The Ohio Supreme Court decided Dec. 7 that the Ohio History Connection can use its eminent-domain powers to buy out a lease from Moundbuilders Country Club. The club’s golf course is located on a series of ancient Native American earthworks known as Octagon Earthworks and Ohio History Connection wants to try to designate the property as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The case now heads back to the trial court to proceed with the eminent-domain appropriation.
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled on Dec. 7 that Ohio’s state historical society can use its eminent-domain powers to buy out a lease from a Newark golf course located on a series of ancient Native American earthworks, Cleveland.com reported.
The court’s 6-1 ruling opens the door for the Ohio History Connection to seek to designate the Octagon Earthworks, built by the Hopewell Culture sometime between 100 B.C. and 500 A.D., as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, though it’s still uncertain whether that will happen.
The case revolved around whether the Ohio History Connection acted in good faith when it offered the Moundbuilders Country Club $800,000 in 2018 to break its lease, which runs through 2078, Cleveland.com reported. That was the value of the lease as determined by an appraisal in February 2018.
The History Connection also ordered a second appraisal, conducted a month before, that the organization’s president/CEO, Burt Logan, mistakenly believed to value the lease at $500,000, Cleveland.com reported. However, after the lawsuit was filed, a History Connection attorney discovered that appraisal actually concluded the lease was worth $1.75 million.
That led the country club to file a counterclaim asserting that the History Connection didn’t negotiate in good faith because it purposely hid the $1.75 million appraisal, Cleveland.com reported.
A decades-old Ohio law allows history organizations like the Ohio History Connection to use eminent domain to appropriate “the site of any historic or prehistoric mound (or) earth works.” But, Cleveland.com reported, the country club argued that it already allowed some public access to the site, and that the golf course provided a far more tangible economic benefit to the community than betting on the unlikely chance that the earthworks would be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Justice Michael Donnelly, writing for the court, agreed with a trial-court ruling that Logan acted in good faith because he was presented with two appraisals said to be valued at $500,000 and $800,000, and he offered the country club the higher of the two figures as compensation, Cleveland.com reported.
Donnelly also disagreed with the country club’s argument that getting rid of the golf course wouldn’t serve the public interest, Cleveland.com reported. He noted that the History Connection was told it couldn’t be nominated for World Heritage site status or get assistance from the U.S. National Park Service and the U.S. Department of the Interior until it terminated the country club’s lease and removed the golf course.
“This park will help preserve and ensure perpetual public access to one of the most significant landmarks in the state of Ohio,” he wrote. “This is not just any green space. It is a prehistoric monument that has no parallel in the world.”
Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor concurred with Donnelly’s decision, as did Justices Pat DeWine, Melody Stewart, and Jennifer Brunner. Justice Pat Fischer concurred in judgement only.
The case now heads back to trial court to proceed with the eminent-domain appropriation, Cleveland.com reported.
The lone dissenter in the case, Chief Justice-elect Sharon Kennedy, wrote that the trial court “failed to consider the speculative nature of the necessity of the appropriation” when siding with the Ohio History Connection.
The History Connection’s ultimate reason for breaking the lease, Kennedy wrote, was to get the earthworks designated as a World Heritage Site, Cleveland.com reported. However, she wrote, “being nominated is not an assurance that the site will be selected for World Heritage status,” noting that only two of the five sites nominated by the United States for World Heritage designation since 2008 were accepted.
Kennedy quoted a 2006 Ohio Supreme Court ruling that the city of Norwood, near Cincinnati, couldn’t use eminent domain to acquire property that was deemed to be “in danger” of becoming a blighted area.
“What it might become may be no more likely than what [it] might not become,” the court held in that 2006 ruling. “Such a speculative standard is inappropriate in the context of eminent domain, even under the modern, broad interpretation of ‘public use.’”
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