With talks stalled between the town and owners of a Valley Road home slated for demolition, New Canaan’s highest elected official said Thursday that the municipality is looking into taking the disputed property by eminent domain.
1124 Valley Road. Credit: Michael Dinan
Noting that the owner of 1124 Valley Road—Norwalk’s First Taxing District—has rejected the New Canaan Land Trust’s offer to purchase the 4-acre property, with its 18th Century home, for $1.2 million, First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said during a media briefing that “we are looking into executing eminent domain as a town to take the property as open space.”
With authorization from New Canaan’s legislative body, the Town Council, the municipality would first negotiate on its own with the First Taxing District, Moynihan said during the briefing, held in his office at Town Hall. If those talks did not progress, the town would obtain two new appraisals of the parcel and start the eminent domain legal proceeding “soon,” in part because the conspicuous red-painted house there could be demolished as soon as May 13.
“We are very disappointed that the Taxing District is doing what they are doing,” Moynihan said. “The key fact is they have admitted that they do not need it for public water company purposes. If they did, we could not take it.”
He added: “The fact that they tried to sell it for two, three years indicates they do not need it for water company purposes.”
The Taxing District purchased the property in 2006 for $2,250,000, tax records show.
It came onto the radar of preservationists after what they call the “Grupe-Nichols-Brown House” hit the market at $2.25 million two years ago.
The ownership entity later tried to sell it for $1.6 million, Moynihan said. Officials with the Taxing District told NewCanaanite.com recently that they have tried to accommodate historic preservationists by offering to sell the house itself with limited land around it.
But “the Land Trust is not just interested in the house, they are interested in the [entire 4-acre] property” because it abuts the 10.3-acre Browne Wildlife Sanctuary, Moynihan said.
The property last was appraised at $1,590,600, according to tax records.
Moynihan noted that the town’s appraisal is from 2013 and that many 4-acre properties in New Canaan have been devalued since then.
Though eminent domain is addressed fully in Section 8 the Connecticut General Statutes, the town appears to be invoking Section 7-131b. It reads, in part: “Any municipality may, by vote of its legislative body, by purchase, condemnation, gift, devise, lease or otherwise, acquire any land in any area designated as an area of open space land on any plan of development of a municipality adopted by its planning commission or any easements, interest or rights therein and enter into covenants and agreements with owners of such open space land or interests therein to maintain, improve, protect, limit the future use of or otherwise conserve such open space land.”
The state Office of Legislative Research in 1999 published a paper titled “Using Eminent Domain To Take Open Space Land.”
If the eminent domain process moved forward, the Land Trust likely would sign a binding agreement with the town to turn over $1.2 million for the purchase. The town would own the new house though a nonprofit organization such as the Land Trust would be responsible for its maintenance, he said.
“I think the water company is not being reasonable and I would like to see the property under town control at a fair price,” Moynihan said.
Note, the Board of Finance supported the First Selecman’s efforts to acquire the property and save the house at their meeting earlier this week and the Town Council followed suit (unanimously) last night, authorizing the First Selecman to do what is necessary to acquire the property.
It is unfortunate that it has come to this but when a private water company resorts to threatening our town with the imminent demolition of one of our last (27) remaining Colonial structures in order to extort a higher price for it, then we must take action. We have tried. First Selecman Mallozzi began this effort several years ago with a letter expressing interest in the property, asking for a meeeting. I personally have attended at least three water company board meetings hoping to move this dialogue forward. It has been removed from the agenda each time. The First Selectman and I wrote a letter on April 9 on behalf of the town and the many non-profit organizations who have a stake in the matter. There was no reply to our letter. Instead, we all read the water company’s reply in the pages of the NewCanaanite. It is time to force the issue.
Why should the Town – and us taxpayers – be out of pocket for any money for this eminent domain taking? Fine if Town takes it and then turns it over to Land Trust in exchange for a payment = FMV, which presumably would, in turn, be paid to First Taxing District. However, that is not clear from the news coverage of this matter. Anything else makes our Town government and newly elected crew no better than the Hartford crowd that is crippling our state economy with a tax/spend regime.
I like this — the first taxing district has paid close to nothing in taxes
over the time they owned this property — but want $1.6 mil
when the land trust has $1.2 mil to spend — lets see if a judge
agrees with their price — it’s great to see the town stand up to
these non tax payer who want all they can get form us