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The owner of Crow's Nest says Stafford County's effort to condemn the peninsula is premature and flawed.
K&M Properties of McLean, developing the 3,280-acre tract as Stafford Lakes Limited Partnership, made that case in several court documents filed this week. The company was responding to a petition of condemnation, which county officials served last month.
"There is a bad match of the government objective, which is to preserve the property, and the policy objective of what you can really do with condemnation authority," said the developers' attorney, Clark Leming. "You can only go so far with condemnation authority. And the county seems to be stretching beyond what has been delegated to them."
Gifford Hampshire, the outside attorney hired to handle the condemnation case, said the developer's claims are without merit.
"In our experience this is the normal process with big condemnations, the landowner raises procedural questions early on," he said.
Leming mostly takes issue with the supervisors' reason for asking the Circuit Court to forcibly take the land. The condemnation petition says the county wants to turn 2,887 acres east of Raven Road into a passive recreational park.
"Passive park," Leming suggests, is a cover for conservation intentions. No other county documentation proves otherwise, he said.
The condemnation petition fails to include details about the public recreational opportunities that would be installed on the land, he said.
And the county has not proven its need for nearly 3,000 acres of park land. Crow's Nest has not been designated as potential park land in the current comprehensive plan--a blueprint for Stafford's future development.
"Conservation is not something that Virginia law gives governing bodies power to condemn for," he said. "If the public purpose is a passive park, there's a good bit of work that needs to be done."
Hampshire contends that there is no legal requirement for the county to take the steps Leming points to.
The county also has deprived K&M of an opportunity to negotiate sale of the land outside of court, Leming said. The law requires a bona fide offer and good faith bargaining before a condemnation can be granted.
Supervisors first put money on the table earlier this year, offering to buy 2,887 acres for $33.2 million. The amount was based on a recent appraisal.
Officials did not account for 182 acres within the parcels they said they wanted to buy, Leming said. And the appraisal did not include the value of timbering rights. Those items alone should have increased the county's offer by $10 million, according to K&M's calculations.
The developer responded to the county's offer with several options, including a total sale price and three partial development options. Two recent appraisals value the land at more than $60 million, Leming said.
Stafford filed the condemnation petition shorty after the counteroffer package was delivered.
"We don't think that's a bona fide effort to purchase the property," Leming said. "We have put four versions of compromise on the table, and the county seems unwilling to consider any of them."
Condemnation efforts will probably linger for at least the next year. Leming said he doesn't expect to get the issue to court until late 2007.
Meanwhile, K&M plans to continue the work necessary to develop the land. The Planning Commission's denial of a subdivision plan for the property has been appealed to the Circuit Court. And workers are collecting information needed to file plans for another part of the peninsula.
Supervisors agreed in early December to ask the courts to halt work on the peninsula until a decision can be made about condemnation, but nothing has been filed yet.
To reach MEGHANN COTTER:
Email: mcotter@freelancestar.com
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Counter points K&M's arguments against condemnation The county's comprehensive plan does not include Crow's Nest as a future park. Localities cannot condemn land specifically for a passive park or conservation. Supervisors have not demonstrated the public's need for a park that large. The county has not offered an adequate price for the total acreage in the requested parcels. The condemnation petition lacks drawings of proposed changes to the land, which would prove the board's intentions of creating a park. There has not been a bona fide effort to purchase the property without condemnation. State law gives condemnation powers to local governing bodies, not their appointed attorneys--to whom the board delegated purchase responsibility. The peninsula contains three cemeteries, which cannot be condemned under state law. K&M believes the county plans to convey the land to the Nature Conservancy, a private, not public group. |
