Im so sick if these NIMBYS trying to derail this project. What an overall benefit to the city. And doesn’t even have anything to do with “lining the developers pocket’s”.
These guys are double NIMBys both in the literal and figurative sense.
I have an easement going across the end of our yard. I saw this shown in the plot plan when we bought the house. If the city wanted to build a greenway on that easement, I would be all for it. In fact, I would request to have them put a gate in the fence so I could get on the greenway straight from my backyard.
A few years ago a greenway was built in my neighborhood. It mostly went on HOA common property but there were a few places where they had to get easements from homeowners.
In this case the HOA was strongly in favor and approved it, in spite of some of the individual homeowners’ objections. And at that point the homeowners really had no choice: it was sell voluntarily or via eminent domain.
The City has an Easement and unless the new trail would expand beyond it, which is not what I’ve seen, they wouldn’t need to buy these people out or condemn any new property. The landowners have just been trying whatever bad faith/stupid things they can to kill it so they won’t have a trail close to them. Even though they all bought subject to the greenway Easement.
if its 5.5 million for one segment when it used to be 4.something million for the entire project, it should be torpedoed. i agree that the privacy and tree canopy is BS. Portions of the greenway flood all the time and Lassiter Mill houses far more expensive than anderson park have greenways in full view of their backyards. if the cheaper options now exist, go for it…price has escalated way to much.
The city has an easement, which you can see on this plat that forms the property descriptions for neighborhood. This would have been a condition of subdivision approval and suffice to say that an easement on a plat is valid and enforceable.
They have been so dogged that it’s hard to imagine what they wouldn’t do to kill this. They tried recording a unilateral termination without the city’s signature, which is (a) not how this works, lol, lmao, and (b) a tactic usually employed by sovereign citizens.
All their arguments collapse under scrutiny. Eg the easement document says that no improvements may be built in the easement (no improvements may be built by the property owner, that’s how easements work) or that the easement says “open space” (not inconsistent with a greenway trail, whatever).
In the end this is 9 well-off property owners trying to either kill the greenway they had ample notice of, or cause the city to incur hundreds of thousands more in costs so that they can keep 50 more feet of backyard.
I have heard these budget numbers thrown around, but have not heard or seen anything formal to substantiate this claim.
That first speaker mentioned a lot of speculations about the cost of land acquisition and legal costs, etc. There is no land to acquire with the easement. And there wouldn’t be any legal cost if these folks would not present a legal challenge. They are driving up the costs.
Same here. Big Branch Creek goes behind our house and there was an option I believe at one point for the greenway to go along there. I was like cool I can hop on the greenway straight from my house! Granted I might build a fence to keep kids from wandering into our yard. Also, the self-righteous, condescending tone of some of the speakers is …oof.
Sounds like they’re fighting an unwinnable battle. I hope they enjoy paying court fees AND STILL having the greenway built along the easement, regardless!
I was comparing the easement map with Google Maps & Zillow, and I have some thoughts.
The houses that abut the easement already enjoy much larger parcels under their houses than the ones across the street. The houses across the street are mostly in the 1/4 acre range while the ones abutting the easement are nearing 1/2 acre or more. The developer clearly platted these lots with the easement in mind by making the lots substantially larger.
3241, and especially 3245 Anderson have clear cut their backyards for lawns and have only left the tree buffer largely on the easement. Some of the vocal neighbors have complained in council session about losing privacy. Well, I suspect that they live at one of those two addresses. The other houses have not cut their trees in the backyards. FWIW, 3245 Anderson also has their street view blurred on Google Maps so this is clearly a hot button issue for them.
Using Zillow, the houses that abut the easement have a slightly higher value than the ones across the street. It’s not crazy different, but they are a bit higher on average.
Plus the greenway easement overlaps the sewer easement so definitely should not have any structures in the sewer easement and that is a large sewer line. Big reason to pay attention or ask questions about any easements crossing your property.
