pledged bond money to guarantee the subdivision’s streets would be brought up to the city’s standards.

After building ceased in the neighborhood, and the roads were not finalized by the developer, the city sought legal action to recover the bonds from South Grand View and its insurance provider, Greenwich Insurance.

Because the city paid to finalize and seal coat the roads in Grande View Estates several years ago, the $56,125 judgment will help offset the city’s costs, said Alabaster Mayor Marty Handlon. The judgment represented only a portion of the $77,000 total bond originally put up by the developer.

“Any chance we have to recoup an expense spent on someone else’s behalf is good for the city,” Handlon said in a Dec. 14 phone interview.