North Corridor Roadblock

Dad and Mom predicted in the 1960s: "Iowa City and Cedar Rapids will grow together someday."

Once secluded and miles out of town, our family's rural land is today at dead center of the so-called North Corridor, Johnson County's top priority target zone for new housing. Our environmentally sensitive woodland has become valuable real estate.

Several years before Mom died in 1999, our parents established a family trust for preserving the "natural habitats and scenery" of their "Gilead" as long as possible into the future. Dad is 94, and we four kids agree we're not interested in speculating on subdivisions or dreaming of selling out.

Our big news this summer is the Scanlon/Southgate announcement about seeking Coralville annexation for a 130-acre parcel lying along our western border. Big as this looks to us, however, it's a footnote to their larger scheme which envisions some 500 houses planned for 250-plus acres south across Dubuque Street. That's got the whole neighborhood aroused, and it will make news again when dozens (hundreds?) of us show up at the JCCOG meeting next week. (Citizens for Sensible Development http://www.citizenssensibledevelopment.org).

By contrast, developer Dean Oakes' plan for developing a "landlocked" 24-acre property he's acquired north of our place is a minor sideshow.

The Oakes land features ridges and ravines, bounded by the reservoir on the north and creeks and wetland on east and west. To gain the "access" Iowa law entitles him, he proposes to build a private road north from the end of 275th Street NE, along inside the very rugged east border of our 39 acres plus the east border of the adjacent 10-acre Scanlon parcel. (Scanlon land surrounds us except on the east.)

We've agreed in principle to accommodate him while sparing the biggest trees and avoiding the steepest slopes, but we are unwilling to let him come in farther, dividing our land, to angle across on the higher ground where a road, if any, "should" go. And we are unwilling to grant a permanent easement outright without seeing detailed plans and hearing affirmations from the various public regulators that this road really can and must happen. It's really a terrible place for a road, and everyone says so, including the developer himself.

Folks seemingly "in the know" have said a Johnson County Sensitive Areas Ordinance could protect those slopes--if it ever comes to see the light of day. Evidently there's no chance politically. If wishes were horses... (http://www.johnson-county.com/zoning/reports/sensitive_areas/index.shtml)

Our Woodfield Lane neighbors do not want the Oakes development at all, but nobody sees any way to stop it, short of somebody buying him out and guaranteeing conservation. And nobody is coming forward to do that. Some neighbors brought in the US Army Corps of Engineers, so now a federally protected wetland is part of the mix, but nobody believes it can stop the road (http://gileadpress.com/wetland/).

The quest for any other "magic bullet" has been pursued for over a year.

Of course our family would make the issue go away if we could, but we can't. I've worked with Mr. Oakes and his lawyer as our designated negotiator. (I don't dislike either one.) I've consulted and involved neighbors, county officials, and various others. Several of us have done our best to learn the rules and the players; we've tracked zoning decisions and plat plans and steeped ourselves in the county's land-use planning culture.

Well, not surprisingly, Mr. Oakes finally tired of our endless study and consensus process, so last month he got a judge to order that we're headed toward the Eminent Domain fight we all say we don't want. A Compensation Commission is scheduled to walk the route at 9:30 a.m. on September 20, unless we reach a private agreement about route and design and price before then.

Whatever community consensus or land-stewardship argument might favor our side, the Code of Iowa is unambiguous: "The right to take private property for public use is hereby conferred ... [u]pon the owner or lessee of lands, which have no public or private way to the lands, for the purpose of providing a public way, not exceeding forty feet in width, which will connect with an existing public road. The condemned public way shall be located on a division, subdivision or 'forty' line, or immediately adjacent thereto, and along the line which is the nearest feasible route to an existing public road...." (http://www.legis.state.ia.us/IACODE/1999/6A/4.html)

Mr. Oakes is pursuing the shortest line to 275th Street NE. No argument. Is it feasible? What's feasible? That's a matter for experts.

Our slightly longer, curving, family-consensus route--only if the road is unstoppable--might qualify as "nearest feasible," but the 40-foot width limit could prove impossible given the terrain. Another matter for experts. And more likely with voluntary agreement. (http://gileadpress.com/oakesrd-80.jpg)

Our east border is the shortest way, but not the only one. I've pointed out half a dozen. (http://gileadpress.com/oakesrd-alternatives.html)

To be continued.

Dan Clark


"Legal justification is not moral justification."
(Nicholas Johnson, August 22, 2006)