September 26, 2005
D.C. land costs keep rising
The lawsuit to block land taking for a Washington Nationals stadium may have been tossed - sorry for neglecting to mention that at the time, incidentally - but there'll still be plenty of work for D.C. lawyers. According to eminent domain law, landowners who don't like the district's offer for their land can't say no, but they can sue for a bigger award - and that's just what they're doing, in bunches. "North of my property, things are selling for $350 to $400 per square foot," but the city offered only $188 per square foot for her art studio, local property owner Patricia Ghiglino told the Washington Post. "The city's offer is not fair compensation." One likely key to the cases is how the court rules on the reasons for skyrocketing land values in the Navy Yard area - eminent domain law allows the city to disregard any increase in land values from the stadium project, but locals insist that values were on the rise anyway.
Even more interesting is that the latest batch of city offers totals $97 million, according to the Post - $20 million more than the previous estimate, which had already pushed the estimated stadium cost within $4 million of its legal limit. If my math is right, that means that the stadium budget is already $16 million over the "trigger" amount that's supposed to halt construction while the council seeks a cheaper site. But surely if this were the case, someone in the D.C. council would have noticed first, right? Right?
