Parties to public and private construction contracts entered into after August 1, 2019 are subject to new statutory requirements and limitations regarding the withholding and release of retainage, that portion of earned contract funds withheld by the owner from the contractor pending completion of the project.  It is important that owners, prime contractors, and subcontractors…

One of the most consequential decisions of the recently concluded term of the U.S. Supreme Court involves the reversal of a 30-year precedent and reinstatement of a landowner’s right to seek redress in federal court for an alleged taking of property without just compensation.  The 5-4 majority decision in Knick v. Township of Scott, PA…

Finding the Future: Innovations in Land Use and Sustainability

Picture the future.  Does it include automated vehicles? Will we fly from place to place in personal pods like in the sci-fi movies we have watched?  What else does the future hold and who will shape it?  Land planners predict the future will be shaped…

Inverse condemnation is a potentially powerful kind of litigation ju jitsu move that property owners can use in certain situations to call the government to account when it damages their property by an official act or omission. Most everyone has some familiarity with eminent domain, also known as condemnation or a governmental taking. Where private…

The fact that Minnesota, and especially the metropolitan region of St. Paul/Minneapolis, is experiencing a severe affordable housing crisis is not disputed.  The Metropolitan Council recently released data documenting that the metro region of Minnesota is growing substantially but that the supply of new housing, affordable across a broad range of housing types, is lagging. …

When policymakers debate new regulatory policies, including those relating to housing, invariably someone will identify that such regulations come at a price, oftentimes a high price.  This usually triggers the response that complying with the regulations will be the “greedy” developer/builder’s problem and they can simply take it out of their profits.  It’s a nice,…

Earlier this year, Housing First MN, a Minnesota trade group that advocates for the interests of the housing industry and homeowners, issued a powerful report entitled Priced Out: The True Cost of Minnesota’s Broken Housing Market (full disclosure: the author represents this organization). The report confirms what others have speculated about in recent years…

Last week the City of Bloomington adopted an expansive “inclusionary zoning” ordinance for the purpose of compelling developers of single and multifamily housing to include a portion of their new housing as affordable based on prescribed income standards.  “Inclusionary zoning” refers to a policy that compels developers to include some land use component desired by…

If you haven’t heard of Waymo, you’re probably not alone. I didn’t know of the work of Waymo until I started reading up on the phenomenon that is known as “self-driving” cars. Waymo is the Google self-driving project that became a standalone subsidiary in December 2016. Last year, Waymo launched a self-driving taxi service in…