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A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

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Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#261

Wow they had the condition that the land be used as a park baked into the deed when they sold it to the city for $10, the city sold it, and when the family went to court their suit was dismissed. Now their home is worthless because nobody wants to live next to a data center. When are we going to hold local government officials accountable for bullshit like this? Send them to prison.

Don't the Chinese execute their corrupt officials/rich ppl while there families do the GoT shame walk?

I also like Oprah's 'you get to be a Luigi, and you, and you' etc approach.

Maybe someone can vibe code a corpo calorie calculator (CCC tm) so when u upload a pic u get an estimate how long it can feed your fam.

There has to be a way for the hoi polloi to get some cake too.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#264

Are deeds with conditions like that legal in that jurisdiction?

Except when they violate civil rights (i.e. "whites only" deed restrictions are not enforceable, though they do exist), I think the answer would generally be yes. In some places in Texas, there is no zoning, only deed restrictions, Houston being the largest city where that's so, though that has evolved a bit and the city does have more say about land use than in the past.

Anyway, deed restrictions run with the land and are legally binding on subsequent owners in Texas. Buying land is agreeing to the contract implied by the deed restrictions. It's part of the due diligence of acquiring land in Texas.

Of course, governments can change the terms of that kind of thing in some cases. But, I suspect any honest reading of this situation would have required the city to go through a public hearing process so that the neighbors of the property were aware and had a voice in the decision, at the very least (but maybe even with that, their was a clear agreement to reserve the land for parkland, they shouldn't have taken the land if that wasn't an acceptable obligation). Property rights and contract law are pretty sacred in Texas. I lean YIMBY about a lot of things, but this gets my hackles up. It looks illegal on its face and shouldn't have made it through the cities lawyers going over this deal.

Edit: I should also mention that it is literally the neighbors right/obligation to sue in these cases. I've seen the argument that the neighbors of the land don't have standing. But, for deed restrictions, the neighbors are exactly the people with standing to sue over violations of deed restrictions. Cities in Texas are not obligated to enforce deed restrictions in most cases and most do not, Houston is one major exception to that rule.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#269

Are deeds with conditions like that legal in that jurisdiction?

IANAL but Texas law seems to allow a great deal of flexibility in deeds. One interesting quote I found:

> spelling out any additional agreements between the parties within the four corners of the deed itself can eliminate any doubt or ambiguity as to the content of those agreements.

The word "any" does some heavy lifting here, I'll admit.

> How can a grantor insure that the “as is” provision is unconditionally accepted by the grantee? The answer is to require that the grantee sign and acknowledge the deed

This quote is using as-is provisions since those are very common, but it seems like this doctrine applies to any condition in a deed.

Did a representative for the city ever sign the deed?

https://lonestarlandlaw.com/deeds-in-texas/

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#270
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a tax loophole where you buy a lot of land and donate 90% of it to the government to be "public parkland". However, in actuality, you're the only person who has convenient access to this land and nobody else can build there, so you get nearly all the benefits of this land while claiming a big tax deduction. It doesn't sound like what is happening here, but I don't think you should be able to block developmen…

>There is a tax loophole where you buy a lot of land and donate 90% of it to the government to be "public parkland". However, in actuality, you're the only person who has convenient access to this land While I'm sure that's happened once or twice and serves as great fodder to get people of a certain ideological bent riled up, for the most part nobody is giving government land that's worth a shit. They're doing it to…

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