City Council has voted 3-1 to seize land next to Kmart to build the Hillsdale Connector, Graham Moomaw reports for the Progress, though they’d be seizing the land from a developer who wants it to be seized.
It was six years ago when Council approved the construction of the local-traffic-only road to parallel Route 29, and three years ago when it emerged that the road wouldn’t happen until 2014, at the earliest. Two years ago Regal announced that their four-screen theater behind Kmart would become a nine-screen, stadium-seating theater, something that there has been no apparent progress on, and that some folks speculated might have really been intended to ratchet up the value of the land in case things came to eminent domain proceedings.
What the city wants is that new, little road that’s between Kmart and the under-construction Whole Foods, so that they can run it past Kmart and through Seminole Square. That’s a total of an acre and a half. The developer who owns the land agreed to build the road to state standards, be reimbursed by the city, and then turn it over to the city, which would turn it into the Hillsdale Connector. But Kmart sued the developer, saying that they’ve leased the land and the developer doesn’t get to sell it. The city’s planned eminent domain proceedings are presumably intended to accelerate the process, either by “seizing” it (from a willing party—the developer) to obviate the lawsuit, or to persuade Kmart to drop their suit and make eminent domain unnecessary.
Councilor Holly Edwards was the lone dissenting vote; Mayor Dave Norris did not vote, because he is out of the country on city business.
Exactly what City business is Dave Norris conducting abroad?
I was wondering that myself. Probably some sister city crap.
Yup. Winneba.
I feel the need to point out what a huge mess the city made of Hydraulic Road between 29 and 250 as a direct result of the Hillsdale connector project.
Uncontrolled traffic crossings at Michie Drive (people trying to make left hand turns from any direction at that intersection), then at what used to be the Kroger/Kmart Traffic light, all work to snarl traffic on that road in the same way that the 29/250 interchange is snarled (people running in the 1st and 2nd lanes with the purpose of cutting over into the 3rd lane so as to get around everyone waiting in line to get onto 250 at Best Buy).
And once they get this most recent section settled- then what next? They don’t have any agreements to use the initial path they originally proposed to get to Hillsdale- unless the Jessup Family wants to let them go East of the Pepsi plant, to connect to Pepsi place. The USPS has already said absolutely NO to allowing them to take any of their property for the project.
What?!? We’ve begun work on the beginning of a road without knowing how/when/if it has an ending?