Real Estate & Property Law

MoDot spending $2.3 million to get bridge right-of-way that city sold for $2

By Alan Ackerman

Lake Expo Online

ST. LOUIS -- At least two years after engineers selected the route of ramps for a new Mississippi River bridge, a city agency agreed in 2003 to sell publicly owned land in that path to a developer for $2.

The blighted property north of downtown, once used by a trucking company, fell in the LRA's hands in a tax sale. It sits along the east edge of Interstate 70, just west of Broadway, in a neighborhood of worn commercial buildings and vacant lots.

The site attracted the interest of Archview Storage, an enterprise owned by several businessmen who include Randy Heil, who operates a tool-and-die shop nearby, and Daniel McGuire, president of McGuire Moving & Storage.

The purchase of a property for over $2 million dollars from an owner that purchased the property a few years before for literally $2.00, poses an interesting question. Bridge and road projects are so uncertain, is there not a time in which a local community is better off taking the risk there will be no project and allowing development wherever and whenever it can occur in the area. A conflict between development at the community's assistance and a future public need draws a hazy line. Clearly, neither the community nor the Missouri Dept of Transportation wanted the result. However, there is also an owner here who would likely prefer keeping and maintaining the property after taking a risk in development.

Full post as published by National Eminent Domain Blog on October 30, 2009 (boomark / email).