Real Estate & Property Law

Weekend Round-Up

By Robert Thomas (inversecondemnation.com)

Several diverse items of interest for your weekend reading enjoyment:

• "Impact Fees" - a response to this commentary about impact fees and the legality of "fair share" exactions by the County of Hawaii.

• "Substantive Due Process at Work" - analysis by our friend Dwight Merriam at the IMLA local government blog of a recent Montana Supreme Court decision that seems to hold that substantive due process in not available to challenge "as applied" zoning laws. You mean that local government is not constrained by the Due Process Clause from arbitrarily and capriciously failing to follow its own zoning laws?  

• "Condemnation Suit Goes to State Supreme Court" - "In order to resolve a condemnation case which questioned whether the city?s motives for property acquisition are indeed for public interest and not for private developers, the state supreme court has agreed to hear the issue on direct appeal." See also this report from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and this report from the Seattle Times.

• "Planners propose to rejuvenate Balboa Park area" - from the San Francisco Chronicle a report about a plan to "revitalize" an "outdated" part of the city, and "transform the area into a transit village with new dense housing and retail." 

Planners envision a neighborhood where college students and residents linger at coffee shops and gather at a new plaza. They want residents to walk and ride their bikes to commuter trains on what has been a traffic-choked and often precarious Ocean Avenue. 

• "Ruling felt far beyond Superferry" - from Jerry Burris at the Honolulu Advertiser:

Say what you want about the Hawai'i Supreme Court decision that at least temporarily shut down the Hawaii Superferry, this much is for certain: It changes the rules of the game substantially for lawmakers who think they can tinker with, or manipulate, the state's economy. 

Full post as published by inversecondemnation on March 21, 2009 (boomark / email).