There's a good article in the Chesapeake Bay Journal discussing the legal wrangling in York County, Pennsylvania involving the County's attempts to seize land through the power of eminent domain.
In York County, PA, the County Commissioners recently voted to condemn, with the intention of seizing through eminent domain, an "archaeologically and ecologically valuable property along the Susquehanna on which a local developer had intended to erect a subdivision." As the Chesapeake Bay Journal reports:
The 80-acre parcel, on which developer Peter Alecxih Jr. had proposed to build more than 50 houses in a subdivision called Highpoint and over which Alecxih is now suing the county, was originally part of a much-larger property known as Lauxmont Farms, which was owned by the Kohr family for about 30 years. In the late 1980s, the Kohr family declared bankruptcy, and has since sold off portions of the property and pursued plans to subdivide others in an effort to fulfill their obligations to creditors. The family still owns about 500 acres, including a portion of the property with unquestioned archaeological significance. County officials have made purchase offers to the respective owners of each tract of land, but their offers were reportedly rebuffed. The Kohr family denies that most of their remaining 500 acres were ever even for sale, and has called the county’s contention that family members had made sale overtures to county officials as “fiction fabricated to advance [their] agenda.”The county officials, joined by state leaders including Gov. Ed Rendell, are hopeful the Lauxmont Farms and Highpoint properties will form the spine of a riverfront park that preserves the archaeological and ecological integrity of the landscape. They envision a publicly accessible “Susquehanna Riverlands Preservation Project” that will include an environmental education center, trail network and Native American heritage site.
A decision in the Highpoint eminent domain case is slated to come out today.