Real Estate & Property Law

Sewer company Eyes Country Club Property

By Alan Ackerman

    When one reads about the Brite Canyon Resource Recovery seeking to obtain nine holes of an 18 hole course, one has to wonder whether the condemning authority has any sense of what it is doing.  The destruction of nine holes will make the remainder of this parcel worth far less than one-half of its prior value.      First, it may now be adjacent to a holding pond.  Of greater import is that people who play golf on 18 hole courses expect to continue to play a full round of 18 rather than nine holes.  
    As a hacker who barely gets to nine and only on the rare day in which my friend lets me use his drive as a starting point, I have no great problem with a nine hole course.  However, anybody who golfs on a regular basis expects the full three to five hours to play eighteen holes.  
    On the flip side, when reading the article closely, we notice that this golf course probably is an 'eyesore' and not in use.  Does it really have 18 holes or is this really just a fallow former golf course?
 

Tehachapinews.com

Brite Canyon Resource Recovery intends to take control of the derelict 160-acre Golden Hills Country Club and golf course that for years has been an eyesore on Woodford Tehachapi Road, according to sanitation company officials.

The owners of the small sewer company - a division of the Golden Hills Sanitation Company --  recently offered to buy the property from owner Ed Borges of AB Development Co., said Clint Hilderbrand, sanitation company corporate officer.

'We made him a bonafide offer,' Hilderbrand said in an interview May 25 at the company's Old Town office, accompanied by Cody Tellis, who manages the estate of the family of the late Carly Smith. The estate owns Brite Canyon Resource Recovery and numerous other waste water properties in California.

The written offer to Borges was $2 million, Hilderbrand said -- 'far more than it's worth.'

'As a public utility we have eminent domain rights. He declined the offer. Based on Public Utility Code 624, we are preparing to file eminent domain.'

Full post as published by National Eminent Domain Blog on June 15, 2010 (boomark / email).