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| Real Estate & Land |
The Politics of the Deal
Michael Sisk
06/01/2004
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Hidalgo notes that in West Hartford, his company spent
considerable time reviewing the town’s master plan, then crafting a project idea
that seemed consistent with the collective vision of local political leaders. As
a gesture toward civic pride and nostalgia, developers named the project Blue
Back Square, the title of favorite-son Noah Webster’s first book, published
before his famous dictionary. “Politics is a filter that helps you understand
what you can and cannot do,” Hidalgo says. “While a particular parcel might be
zoned for a particular use, that use may not be politically accessible.”
Community Quagmire
DiFrancesco tells of one development disaster that
came from a landowner ignoring such considerations. In the bucolic countryside a
short distance from greater Philadelphia, an investor purchased a rather large
tract of land in a wealthy enclave where fox hunting is a popular pastime and
the ability to cross properties during the hunts is an unspoken cornerstone of
the social contract. This investor wanted to subdivide and develop the property,
a goal that, according to DiFrancesco, did not immediately doom the project,
because it would have actually preserved considerable amounts of open space.
Unfortunately, the plan’s execution turned into nothing short of a debacle.
Instead of hiring local architects and lawyers with established political
connections and the knowledge of what it takes to get a deal done, the landowner
opted for a hardball approach. “He brought in a lot of outside people, a
powerful lawyer from Philadelphia and other powerful experts and never solicited
the township’s opinion or advice. They were like a bull in a china shop,”
DiFrancesco recalls.
Furthermore, the landowner antagonized his neighbors by
closing his lands to their horse riding and foxhunts. Though most community
property use laws are designed to respect the rights of owners, in some
instances, the citizenry may view private property as a quasi-public resource,
one in which they legitimately have a stake. As a result, concessions (or at
least open lines of communication) to a local community can be critical to
winning approvals for development. These concessions often include promising not
to seek maximum density and preserving significant open space; occasionally,
they even extend to providing rights of way to fox hunters.
Though, in this
case, the landowner did ultimately reverse his decision to close the property to
fox hunting, the damage was done, and local politicians and residents responded
in kind: The approval process, which should have taken no more than a year,
required six years and cost $300,000.
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