Boone Hospital trustees avoid eminent domain for south campus project
“Eminent domain proceedings won’t be needed for the Boone Hospital Board of Trustees to acquire a roughly 3,800-square-foot property at the site of a $20 million south Columbia medical campus that is under construction.
Trustees attorney Tom Schneider said the Ravindran family has agreed to sell the 85-by-45-foot strip of land that was needed to square off the 14 acres purchased by the trustees in 1989.
“We have reached an agreement with the family. We are purchasing it,” Schneider said Thursday. He said the trustees paid full market value — $8,000 — for the strip that Boone County Counselor C.J. Dykhouse had described as “an undevelopable remnant” that was “not usable by anybody.”
Schneider said the purchase has been finalized and the deeds should be in hand in a week to 10 days. Trustees had previously tried to negotiate acquisition of the property, and when that effort failed, the Boone County Commission was asked to authorize Dykhouse to file a condemnation action to obtain the property through eminent domain, declaring the strip of land is “necessary for public use.” By statute, property can be acquired for a county hospital board through condemnation proceedings, but the action had to be initiated by the county commission, which owns and leases the hospital to BJC HealthCare.”
Jackson, Jodie. Columbia Daily Tribune 8 September 2014.