DELAND - In two months Alex Ford has managed to upset a great number of people and at the same time convince the city's policy-makers to see things his way.

    Ford's friends call him a "Southern gentleman."  Even the people who wouldn't exactly call him a friend respect his legal abilities.  The lawyer, himself, says he is doing what he thinks is best for DeLand.

    What was best this week, Ford said, was jumping the next hurdle in getting a Wal-Mart "superstore" built in north DeLand.  Ford argues the city should change its comprehensive land-use plan to accomplish that.

    Just last month he was convincing city commissioners another section of that same plan permits A.R. Paquette to park trucks filled with hazardous waste overnight at the company's DeLand garage.

    If he is not winning over public opinion, at least this 39-year-old son of a lawyer is winning city commission votes.

    "I don't care if it's popular," Ford said.  "It's what I think is right."

    If city commissioners had not reconsidered and voted to allow Paquette to park the trucks, Ford insists a lawsuit would have followed.

    In the end, the city and the company reached a settlement, the terms of which were not likely to be reached in court, he said.

    If city commissioners had not voted to send the proposed 200,000-square-foot Wal-Mart proposal to the state Department of Community Affairs for administrative review, Ford promises Wal-Mart would have found another site in the area or the property owners would have sued.

    "Is it hardball?" Ford asks.  "It's protecting your client's rights.  It's being ready, being prepared, like a Boy Scout.

    "When I'm coming into these things, I am not coming in to be wrong," he said.  "I am coming in to be right."

    Mayor David Rigsby, one of those who describes Ford as a Southern gentleman, said a lawsuit could have cost the city $100,000 in legal fees to defend the commission's initial position on the Paquette property.

    "We would have been slaughtered in court," Rigsby said.  "We would have been eaten alive...If I'm going to go against a man as learned as Alex Ford, I'm going to have my ducks in a row."

    Since the Paquette issue, the city has begun the process of placing a moratorium on hazardous waste sites until it adopts an ordinance regulating the uses.

    Rigsby does not see Ford exercising a particular vision of DeLand's business growth through the clients he has chosen and the projects he has supported.

    Commissioner Marshall Bone sees Ford's two most recent appearances before the panel as a coincidence too.

    "He was hired by two different clients to do a job," Bone said.

    Steve DeLuca, president of Delco Oil Inc. and Ford's close friend, is also a client.  DeLuca has retained Ford for 18 years for work on condemnations and land uses.  Ford was also best man at DeLuca's wedding.

    DeLuca spoke in favor of the Wal-Mart proposal at the public hearing Wednesday before commissioners took their vote.  A "lunatic fringe downtown" has clouded the Wal-Mart debate, he said.

    "Alex is a gifted litigator.  He does my land issues," DeLuca said.  "He's as good a land-use lawyer as there is in the state of Florida."

    Ford can empathize with commissioners because he chaired the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council for two years up until last June, DeLuca said.

    "Alex Ford...has sat on the other side of the microphone," he said.

    "He clearly is top shelf," DeLuca said.  "He's a good guy."

    DeLuca said a reporter would regret it if this story said anything less than that, only because that reporter would eventually learn the story had cast a false image of Ford.

    But Ford said his friend exaggerates.  "Mr. DeLuca greatly overstates my abilities."

    If Ford is humble, he has to be confident.  He doesn't like losing.

    Even the Police Athletic League basketball team he coaches recently came in first place.

    Tall. Slender. Graying.  ford runs two to six miles at a time.  Any he usually does it in worn basketball shoes.

    He plays basketball and volleyball.  He attends Trinity Methodist Church.  Any he says he shops Wal-Mart, K-Mart and downtown stores.

    He and his wife, Vincetta, have one boy and one girl -- 13-year-old Lex and 16-year-old Stephanie.  Ford has referred to his daughter while arguing for Wal-Mart.  Stephanie says there is no competition between Wal-Mart and downtown stores, he said.

    Ford is "old DeLand."  His father is DeLand attorney Frank Ford, and his mother is Sally Ford, a political and civic activist.  He attended Stetson University as an undergraduate and then Stetson College of Law.  Now he handles land-use issues, wills, probates and trusts at Landis, Graham, French, Husfeld, Sherman and Ford.

    "When I went to law school, I probably had no intent of doing this at all," Ford said.  "It's not the glory stuff you see on television."

    It's more like arguing definitions in the city's comprehensive plan with city Planning Chairman Mary Swiderski.

    "I think he's a good attorney," said Swiderski, an opponent of the Wal-Mart proposal.  "If I was in a bind, I'd hire him.  But I also don't have the highest regard for that occupation.  They'll say what it takes to protect their clients."

    Swiderski made some strong suggestions about how the Wal-Mart issue was being handled when she spoke during Wednesday's public hearing.

    "I cannot compete with Wal-Mart," she said.  "I cannot compete with the good old boys or any backroom politics that may be going on in this room tonight."

    Ford said he took that comment personally, while disputing any being-the-scenes deal with this project.

    I didn't appreciate it," Ford said.  "I can't imagine any one of those guys (commissioners) selling the city down the river for Alex Ford...I never felt those particular five would give me a vote that they didn't think was appropriate."

    Ford also has felt the force of some pretty powerful words published on editorial pages before Wednesday.

    "I wish they would get to know me before they took the tone they took," Ford said.  "It doesn't affect me; it affects my family."

    That kind of publicity and the possibility of mistaken characterization in the press probably will keep Ford out of public office, he said.

    "I don't think I ever will (run)," Ford said.  "I don't like the scrutiny I'm getting right now.  It's a shame the stuff you've got to go through."

 

This article originally appeared in the September 6, 1997 issue of  The News-Journal
and is printed with permission