muon2
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« on: July 02, 2014, 11:39:34 AM » |
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I've posed this before on other thread related to the case, but it seems useful to bring it up here as well. Consider the following situation. A city is working with a private developer to improve a vacant brownfield. Most of the needed land is in a single parcel, but there are a few other landlocked, unbuildable parcels that make up the project area. The small parcels are actually remnants of lots that existed before the development of the business that became the vacant brownfield, but for some reason the city allowed the subdivision of those lots creating the unbuildable parts.
The developer and city are able to purchase the main lot and all but one of the small parcels which is in the middle of a block with no road frontage. This last parcel is in a trust and the trustee has been unable to locate an owner that can decide on the offer to purchase. There's even some evidence that suggests that the owner is long deceased with no identified heir to the trust. The city seeks eminent domain to purchase that last parcel from the trust.
Is this a sufficiently narrow use of eminent domain to benefit a private entity? If not, does the city ever have a means to resolve the use of the wayward parcel?
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