By Christian Davenport
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 26, 2006
In the coming weeks and months, some property owners along the proposed route for the intercounty connector could find a surprise in their mailbox: a notice that state officials intend to acquire a part of their land to make way for the 18-mile highway.
Maryland transportation officials have known for months which properties could be subject to "partial acquisitions" but have not sent notices to nearly 200 landowners who may be forced to give up a slice of their property through eminent domain.
The state has held off because the right of way for several sections of the highway -- designed to link Interstate 270 in Montgomery County with Interstate 95 and Route 1 in Prince George's County -- has not been officially approved and could change, according to transportation officials.
It would be unfair to alert property owners about eminent domain proceedings, officials said, until it is certain that their properties are going to be affected. "We want to know where the road is going to go before we bring a specific property owner in and say this is how much we need and begin negotiations over the fair-market value," said David Buck, a spokesman for the Maryland State Highway Administration.
Critics, however, say the state is stalling to mute additional opposition to the project, which for years has been opposed by environmental groups. Some of the affected landowners also worry that any delay will hurt them in a cooling real estate market.
The right of way has been finalized in only one of the five phases of the $2.4 billion highway project, state officials say. The 122 private landowners in that first phase have been notified that they are losing a piece of their land.
The first phase, known as "Contract A," runs between I-270 and Route 97 in Montgomery.
There are 173 private property owners in the remaining four phases whose land could be subject to the partial acquisitions, according to a state highway document. Those parts of the route stretch from Route 97 east to Route 1 in Prince George's.
Officials stressed that they are working to limit the impact, and the numbers could change. Once lines are set, they said, property owners within the right of way will be notified.
The approximately 60 landowners whose entire properties are being acquired by the state were notified in November 2005 because it was certain they would be displaced by the project, Buck said.
Property owners have had plenty of opportunities to inquire about the fate of their land, Buck said. The state has held nearly 100 public meetings in the past couple of years, offered maps showing where the road would go and met one-on-one with dozens of homeowners.
Although transportation officials say they are only being fair, Montgomery County Council member Phil Andrews (D-Gaithersburg-Rockville) said the state's approach to notifying residents amounts to "a strategy to minimize opposition" to the highway, which received federal approval in June.
Andrews's request for a list of the properties that could be subject to eminent domain was denied by the State Highway Administration. A similar request by The Washington Post was also denied. The state said the list did not have to be made public until the highway's plans are finalized.
"I think it's a terrible process that's very unfair to the affected people," Andrews said. "I think that anybody who might lose a portion of their property should be notified immediately or should have been notified before that this was at least a possibility, or a probability."
That's how Dale and Dennis McCarthy feel.
The Derwood couple, who live near Rockville and within the project's first phase, received notice in July that the state would be claiming much of their back yard. Despite paying close attention to the project, they said they were shocked to learn that 2,800 square feet of their property fell within the road's right of way, and they thought that the state should have notified them earlier.
Recently, they received the state's offer: $59,750 -- or about $21 a square foot.
To the McCarthys, however, the land is priceless. The trees and stream in their back yard are why they bought the property about 12 years ago, when it seemed as if the highway wouldn't come to fruition, Dale McCarthy said. It's where they spread their son's ashes after he was killed in a car accident 12 years ago at age 16.
Now they are worried that instead of a pastoral patch of woods behind their house, they'll have a six-lane highway running through their back yard. If they had known they were going to lose so much land, they would have sold the house a long time ago, Dale McCarthy said.
"There is no way we can stay in this house and watch the destruction of what we consider sacred land," she said. "Why didn't they tell us last year when the [real estate] market was better? It puts us in the worst position we could be in."
The offer "is not anywhere close to mitigating the damage to the property," Dennis McCarthy said. The highway "is going to make the house almost impossible to sell."
Assigning value to partial acquisitions is "very, very complex," said Joseph M. Miklochik, director of the Office of Real Estate for the Maryland Department of Transportation -- and much more difficult than pricing an entire parcel.
Appraisers have to consider not just the value of the land to be acquired but also damages to the remaining property -- all in a fluctuating real estate market. But Miklochik said the Highway Administration has assembled a team of some of the best appraisers in the state who are experts in this kind of real estate evaluation.
Once the price is set, the state is willing to negotiate, he said.
"We try our best to be as fair as we possibly can to the property owners," he said.
At first, Daniel Chow of Derwood said he thought the state's offer of $12,250 for 509 square feet of his back yard was fair. But then he thought about how the highway would completely change the character of the neighborhood. Will people still want to live here? he wondered.
What about the construction? The offer "won't compensate for all the noise, the pollution," he said.
But what's a fair price for having your back yard replaced with a highway? He doesn't know.
That's why he's hiring a lawyer.
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