Updated 9/8/2020
This post is co-written by Gary Van Cleve, Mitchell Simonson and Josh Folland
This unprecedented time of pandemic has brought social interaction to an abrupt halt with cautious open-up just beginning. Americans have had to learn to live, work, educate their children, recreate, shop and otherwise transact business—all while social-distancing, self-isolating and not
Those of us in the real estate practice—and particularly in areas concerning real estate valuation such as eminent domain and property tax appeals—are obviously quite concerned about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our clients’ property values as we all proceed through these very uncertain times. I think about two upcoming quick-take hearings that
Property owners forced to move their business locations through condemnation for the Metropolitan Council’s Southwest Light Rail Transit project are generally entitled to compensation on two fronts—first, they are entitled to just compensation for the taking of their real property; second, they are entitled to relocation benefits for the costs and expenses of moving their
In case you missed it, WCCO ran a story the other night about a small business owner who has been displaced through condemnation of her property by the massive, two-billion dollar Southwest Light Rail project. The business owner said she was promised by the project’s sponsor, the Metropolitan Council, that she would be “made whole.”
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
For more than 30 years, a property owner who claimed that a regulatory action by the government amounted to a compensable taking under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has been required to litigate the issue in state court first, before being allowed to gain entry to federal court. The 1985 case of Williamson
Well, it seems that the State of Wisconsin has gone from one extreme to another in the area of codifying conditional use permit (CUP) law. Where before there was nothing, last fall the Wisconsin State Legislature adopted amendments to county, city, town and village land use statutes that set out standards to guide and limit
One of the current tax code provisions that would be eliminated under the House-proposed tax reform bill is the popular federal Historic Tax Credit program (HTC). The HTC dates back to the Reagan Administration and currently provides a federal tax credit in the amount of 20 percent of qualified rehabilitation expenditures for any certified historic
Forgive developer Martin Harstad if he thought he was in Potterville and not Woodbury when the city told him he had to pay nearly $1.4 million in “road assessments” as a condition of approval for his “Bailey Park” residential development. Harstad sued Woodbury to challenge its authority to demand the road assessments and won
Property owners in the path of light rail and bus rapid transit projects are now eligible to receive the full protection of the state’s eminent domain laws, thanks to legislation passed in 2017 by the State Legislature.
Before passage of this legislation, the Metropolitan Council (Met Council) had been taking the position that it was