case studies Eminent Domain

Severance Damages

Issue:

Client owned a 6.77-acre property improved with 150-unit garden apartment complex. The apartments enjoyed a park setting as they backed up to the Capital Crescent Trail. The quiet setting in close-in Chevy Chase imbued the property with substantial value. The State’s Purple Line Light Rail would be constructed in the bed of the Capital Crescent Trail. The project would require the widening of the trail and the elimination of the mature trees, which screened the facing apartments from the trail and the County-owned industrial depot on the other side of the trial. The State would only need to acquire a thin strip of 7,356 square feet of the client’s property along the Capital Crescent Trail to accommodate the project. The State asserted the value of the compensation due for its taking was $175,550. But the loss of the screening, destruction of the garden apartments’ park-like setting, and substitution of the Purple Line Light Rail for the quiet wooded trail would substantially reduce the rental value of the apartments facing the Purple Line and the total value of the garden apartment property after construction of the project was complete.

Goal:

Client demanded to receive full just compensation for both the value of the real property being taken by the State and the diminution in value that would be suffered by the remaining property due to the project.

Success:

Joseph Suntum worked with the client and an independent appraiser to capture all of the damages that would be suffered as a result of the project, including increased vacancy and marketing costs to lease apartments facing the Purple Line, and a higher capitalization rate to reflect the increased risk of ownership. Upon convincing proof of the resulting damages, the State agreed to pay $1,845,350 in just compensation.

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