Park site in legal limbo
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Mayor-President Kip Holden is asking voters to raise taxes to pay for a $225 million Audubon Alive riverfront park despite murkiness over the land’s ownership.
Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration acknowledged Tuesday that although it believes the property is state land, ownership is unclear despite years of litigation with the Illinois Central Railroad Co.
The dispute scuttled earlier plans for a park on the site.
“A preliminary injunction was issued some years ago ordering the State to stop work on the proposed DeSoto Park, which was to be located in the same area as now proposed for Alive. The State continues to assert ownership of this land and control of its use, but these issues were never resolved,” Pam Perkins, an attorney for the Jindal administration, said by e-mail.
Attorney Doug Williams, who represented Illinois Central in the earlier legal proceedings, said he is trying to facilitate communications between the city-parish and the railroad.
Those efforts, he said, are in the early stages.
In the meantime, Williams said, there is a problem with a project moving forward on the land west of the Mississippi River levee between North Street and Hollywood Casino off River Road.
“There’s an injunction that prevents the state from going on that property and doing anything,” Williams said.
Holden’s special assistant Walter Monsour told the Baton Rouge Area Chamber on Sept. 15 that the state owns the land and would lease it to the city-parish government for a nominal amount.
Neither Holden nor his chief administrative officer, Mike Futrell, responded to numerous requests for comment about the ownership issues through three phone calls and three e-mails over two days.
Voters will decide Nov. 14 whether to approve a $225 million Alive park that is supposed to include an outdoor amphitheater, thrill ride and aquarium.
The park is part of a $901 million tax package of drainage system improvements, a new parish prison, traffic light synchronization and other projects.
The proposal calls for a half-cent sales tax increase and a property tax boost. For instance, a taxpayer with a home with an assessed value of $200,000 with Louisiana’s homestead exemption would pay an additional $123.75 in property tax per year.
A similar proposal failed last year.
Alive would be built on a 16-acre site that sits across from the Pentagon barracks and the State Capitol Annex. Railroad tracks separate the property from the Mississippi River. For part of the year, the land is under water.
A decade ago, former Gov. Mike Foster’s administration talked about developing the batture — land between a river and a levee — into something smaller in scale than the park Holden envisions.
Then-state Commissioner of Administration Mark Drennen said Tuesday that the sticking point was access to the site over the railroad tracks.
“The whole issue with the railroads has been their liability issues. They have always been concerned that somebody was going to get hurt and somebody was going to sue the railroads,” Drennen said.
He said the ownership issue was a secondary concern because the state’s attorneys were “99.9 percent confident” the state owned the land.
However, it was the ownership question that was the thrust of a suit the state filed in 2000 seeking an official declaration of ownership. Illinois Central Railroad Co. was named a defendant.
Before 1884, the property was part of a military garrison and barracks. In 1903, the federal government transferred the title to LSU, giving the university the barracks’ 211 acres except for land for St. Joseph’s Church — which later became a cathedral — and the railroad.
The railroad received use of the property in question. The handwritten patent called for the title to vest in LSU if the railroad ever stopped using and occupying the land.
“Although the State is the legal owner, it is not currently in possession of the Property,” the state wrote in the 2000 petition.
The state complained in the filing that a predecessor to Illinois Central leased part of the land for ship and boat supply and other operations, damaging the property.
The case dragged on for years, producing three fat file folders of legal documents in the archives of the East Baton Rouge Parish Clerk of Court’s Office.
In 2002, the Foster administration put $2 million into the state construction budget to develop a park on the batture.
Illinois Central Railroad objected and asked the court to stop the “forced abandonment/trespass and unlawful taking of property by the State.”
In a November 2003 letter filed in the court record, Williams wrote that Drennen, then commissioner of administration for Gov. Mike Foster, admitted ordering the work to be done.
Williams wrote that Drennen “has advised me that the State intends to take possession of the entire tract (including the portion upon which the railroad tracks are located) and that the State intends to force the Railroad to remove its tracks from the property.”
The state court granted an injunction that halted the Foster administration’s work on the site.
In 2004, state District Judge Mike Caldwell, of Baton Rouge, weighed in on the issue of the land’s ownership.
“It is my opinion that LSU is the owner of that property, or excuse me, the state of Louisiana is the owner of that property,” Caldwell of the 19th Judicial District concluded, according to a transcript of the court proceeding.
The judge then warned the state not to get too excited.
Caldwell said, “It’s clear that the railroad has very valid rights in that property.”
The 1st Circuit Court of Appeal later ruled that the state court did not have jurisdiction to decide whether the railroad is still using the property.
Instead, the Surface Transportation Board needs to determine whether Illinois Central abandoned the property, the 1st Circuit ruled.
“The State’s claims cannot be resolved without first determining whether the property has ceased to be used or occupied,” the court wrote.
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