Shelton moves to condemn land needed for Constitution Boulevard extension
SHELTON — The city has called on the courts to determine the value of a Blacks Hill Road property essential to extension of Constitution Boulevard.
Mayor Mark Lauretti said the city has gone to the courts to determine the land's value after failing to come to terms with the owners of 55 Blacks Hill Road, who earlier this year offered to sell the 5.1-acre site to the city for $1.7 million.
“Condemnation has been applied for in the courts,” Lauretti told Hearst Connecticut Media. “It takes 35 days, and after that, unless something unforeseen occurs, we will pay what the judge says we need to pay.”
Lauretti has declined to say what the city has offered, saying only that two appraisals have been filed with the court.
Attorney Patricia Sullivan, who represents the property's owners, did not return requests for comment.
Sullivan has stated that in midMarch her clients offered to sell the property to the city at “a price commensurate with what had been approved
by the Board of Aldermen for the purchase of the smaller property across the street at 56 Blacks Hill Road.
“At the city's request, they permitted representatives from the city to visit the 55 Blacks Hill Road property this past Friday (March 18),” Sullivan said.
In a letter dated March 11 to the city corporation counsel Fran Teodosio, Sullivan, on behalf of the owners, wrote that the city first offered to purchase the land for $215,000, to which she stated the owners were “insulted.”
The next offer, after an updated valuation of the land, was $345,000, Sullivan wrote.
The Board of Aldermen, at a meeting in February, approved the city's purchase of 56 Blacks Hill Road for $590,000, with the cost being covered through use of American Rescue Plan funds.
Sullivan, in her letter, said a “well-respected” real estate professional had estimated the property's value at “well in excess of $1 million.”
“Simple math would suggest that a tripling of the price paid for 56 Blacks Hill Road would be appropriate for the purchase of 55 Blacks Hill Road,” she wrote.
“A $1.7 million counter (is) hard to even respond to,” Lauretti stated in March.
Lauretti has said he first contacted the owners of 55 Blacks Hill Road — which the mayor says has been vacant for several years — before the onset of the pandemic. He said the city made an offer to the owners, which was rejected.
Sullivan said the property, on which sits one house, has been in her clients' family since the 1940s.