Daily Development for Monday, February 4, 2002

Daily Development for Wednesday, February 13, 2002

By: Patrick A. Randolph, Jr.
Elmer F. Pierson Professor of Law
UMKC School of Law
Of Counsel: Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin
Kansas City, Missouri
prandolph@cctr.umkc.edu

EMINENT DOMAIN; FUTURE PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY: A city may legitimately acquire private property for future use as a yet-unplanned park, presidential library and museum.

Pfeifer v. City of Little Rock, 57 S.W.3d 714 (Ark. 2001)

This Arkansas Supreme Court decision provides additional guidelines and leeway for eminent domain in that state. Here, the City of Little Rock filed this suit to acquire an owner's commercial building and lot in the downtown area as part of a future site for a park to house the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Park, library and museum.

While the owner appeared to concede on several occasions that the amount offered to him by the City for the condemnation was indeed the fair market value of the property, he opposed the City's ability and purpose to so acquire his property. The owner argued that the City's actual plan was to provide a "building ready site" for the presidential park and complex, and that the City's purpose was not a public one in its proposals to lease out portions of the property to the federal government and to private parties for the facilities, neither of which facts, asserted the owner, comported with a legitimate use of the power of eminent domain in Arkansas.

Apparently, the acquired land is to be cleared and then offered for lease in some kind of public bid process in which a private foundation would be afforded the opportunity to lease the property for $1 in a cooperative venture by which a combination of private and federal money will be used to construct the library, which would include extensive federal archives housed in federally owned buildings. At the time this condemnation action was instituted, many of the necessary planning steps had not been taken to insure federal participation in this project. Apparently the idea was to have this property ready when it came time to locate the library. If the library was never built, the City officials testified that they intended to use the property nevertheless for park purposes, although it is not clear that the City made any binding commitment to this effect.

The trial court found for the City and the Arkansas Supreme Court here affirmed. The court found that the park and presidential facilities were apparently sufficiently planned to constitute a proper public purpose. On the question of the power to condemn for purpose of retransfer, the court confirmed that a city has the power to condemn land and lease it under Arkansas statutes. "The real question is whether the City's assertion that this land will be a park encompasses the idea that the presidential library and complex can also sit on this site as part of the city park."

Pointing to the broad discretionary powers afforded local governments in condemnations, the Supreme Court found further that the owner failed to meet the burden of proof that his land was not actually needed for the park and facility (it bordered the edge of the proposed facilities as depicted and described by the City).

As the City alleged that the land was being acquired for park purposes, the court devoted much of its opinion to its discussion of whether a Presidential library is a "park." It concluded that various private and public buildings had already been located within "parks" in Arkansas and that the characterization of the library property as a "park" was appropriate. Note that the library likely would not take up all the area condemned in this action, and that the remaining area would be a city park.

Comment: The case is worth noting partly for its historical significance (the development of a Presidential Library doesn't happen that often) and partly for the possible extension, at least implicitly, of Arkansas eminent domain law to permit the development of a federal presidential library. One suspects that the fundamental driving purpose of this project was not the creation of a city park, but the development of the federally owned Presidential library.

In the editor's view, a Presidential library is a significant public project that the State and Federal government can cooperate on, and the editor sees the exercise of the power of eminent domain for such a cooperative project as appropriately within the public purpose of a local agency, which is in turn, of course a subdivision of the State. The state statutes permitted condemnation for parks and also for "other public purposes." No need to "dress up" the project as a sham park project. Call it what it is; it's OK anyway.

The editor suspects, by the way, that the Arkansas court would have agreed with this analysis, but it was presented with a condemnation petition to create a "park," not one to create a Presidential library, and played the hand it had been dealt.

Also see: Mentor v. Osborne, 758 N.E.2d 776 (Ohio App. 11 Dist. 2001). (In the absence of proof showing an abuse of discretion by a condemnor, condemnor's statement of necessity in an appropriation petition is prima facie evidence of the necessity of the appropriation.

The City was seeking to obtain lands for parkland and recreation purposes, and to preserve the Lake Erie shoreline. The landowner was arguing that the City, according to its own prior planning documents, had already acquired sufficient parkland for the current population. The court concluded that the City was not bound by those documents in making a determination of public need, and did not have to show that it was immediately putting the property to park use.)

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