Minister's Study

Ministering, writing, and wrestling in a land flowing with sweet tea and deep-fried food

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Land grab!

Construction recently began on the lot beside the church. I've quietly bemoaned (okay, occassionally I've bemoaned it loudly) the fact that the church didn't purchased the property either time it became available (both were before we got here). Now that the church is looking to expand, it sure would be nice to have that property; without it, we'll almost surely have to change locations.

Well, when they started working next door, they surveyed twice, but the property line always looked fishy to us. It didn't look like what we church folk expected from our old survey.

Well, the next door neighbor didn't like the looks of the property line they took across her backyard either. So she hired her own surveyer and checked the line. According to her surveyer, the builders swiped about twenty feet of her backyard. That's an incredible amount of land in NYC. Since the church's property line runs diagonally back, and we know the builders anchored one end at the right spot, they didn't steal as much square footage from us -- but if the next door neighbor's survey is right, they still tried to steal a big chunk of land from us. Twenty feet by, oh, say, thirty feet (in the case of the neighbor), or somewhat less for the church, isn't much in MN or rural VA -- but here, that's enormous, worth thousands, and probaby tens of thousands (I hesitate to say even more, but in some circumstances it would be), in property value.

The neighbor has a stop work order out, has signed on a lawyer, and is ready to fight tooth and nail for her land, or to at least make the company buy it from her. Now we've got to decide what the church will do.

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