but YOU broke it ...

[Cheesesteak]

OTOH, the home buyer isn’t the dumb m-fer cutting a check for $300,000 to a guy who can’t manage the payments, then whining about losing money when the whole market tanks and his buyer decides on a strategic default.

[eschereal]

A lot of people are rather stupid and easily convinced that they can afford this. Stupidity appears to be a valuable capital resource without which the economy we are familiar with would falter at best.

[Saint_Cad]

Well it looks like the city won and yet again fuck any pretense of property ownership.

Under state law, she said, Dillard’s itself did not have to be blighted to be condemned – it merely had to be in an urban renewal area that contained blight. Twin Peaks has been designated a blighted area by the city more than once, most recently in 2012.

However, Mallard said, that blight couldn’t be fixed without taking Dillard’s title. Dillard’s owns its property and holds an agreement allowing it to veto any redevelopment of the mall. Attempts to negotiate with the store fell through this spring.

“The prospect of these parties reaching an agreement is dim,” Mallard wrote. “Dillard’s and NewMark Merrill each lay blame on the other for failure to compromise and reach agreement. The court need not determine why there was failure to reach agreement; it simply must accept the fact that there is no agreement and no likelihood of agreement to conduct its analysis.”

The judge also admonished Dillard’s for its claim that the condemnation was a sham, done solely to aid NewMark Merrill.

“The situation here involves more than a mere impediment,” she wrote. "Dillard’s actions have completely prevented any effort to implement a legitimate urban renewal plan. … Here, there is a complete shutdown of redevelopment, leaving Longmont with a blighted mall.

So what did we learn?

1. If you are in a blighted neighborhood even if you do not contribute to the blight, the government can take your property.
2. If you have a contract that gives you certain rights (like veto power over development plans) then you need to either give up those rights or you lose your property.

[Saint_Cad]

Oh as a note to the above and possibly the reason for the stalemate between Dillard’s and Twin Peaks, the first thing the new management did when they took over the mall was jack up the rents that drove many of the retailers out.

[Odesio]

@Saint_Cad

So what did we learn?

1. If you are in a blighted neighborhood even if you do not contribute to the blight, the government can take your property.
2. If you have a contract that gives you certain rights (like veto power over development plans) then you need to either give up those rights or you lose your property.

If the contract serves to drag down the whole area then, yeah, either play ball or face eminent domain. I’m not really feeling sorry for Dillard’s.

[Saint_Cad]

@Odesio

If the contract serves to drag down the whole area then, yeah, either play ball or face eminent domain. I’m not really feeling sorry for Dillard’s.

From what I know about the revitalization plan (very little) it is a crap ass plan. Two points I do know is that rents were increased which actually contributed to more blight as it drove away most of the retailers and anchors and they plan to make it an outdoor mall . . . in Northern Colorado. That’ll be fun for Christmas shopping.

I think one of Dillard’s claims was they should not be punished for the bad condition the mall is in and veto the crapass plan to revitalize