The Colorado Supreme Court struck down an eminent domain case in which an urban renewal authority wanted to buy part of a lake in order to provide more parking to lure Wal-Mart. The authority claimed it could do so because a shopping center near the lake lost a major tenant, and was given the authority to take land on the basis of eliminating blight. But an office park, with a smaller tax-generating base, was built up around the rest of the lake and in the view of the court had eliminated the existing blight.
The urban renewal authority director, Tim Steinhaus, said the authority could condemn a property in an urban renewal district simply because the authority was dissatisfied with a retailer’s economic performance, according to the Denver Post’s report. That characterization “far exceeds an urban renewal authority’s power to act pursuant to a municipality’s initial blight determination,” the court ruling stated.
