Posted on 11/04/2003 11:07:23 PM PST by JohnHuang2
PRIVATE IMPROPERTY
County to landowner:
You will rent to us
Judge orders lease extended despite government's refusal to meet terms
Posted: November 4, 2003
5:00 p.m. Eastern
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.comCiting eminent-domain laws, an Arizona court has forced a landowner to continue renting space to Maricopa County even though the municipal government failed to agree to terms to extend the lease.
Orsett/Columbia Ltd., the owner of a strip mall in West Valley, Ariz., has been leasing space to the county for the Peoria Justice Court since 1989, reported the Arizona Republic. The lease expired in July, and the landowner wanted a five-year lease extension. The government, however, only wants the space for two more years and took the issue to court to force the company to comply with the county's demand.
"This means municipalities can identify a space they want and force a landlord to lease it to them," Mike Freret vice president of development for Orsett/Columbia Ltd., told the paper. "It may mean that if the space they want already has a business owner in it, they could boot them out."
Tom Irvine, who represents the county, said it is no different than the Arizona Department of Transportation leasing private land along roads during widening projects. The 5,500 square-foot space in Columbia Square Center is only a part of the total property.
According to the report, the Orsett officials would agree only to a five-year lease, saying a dance studio was willing to pay for the space for that long. The county, however, is planning to move the courts to a new building in just 18 months.
"We think the statute and the Constitution allow governments to rent, but governments can only take what they need," Irvine told the Republic. "We only needed it for a couple of years, and the court didn't want to waste three years of taxpayer money."
Orsett called it "involuntary servitude," the report said, arguing that eminent domain does not allow governments to force a private company to enter into an involuntary commercial lease.
In July, Judge William J. O'Neil of Pinal County Superior Court gave the county a two-year lease, stating the space was for a public use and was necessary for the court to continue operation.
"What the lower court said via these actions was that municipalities can create new contracts where none existed before," Freret is quoted by the paper as saying. "That's way beyond the premise of what the eminent domain statutes were set up for."
Clint Bolick is vice president of the Institute for Justice in Washington, D.C., a group monitoring the case.
"Using eminent domain to compel a property owner to rent to government seems tyrannical," Bolick told the paper.
Orsett/Columbia Ltd. is waiting for a ruling by the state Court of Appeals, which it hopes will overtrun O'Neil's decision.
(Blood boiling....relax...relax...Think peaceful thoughts.)
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