The state paid him for his troubles, but the property is too small to include another building, Seitz said, and adding a billboard is his only chance to produce income from the lot.
So the towship took part of his property by eminent domain. Now the remaining partial lot is too small to use for traditional structures.
So the owner wanting to make use of and profit from the property decides that selling advertising on the property is the only source of income from the property.
However the township zoning board rules that there can be no billboard on the property because there is already another nearby.
This ruling essentially makes the property worthless. Worthless or not the township will demand taxes be paid on the property.
The property being too small to develop will make it impossible to sell to anyone other than an adjacent property owner. However any adjacent property owner will know that the present owner is under pressure to unload the property and will only offer pennies on the dollar for what it would otherwise be worth.
Also an adjacent property owner would be in many ways be foolish to buy the property. The adjacent property owner knowing present owner being unable to build on the property and being an absent owner could easily make use of the property while not owning it for parking. Also property being a corner lot the new owner would subject themselves to increased taxes (property taxes are traditionally paid on road frontage. Corner lots have double the road frontage of mid-block lots and thus double the frontage taxes).
So an adjacent land owner might use the vacant lot for free and let the present owner foo the taxes.
In effect the township had taken all the owners property while only paying for a portion of the property but will still levy taxes on the property.