Fight over Bay Trail extension might be over
A state appeals court may have ended a 12-year legal battle over the cost of the newest stretch of the Bay Trail, rejecting challenges by owners of the Golden Gate Fields racetrack to a trial that required the East Bay Regional Park District to pay $2.125 million for the East Bay waterfront land, rather than the $12.85 million the track owners were seeking.
The 1-mile path and 180-foot bridge, which opened to the public in May 2020, and surrounding land cover 2.88 acres in the bluff below Golden Gate Fields, which owns 137 acres on the border of Albany and Berkeley. It is part of a trail around San Francisco Bay that began construction in 1989 and is planned to cover 500 miles of pathways for hikers, joggers and cyclists.
The park district took over the sand-covered land in 2011 through eminent domain, the government’s authority to acquire private property for public use. A judge upheld the district’s action and, in January 2013, ordered a trial within five years to determine the amount of compensation.
The two sides had drastically different appraisals of the property’s worth. Golden Gate Fields’ appraiser said it could be rezoned and used for a residential community for senior citizens, with a land value of $12.85 million. The park district’s appraiser said it should be kept for waterfront and recreational use and assessed the value at $374,000.
As the January 2018 trial deadline approached, however, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Jo-Lynne Lee said some issues needed to be resolved before the case went to the jury. After further proceedings, she ruled that when the government acquires undeveloped property through eminent domain, it must compensate the owner only for the value of the land without development, rather than additional amounts if development had already been approved.
A jury heard the competing appraisals in 2019 and awarded Golden Gate Fields $2.125 million in compensation. The racetrack owners appealed, contending, among other things, that the trial had been improper because the five-year deadline had elapsed.
But the 1st District Court of Appeal said Lee’s actions, which began before the deadline, were the opening phase of the trial.
The park district had presented “factual and legal issues that had to be decided by the court before a jury could determine the value of the property,” Presiding Justice Therese Stewart wrote in a 3-0 ruling Tuesday. She said the judge’s decisions “completed a part of the trial.”
The racetrack owners also said Lee should not have allowed the park district’s appraiser to testify that the 2.88 acres of waterfront land, with sweeping views of the bay, should be assessed at the same value per acre as the rest of Golden Gate Fields. The appraiser, Dean Chapman, said the land was not “buildable,” and should be used as a park, because it was potentially vulnerable to sea-level rise and flooding.
That was “a question for the jury to resolve,” Stewart said in rejecting the racetrack’s appeal.
“We’re glad that this long episode is done,” Todd Amspoker, a lawyer for the park district, said Wednesday. Before the trail section opened, he said, the land was “just a rarely used parking lot filled with sand,” and now the public has “not only a beautiful park, for parking to get to the beach, but also an incredible trail with incredible views.”
Michael Betz, a lawyer for Golden Gate Fields, said the ruling did not address the merits of the case or the jury verdict and mainly concerned the issue of whether the trial took place within the five-year deadline. He declined to say whether the racetrack owners would seek review in the state Supreme Court.