Judge Backs Residents In Dispute With DOT

April 22, 2003 - Source: Meredith Barkley, Staff Writer

Stagecoach Village townhouse owners may yet have their day in court.

A Guilford County Superior Court judge has ordered the state Department of Transportation to consider compensation claims from the west Greensboro community's 106 homeowners who believe their homes will lose value with Painter Boulevard going in beside them.

The DOT has appealed Judge John O. Craig III's ruling. Resolution of the matter is at least a year off.

But homeowners are happy with the ruling, apparently the first involving a homeowners association to go against the department.

"At least we have some hope now for some compensation for loss of value," homeowner Barbara Smith said.

An access road will come within 30 feet of her townhouse and Painter itself, a freeway that will one day loop Greensboro, will be within 125 feet.

The DOT only agreed to pay for a building it took and to reimburse the homeowners association $467,200 for loss in value to the common area, which it condemned for the project.

Because it did not take homes of the other individual owners in the community, the department contended it did not have to reimburse them for the loss in value Painter Boulevard would cause. That is a policy the department has followed for years.

Miffed homeowners asked Guilford County Superior Court to intervene. Greensboro attorneys Bruce Ashley and Jeff Peraldo argued that townhouse owners also owned an easement to the community's common area, making them part owner of the common area.

Therefore, the attorneys argued, loss in value to the common area affected each of the homeowners and they should be compensated.

Craig agreed.

"As a result of the condemnation, each lot owner has been deprived of his or her easement in the property taken by the state," Craig wrote in a March 27 order.

The DOT says that unless the right-of-way touches a homeowner's property, state law says the owner is not entitled to compensation even if a project hurts the property's value.

"We feel like the law is on our side on this," said John Williamson, who manages the DOT's right-of-way branch.

If the ruling is upheld on appeal, a jury will consider claims by individual property owners for loss of value to their properties and decide how much each should get.

"It affected everybody in some way," attorney Ashley said. "Clearly it's going to affect the people closer to the right-of-way more than people in the back of the subdivision."

The DOT expects to take bids in July on the nearly 5-mile stretch of Painter that goes from Interstate 40, by Stagecoach Village to Bryan Boulevard. Construction, which is expected to take three years and to cost about $117.5 million, is scheduled to beginSept. 1.


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