Easement.

Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation were very interested in acquiring the Mann Family Farm property as an addition to the Leonard Preserve.  The preserve was acquired in 1999 by Washtenaw County Natural Area Preservation in cooperation with The Nature Conservancy, and Washtenaw County Parks & Recreation administers the preserve.  As the County’s interest stood, they were offering a governmental price that was below appraised value, where Julie and I met appraised value plus five thousand dollars.

The survey work documents the easement crosses preserve land, and in review by my attorney there was concern with the language of the easement document which dated back to 1972.  At that time, legal ease was very neighborly and general in nature, as a result the ingress and egress detailed a public street but did not adequately allow for utility access, and specifically my intention to run all utilities underground to maintain the aesthetics of the gardens.

So as the bid winner, I now had to go hat in hand back to the bid loser, and ask the county for an updated easement that specifically addressed utility access.  While the ask felt uncomfortable, it seemed to me they could not say “no” because it would harm the market value, and the Mann family could claim damages from conflict of interest, as the Natural Area Preservation would be the only potential buyer of an encumbered property by default.

All things governmental move slowly, and this easement update was no exception, it languished for eight months.  In the end, the county came back with a counter proposal for the updated easement.  The public street in the original easement allowed for development of the land in terms of a subdivision of over thirty-five homes, and their position was they would provide the utility language we requested, if we in-turn agreed to a private drive for ingress and egress, which means the land could never be commercially developed….to which we have agreed contingent on closing.