Posted on 11/21/2016 9:39:47 AM PST by Kaslin
NOBODY MOVES to Carver, Mass., for its urban flair. The town is rural and quiet, thickly wooded with pine and cedar — the sort of place people move to when they have a hankering to raise chickens, grow vegetables, and luxuriate amid an abundance of open space.
It's also about as wet a place as you can find in Massachusetts. Half the town consists of wetland, much of it in the form of cranberry bogs. The cranberry industry has always been a Carver mainstay; in the 1940s, the town produced more of the tart little fruits than any other place on earth. Carver's appeal is more diversified today — visitors flock to the town for the train rides at the Edaville amusement park and the Renaissance-themed King Richard's Faire — but at heart, Carver is still cranberry country.
If town officials get their way, however, a great swath of rural Carver will be designated an "urban renewal area," and turned over to a private entrepreneur with plans to build a giant complex of warehouse and industrial-distribution facilities. The entrepreneur — a Boston-based company called Route 44 Development LLC — already owns a large piece of land in the area: a 127-acre parcel, known as the Whitworth Property, that has lain unused since a sand-and-gravel mining operation shut down in 2000. The parcel isn't much to look at; in a report last month, the Carver Redevelopment Authority described it as being littered with "debris, stumps and other materials, building slabs . . . generally unkempt and unsightly."
Like most towns, Carver wants to expand its tax base and promote new growth; not surprisingly, local officials couldn't be happier that a private developer wants to turn the old Whitworth Property into a valuable commercial asset. Homeowners living next to the property would be happy too — if that were all the developer had in mind.
But Route 44 Development's ambitions extend far beyond the borders of the Whitworth Property. With the active support of town officials, it intends to construct a 1.1 million-square-foot distribution center and two warehouses totaling nearly 800,000 square feet, swallowing up the land of numerous neighbors in the process. And if those neighbors don't want to leave? The developer is counting on the town to force them out, by seizing their property through eminent domain and turning it over to Route 44 Development.
Long before Carver residents had any hint of this, town officials and the developer were planning it in secret.
In a confidential letter to Carver's board of selectmen dated Jan. 20, 2015, the developer — who describes himself as a specialist in "eminent-domain cases" — wrote that his company had bought the Whitworth Property in order to build a large commercial facility on it, but understood that it wouldn't be possible to secure the needed state environmental approvals without acquiring the surrounding properties. He urged the town to make that happen through an "urban renewal" designation covering the whole area, and dangled the irresistible bait: "considerable real estate tax revenues." Carver's selectmen, meeting behind closed doors the same day, were keenly interested. "They need the Town to step in to help the development," the notes of their executive session read, "since all surrounding property is privately owned." (The letter and the notes were uncovered after a local homeowner filed an open records request.)
Town officials energetically set about putting the proposal in motion. But it was more than a year before residents learned of the peril to their property. In February 2016, a Carver official told the local paper that Town Hall would "plan to begin reaching out" to homeowners in mid-March. In fact, it wasn't until April — more than 14 months after Route 44 Development and the Carver selectmen were already making plans — that neighbors found out they could lose their homes.
Two owners have already thrown in the towel. Once their homes showed up on an "urban renewal" acquisition list, they decided to sell and spare themselves the misery of trying to fight a developer backed by Town Hall. But some neighbors don't want to go anywhere. Karen and Bruce Tuscher have lived in their home on Montello Street for almost four decades. Karen's father and grandfather owned the property before she did, and after Bruce got out of the Navy, he and Karen settled in to raise a family — which, in classic Carver fashion, included not just their daughter, but a whole menagerie: a pig, a Welsh pony, lambs, goats, and chickens.
The threat of losing their home to eminent domain would come as a shock to anyone, but in the Tuschers' case it is compounded by the fact that Bruce has multiple myeloma, a rare form of blood cancer. In July, as the couple was coming under pressure to sell out to the developer, Bruce was in the hospital, undergoing bone marrow replacement and chemotherapy.
"We would love to live in the home where we have been for 37 years," Karen told Carver's redevelopment authority. "We are not opposed to a business at the 127-acre parcel. We have seen many businesses on that land. My husband and I worked for one of them several years ago."
At best, eminent domain is an unfortunate necessity — a last resort when land is needed for a public purpose, such as building a new school or a highway. But when government takes private property in order to benefit a private developer, or when it threatens to do so, it abuses its power and betrays the citizens it is supposed to represent.
Eminent-domain abuse, sadly, isn't new. In its execrable Kelo decision, the Supreme Court left it up to states to protect individuals from having their property condemned at the behest of an influential private developer. Numerous states promptly enacted robust new protections for private property rights.
But not Massachusetts. Here homeowners remain at the mercy of large developers, and find themselves blindsided by government officials so tempted by "considerable real estate tax revenue" that they're willing to drive people from their homes to get it.
Yeah. What’s up with that?
I've seen some pretty serious blight both urban and rural. So eminent domain to improve an area over the objections of recalcitrant owners is not what bothers me, really. Everyone would be better off if it were improved.
What bothers me is the taking of private property over an objection with just compensation for those losing their property. Just compensation should INCLUDE a piece of the action off their former property. It shouldn't be, "We want your property because it has a magnificent view/location on a beach front/river front/lake front, and we're giving you what we think is market value whether you like it or not."
Instead it should be, "We know it's magnificent, the best location around, and we're giving you control of X area in the new development relative to your square footage in the total development.
Then let that person farm it out for business or sell it. They don't keep their shack in the middle of it, but they just might be the same size as a coffee shop in the new area. And someone might want to buy that from them at a real price.
To any person facing threat of Imminent Domain (ID) you should know that the agency has to offer fair market value (FMV) and relocation assistance. FMV is in the eye of the beholder. If it goes to court, both sides presents the judge their offer and counter-offer. In most cases the judge will split the 2 offers and go right down the middle unless compelling arguments can sway them one way or the other.
Even if the City uses it’s own funding and then after the fact decides to use some form of feral money, the feds will require a review of the acquisition process (softer way of saying ID)and they will not sign off if there was any slight of hand during the process.
It is imperative that people educate themselves about the process. Go to the city meetings and ask how they plan on paying for any improvements that the developer is requesting, ask to see any city ordinances they must adopt prior to using ID, ask if they are going to adhere to federal law for acquisition. The State’s Dept. of Transportation or the County are well versed in these processes because of the federal money they receive for their transportation projects.
Presently I think Wisconsin is Cranberry Country. Wisconsin is the leading state producer of Cranberries
Route 44 Development LLC was set up in 2013- by George McLaughlin III and Robert Delhome out of Boston. Would be interesting to see the connections they have.
CRANBERRY PRODUCTION IN WISCONSIN
Judge for yourself
Wisconsin is the nation’s leading producer of cranberries, harvesting more than 60 percent of the country’s crop. The little red berry, Wisconsin’s official state fruit, is the state’s number one fruit crop, both in size and economic value.
The cranberry, once called “crane berry” by settlers because of its blossom’s resemblance to the sandhill crane, was first harvested in Wisconsin around 1860 by Edward Sacket in Berlin, Wisconsin. Today, more than 250 growers produce cranberries throughout central and northern Wisconsin.
Where Wisconsin Cranberries are Grown
Cranberries are grown on 21,000 acres across 20 counties in Wisconsin. The sand and peat marshes in central and northern Wisconsin create the perfect growing conditions for cranberries.
During the early 1890s, the center of the Wisconsin cranberry industry shifted to the Cranmoor area, just west of Wisconsin Rapids. Later developments occurred in the Black River Falls, Warrens and Tomah areas, followed by cranberry farms in northern Wisconsin, primarily around Manitowish Waters, Eagle River, Spooner and Hayward.
If a private entity wants to take property from another private entity, and the sole justification is that they will use it better..... then there also has to be an option that someone says “no thank you, even for 10 million extra, I prefer to keep my shack”.
Anything else is crap. It sure isn’t capitalism.
Go acquire a few genuine indian trinkets and a few bones. “Discover” them in your yard.
Show up in the negotiation with a fake newspaper headline...”Sacred Indian burial ground discovered in Cranberry country”.
Shove the fake newspaper across the table and tell them this MIGHT become a real headline tomorrow. Ask them how much they think that kind of delay might cost them. Ask them if they have a very good relationship with the local indian tribes (they don’t)
THEN begin negotiations.
I disagree.
Those living around that shack shouldn’t have to put up with it.
Heavy hitters for sure. The property owners would be hard-pressed to find a better and more expensive lawyer than McLaughlin.
Would be like F. Lee Bailey versus Algonquin J. Calhoun.
I wonder if they are fronted for a big company.
http://www.mclaughlinbrothers.com/georgemclaughlin.html
Delhome
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/1998/08/31/smallb1.html
Very interesting.
ED should be used only for legitimate and necessary state projects like needed roads, not damn commercial properties.
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