In 1972, the city of Roanoke, Virginia devised a plan to condemn large parts of a predominantly black neighborhood for redevelopment as part of an urban renewal program to eliminate "blight." In 1975, the city published a map that showed its intent to condemn the land, and in 1978 the city negotiated the sale of the land to a church. That deal was never consummated, however, and the city just let the issue (threat) hang. In 1998, after renewed efforts to sell the property to the church failed, the city decided it was no longer interested in the property. The problem for the prominent black Claytor family, whose property included professional office buildings, a home subdivided into apartments, and a former gas station, was that the 25 year threat of condemnation not only kept them from improving their property as a practical matter, but also drove tenants away.
The resolution below the fold.
The Claytors, led by the physician patriarch J.B. Claytor, had built several buildings on their block, including their homeplace, a gas station, some storefronts and a clinic building where J.B. Claytor and his sons (two doctors, a dentist and an accountant) all set up shop. By the time the redevelopment plan was in place, the family was collecting rents from apartments in their old home, the storefronts, as well as from themselves and some other physicians in the clinic.
Under the threat of condemnation, though, tenants began moving out. With the properties vacant, Claytor couldn't obtain insurance. The homeplace then burned down in a suspicious blaze (and so he lost it all with no insurance), and in 1995 the clinic and all the family's business records burned. All that remains today is part of a garage and the boarded-up shell of the clinic.
In 2001 retired dentist Walter Claytor filed suit claiming reverse (inverse) condemnation. He won on that issue in a Virginia trial court, and the matter was then referred to a panel of court-appointed commissioners (there were racial overtones, with the city attempting to strike the two black panels members), who recently determined the city owed the Claytors $281,500 to repay rent lost on the property (Claytor still owns the lot), and $150,875 for the Claytors' legal fees and other costs of the five-year legal battle that resulted from the lawsuit. With interest and city fees added, the battle will cost the city (taxpayers) of Roanoke some $730,000.
The trial judge was quoted as saying:
"Paraphrasing the Grateful Dead," he said Wednesday, "What a long strange trip it's been."
Indeed.
In 2001 the Virginia General Assembly approved a law, partly inspired by the Claytor case, that put a five-year limit on government plans to take private land for redevelopment projects.
Note: Read more at the Roanoke Times with two of reporter Matt Chittum's articles, which may be found here and here. For readability, I've merged the two stories, and used Matt's words in instances without blockquotes. Much of this is Matt's.