Eminent domain becomes pricier provision for light rail

By Kevin Flynn, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published September 17, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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The cost of eminent domain is going up for RTD on the West Corridor.

The RTD board approved a half-million-dollar increase Tuesday night to a consulting contract with H.C. Peck & Associates for additional workload involved in the property acquisition and tenant relocation services the firm provides for the light-rail project through Denver, Lakewood and Golden.

That raises the contract from $800,000, approved a year ago, to $1.3 million. Peck is one of three firms working on relocation of property owners and renters. The others have contracts totaling $1.2 million.

It was one year ago this week that owners of 21 parcels of property along the corridor started receiving notices from RTD that it intended to acquire their property. But it has gone slowly since then. To date, RTD has fully acquired only four of them.

And the transit agency has yet to begin notifications to owners of dozens of properties along the 12-mile corridor from whom it needs to acquire only partial pieces of land.

That list has been estimated to be between 116 and 180 properties but has been a moving target as RTD redesigns the project, particularly the adjoining bike path, in an effort to cut down on property purchases for the $707.6 million project.

The cost has climbed from the original 2004 estimate of $511.8 million.

Earlier this year, RTD said it expected to move on those partial eminent domain cases by spring. Now in September, it still is unsure when the notices will go out.

Liz Rao, RTD's FasTracks manager, who is leaving the agency for a private sector job next week, said the delays in property acquisition haven't yet demanded a delay in the schedule calling for light rail to be operating by 2012.

RTD says there are several reasons for the increased consulting costs for Peck. For one, the initial contract was based on a scope of work that was very general, and Altes said it had been anticipated there would be a need for increasing it as more work developed.

In addition, changing conditions in the metro real estate market, particularly rentals, have presented more challenges. Peck works with relocations of housing tenants and businesses. Part of that requires it to find new housing for more than 120 low-income families, many of them non-English-speaking, living in a cluster of apartment buildings on Sheridan Boulevard north of 10th Avenue.

Peck has had to hire a number of interpreters to assist, and has had to look harder for comparable housing in a tightening rental market.

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