After hearing emotional testimony from some property owners whose land is being taken for use along a light-rail line, the House Transportation Committee passed an amended bill Tuesday that places curbs on RTD’s power of eminent domain.
“They are taking my home and business and American dream,” Lakewood property owner Galen Foster said to legislators, about the land at West 14th Avenue and Wadsworth Boulevard that he and his wife, Kim Snyder, are losing to the Regional Transportation District.
RTD is taking their property and other land in the area for a four-story, 1,000-space parking garage to serve the Wadsworth station on the west light-rail line.
RTD general manager Cal Marsella told lawmakers his agency pays “fair market value” for land taken through eminent domain.
RTD may solicit interest from private developers for building up to four additional floors of commercial space above the parking garage, he said.
If private companies develop the “air rights” above the “footprint” RTD needs for parking, the agency might be able to save money for taxpayers, Marsella said. But he added, “I want to dispel the notion we’re in the development business. We’re not.”
Late last month, legislators introduced a bill constraining RTD’s power to take property, yet the measure was so restrictive, it even barred the transit agency from acquiring land for rail station park-n-Rides.
On Tuesday, bill sponsors Reps. Al White, R-Hayden, and Ken Summers, R-Lakewood, offered amendments that give RTD the ability to take land for parking at stations and transit-maintenance facilities.
But the measure that passed bars RTD from taking land for “any form of commercial or residential development.”
One impetus for the bill was RTD’s move to take the property owned by Foster and Snyder.
“This is about right and wrong, and you have the power to make it right,” Snyder told the committee.
The amended bill approved Tuesday added a new constraint on public agencies’ power to condemn and take private property. Sponsors added language that says before state or local entities can use eminent domain, they must participate in nonbinding mediation with property owners who are the target of land takings.
Almost uniformly, property owners at Tuesday’s committee hearing blasted RTD for being high-handed and unresponsive to their concerns.
The bill was forwarded to the House Appropriations Committee for consideration.
