Eminent-domain action imminent?

“City officials paid $8,500 for an appraisal of the Dillard’s store at Twin Peaks Mall recently in connection with talk of invoking eminent domain on the property.

All details of the appraisal — including the price of the building and/or the property on which it sits, when the appraisal was done and the company or individual who did the work — are considered confidential under the “attorney-client communication privilege” and the “attorney work product privilege” of the Colorado Open Records Act, according to Rigo Leal, a Longmont city spokesman.

After more than a year of negotiations, Twin Peaks Mall developer NewMark Merrill Mountain States appears to be at an impasse with Dillard’s over redevelopment plans for the mall. Project manager Allen Ginsborg did not return repeated requests for comment. Dillard’s spokeswoman Julie Bull said March 25 that the department store retailer had nothing new to say when asked about possible continued negotiations with NewMark Merrill.

Little Rock, Arkansas-based Dillard’s (NYSE: DDS), which owns the building it occupies at the mall in southwest Longmont, can prohibit new development on the mall site, based on an existing agreement between the retailer and mall owners that was signed decades ago, Ginsborg has said.”

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Potter, Beth. Boulder County Business Report 29 March 2013.