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Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Indiana Law - Question in New Albany about a 1935 deed
This story today in the Louisville Courier-Journal reports that "Legal issues mar Floyd house move." Some quotes:
A meeting yesterday between lawyers for Floyd Memorial Hospital and a neighborhood group failed to resolve legal issues clouding a proposal to move 17 houses now in the path of the hospital's expansion. If the matter goes to court — as the residents have said it might — it could undermine a plan that city officials said would help them bring millions of dollars' worth of federal and state housing grants to New Albany. The plan is to relocate the houses to the McLean Ballfield, off Linden Street in western New Albany. The legal issues are complex and little-tested in court, the lawyers said. * * *To allow the hospital's expansion, the New Albany Board of Zoning Appeals required Floyd Memorial to replace or retain affordable housing that might be lost as a result. Hospital and city representatives then put together a plan to move as many of the Cottom Avenue houses as possible to keep them from being demolished. The officials have estimated the value of the houses could be used as local matching funds to obtain $10 million worth of state and federal housing grants. * * *
[Officials] have been concentrating on plans to move the houses to a 5.8-acre ballfield off Linden Street that is owned by the state and leased to the New Albany-Floyd County Parks and Recreation Department. * * *
But people who live near McLean Field have questioned the impact on their neighborhood and hired Naville to fight the plan. The legal issue, [Mike Naville, a lawyer for residents of the neighborhood where city officials plan to move the houses] said, is a clause in the 1935 deed that Catherine Fawcett used to give the land to the city. The deed states that if the land isn't used for golf or some other recreation, it reverts to Fawcett's heirs.
The city transferred the land, along with other real estate, to the state in 1961. The clause is still on the deed, Naville said, and that could give his clients — about 10 residents of the neighborhood — a powerful legal weapon.
[Michael] Ward, the hospital's lawyer, said that in his view, the 1961 transfer of the land to the state eliminates the clause. Naville said he intends to meet with his clients later in the week.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on July 14, 2004 07:42 AM
Posted to Indiana Law