Appraisers from the City of Santa Clarita have already visited businesses targeted for removal.

We’ve been following the Old Town Newhall Revitalization Project for a while now, with reviews of the Retail Opportunities Analysis and other updates.

Businesses in the area targeted for the supposed public library building were "appraised" by the City of Santa Clarita about four weeks ago and are still awaiting the City’s "friendly" eminent domain offers as a result of those appraisals. City officials in an interview with the Daily News stated that the results from these on-site inspections and market data comparisons should be made public by mid-June. Building owners expect to receive this information within the next few weeks.

Make no mistake about this process: These business owners are being forced to move, whether they want to move or not. While the City hasn’t started the formal eminent domain process yet, this stage is what’s called "friendly" eminent domain, where the building owners are given an opportunity to accept the City’s offers before the legal process starts.

If the City’s buy-out offers are unacceptable to the current building owners, then legal actions will begin with the City filing eminent domain proceedings with the courts. In prior interviews with The Signal, City officials have stated that they will compensate these business owners for "the cost of relocation to comparable facilities" with "not only moving costs, but the costs of acquiring another facility for those businesses".

However, the local business owners have stated that this "assistance" in acquiring a new location means only that they will be offered loans from the Bank of Santa Clarita with 10% down required. That’s not a lot of help, since commercial loans with those terms can be obtained from just about any bank that does commercial lending!

How do you compensate a business like the White Light Chiropractic Center that has been in the same location for over 20 years, with expectations that the owners would use that building and the ongoing business for their retirement? The City is mandated by law to offer "fair market value" for the building (whatever their opinion of that may be), but there are many other costs involved with relocating an established business. And with virtually nothing for sale in the Newhall area, it’s quite likely that they’ll need to rent a new location elsewhere in the Santa Clarita Valley, so that throws a huge monkey wrench in their retirement plans.

Business owners in the "library project" area near Spruce Street have expressed their doubts that a library will actually be built on that site. They are fully aware that it is easier to get an eminent domain proceeding approved by the courts if the intended use of the property is for "public use", and suspect that this is just a way to take the properties from the current owners and sell them to developers to build new commercial space in the area.

Chris Price, one of the City engineers assigned to oversee this project, told the Daily News recently, "We’re trying to consolidate a portion of the catalyst block for the planned library and other new uses." Seems that this comment in itself sheds some doubt as to whether there will really be a library in that location or not.

Officials with the Los Angeles County library system have apparently stated that they don’t have the funds (or desire) to staff and stock this new library, with two libraries already in place in the area in Newhall and Valencia. And with the recent commitment to build a new library in the Acton / Agua Dulce area, it would appear that the County’s library resources are being directed to areas other than this proposed project in Newhall.

With all that is at stake for some of these businesses, property owners expect this eminent domain process to take about a year to complete. After the "appraisals" and offers are received from the City, formal eminent domain proceedings will be filed against all property owners who don’t readily accept this first offer. At that point, the City and the property owners will enter into a negotiation process that will be monitored by the courts.

With this being only the first phase of properties to be obtained by the City for the Old Town Newhall Revitalization Project, expect to see more eminent domain actions in the near future, starting with the areas targeted for the two new parking garages. Remember from an earlier post that the City intends to remove (or redevelop) over 750,000 square feet of the existing commercial space, which currently stands at only about 950,000 square feet. That means that 79% of the businesses in the redevelopment area will be affected by eminent domain or similar actions.

With the initial acquisitions being for "public use" buildings, it’s going to be hard for these business owners to fight the eminent domain process. Even if the library project is just a regular commercial project in disguise, it’s still a public use project in the current plans.

Eminent domain isn’t always avoidable, since history shows that without the use of eminent domain, many airports, railroads and highways could never have been built. However, the more current uses of eminent domain for more private purposes (as in shopping malls and other commercial enterprises) are creating quite an outcry nationwide. According to Wikipedia,

"The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that property may only be taken for "public use", and upon payment of "just compensation". But the U.S. Supreme Court has diluted the meaning of "public use" to such an extent that virtually anything that a local condemning authority declares to be "public use" will be accepted by the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts."

Wikipedia goes on to state,

"Some state courts disagree and in recent years the courts of Illinois, Michigan, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Pennsylvania have taken the position that the taking of private land for so-called "economic redevelopment" — i.e., for reconveyance of the taken land to private companies for the construction of private, profit-making enterprises such as shopping malls, factories, office buildings and even gambling casinos does not meet the "public use" limitation under the state Constitution."

While these more recent rulings are promising, unfortunately for those in the downtown Newhall area, we’re not located in one of the states that takes this more common-sense approach to the definition of "public use" properties. And of course the debate still stands as to whether the "library project" will really deliver a new library, or if it will be just another for-profit commercial project. The plans for this site already state that there will be at least some retail space included there, so the door is open for this land to be used for just about anything.

Other areas in the U.S. affected by this threatened eminent domain process have been successful in fighting the process by using grassroots efforts, but it does take some organization and coordination to make this happen. And California’s history on eminent domain isn’t exacly rosy, since this state leads the nation in the use of eminent domain to condemn properties. Check out the Castle Coalition’s Survival Guide for detailed instructions (and resources) for fighting the eminent domain process.

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