J.K.S. Realty, LLC v. City of Nashua
Annotate this CasePetitioners J.K.S. Realty, LLC and L.J.J. Realty, LLC, appealed a superior court ruling that Respondent City of Nashua did not take their property by inverse condemnation. Petitioners are two trusts that owned as tenants-in-common a 26.8 acre parcel of land that was originally purchased in 1980 for development purposes. The northern section of the property was in the area of a planned "Board Street Parkway." In 1983, Petitioners successfully petitioned to have the property rezoned to prepare the property for sale to a developer. Since 1998, they made numerous unsuccessful attempts to sell the property or any portion thereof. The last purchase and sale agreement was entered into in 2002, for sale of the entire property with a closing in April 2004. At some point, the buyer learned that the City was unsure whether it would take the property for the parkway and asked the petitioners for an extension until he learned what the City intended to do. The petitioners decided to keep the property until it was resolved whether the City was going to take the property and, as a result, the sale did not go through. Since 2004, the petitioners have not marketed the property. However, they have harvested timber on the property for a profit and there was testimony that, unless prohibited by zoning regulations, the petitioners "would have been able to undertake" building "single-family residences, . . . conservation subdivisions, modular homes, manufactured homes, elderly housing, commercial uses, and multi-family developments." In 2009, the petitioners filed a petition for inverse condemnation, requesting that the trial court rule that the City took the property by inverse condemnation in 2004, and sought damages, including but not limited to, the fair market value of the property on that date. They alleged that the delays and continuing uncertainty regarding the parkway deprived them of all economically viable use of their property as of April 2004, when the last purchase and sale agreement fell through. Finding that the trial court properly declined to rule that the property was taken by inverse condemnation, the Supreme Court affirmed.
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