Have you ever found yourself at the eastern end of Business Loop 70, wishing you could just zip down past the Walmart to Broadway? Well, the city’s had that idea in mind for years, identifying an extension of Conley Road to Business Loop in its Major Thoroughfare Plan. The Missouri Department of Transportation has, too, as part of its I-70 improvement study.
Note to motorists: Don’t hold your breath.
The extension, which would be funded by the Conley Road Transportation Development District, is increasingly looking like it might fall through.
The hang up is over land the district would have to acquire from the Columbia Country Club, which borders the Walmart development, to extend the road. Negotiations between the two parties have been going on for more than four years. The country club wants more money for the land than the district thinks it is worth. Add to the mix a recent proposal by the Walmart property owners to rezone an old MoDOT site between the two properties that the country club wants a piece of to reconfigure the course, and you’ve got quite a contentious situation.
The Country Club is upset the MoDOT land is off the table. The TDD’s lawyer, Craig Van Matre, says the district doesn’t have to build the road. And no doubt the city is fretting that they might eventually have to finance the road if the district doesn’t put up the cash.
At the TDD’s meeting Tuesday, Van Matre said negotiations for the right of way were, “still totally up in the air.” He said there’s an offer on the table for the course to utilize four acres of land north of the MoDOT site, but they haven’t heard anything yet.
“We need two acres from the golf course to make that road a reality,” he said. “But the money the golf course wants is in excess of its value.” In April, golf course representatives said they wanted $4.7 million to redesign the course and in compensation for lost revenue while that happens. Van Matre had said then he thought the value to be closer to $1 million.
With sales tax revenues down (TDD’s get their cash from 1/2 percent sales taxes in stores within the district) and an “extremely difficult tax-exempt bond market,” Van Matre said if a negotiation can’t be reached the district may have to abandon the project.
“The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the district has no authority to make the golf course do anything,” Van Matre said.
The city, if it so desired, could use eminent domain authority to make it happen, but don’t expect anything that contentious with an election on the horizon.
Mark Farnen, who represents the country club, submitted a letter to the Planning Department at the end of last year signaling the club’s opposition to the rezoning request for the MoDOT site and the possibility that the road might not get built. The road connection “is now confounded by the unsubstantiated claim that the road and bridge is optional,” Farnen said in the letter. He maintains that the TDD’s establishing documents say that it will use part of the MoDOT tract to mitigate impacts to the golf course and that the documents also list the road as one of the projects the TDD must complete.
The club’s concern that the TDD could drop the road project is understandable, since then no settlement would have to be negotiated and the years of attorney fees would have to picked up by the club. Ouch.
But Erick Creach, one of the attorneys at Van Matre’s firm, said the TDD’s establishing documents list only approved projects, and that there is no requirement the district must complete all of them. Still, the road would help increase traffic to the stores in the district, and Van Matre has said he wants the roads to be connected.
It doesn’t seem like an agreement is anywhere close. Litigation could be a possibility, but there isn’t much (if any) case law on TDDs in the state, so, in the words of the club’s attorney, Anthony Frazier, “We’d all be flying a little blind.”
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