Eminent domain costs exceed county offers
“Just one of the 21 eminent domain cases filed by Delaware County in 2012 to acquire the land necessary to complete Sawmill Parkway remains open.
The property will allow the county to extend the roadway from its current terminus at Hyatts Road north to Bunty Station Road. Right-of-way acquisition for the final phases of the project has not begun.
The county has paid out $3.5 million in the 16 cases in which settlement information is available on the Delaware County Clerk of Court’s website. In those cases, the county offered to pay the homeowners a total of $1.8 million.
“I think that the county may have been mislead by the consultant that they hired,” said Michael Braunstein, an attorney who represented 19 of the property owners. “Whenever you’re doing something like this, the property owner had a right to highest and best value.”
The wide gap between the county’s initial offer and the final settlement in most cases is due to the fact that the county did not take into account residual damage to the properties, such as their proximity to a soon-to-be major thoroughfare, according to Braunstein.”
Ensinger, Dustin. limaohio.com 30 June 2014.