By Tim Woods

Tribune-Herald staff writer

McLennan Community College trustees took the final step in putting to rest a settlement on a failed eminent domain claim Monday night.

In all, the fruitless effort to purchase a neighboring property ended up costing the school nearly half a million dollars.

At the specially called meeting, trustees approved a payment of $429,360.07 to attorneys from Barron and Adler, an Austin firm specializing in eminent domain claims. That included $4,360.07 in court costs.

Barron and Adler represented Affordable Housing Partnerships, a Houston-based nonprofit group that owns the 23-acre property on College Drive, immediately adjacent to the MCC campus. The site used to be the Northwood Apartments, which were razed in 2003.

MCC paid Affordable Housing a $65,000 settlement last week to cover costs from the college’s attempt to buy the property through an eminent domain claim.

MCC President Dennis Michaelis said the school had wanted to buy the property since 1988 as part of its master plan for future expansion. MCC filed the claim last fall.

The school had the property appraised at $1 million, but Affordable Housing had the property appraised at $7.7 million.

At a November hearing, three court commissioners from a county administrative court determined that MCC would have to pay $4.86 million to buy the property. Michaelis said last week the figure the court presented was too high, and MCC withdrew its claim.

“We’re not going to pay an absurd price for (the land),” Michaelis said.

Because MCC filed and withdrew the claim, the college was liable for costs incurred by Affordable Housing throughout the process and settled with Affordable Housing for $65,000, a figure approved Sept. 30 by trustees.

However, the suit to recover attorneys’ fees for work done by Barron and Adler on Affordable Housing’s behalf remained.

MCC claimed in a court filing that no money was owed to the attorneys because they were working on contingency and no recovery was made by Affordable Housing, other than the reimbursement for costs incurred.

Barron and Adler, though, said they should be paid $1,284,666.67 as “reasonable and necessary attorneys fees,” according to court documents. In their filing, Barron and Adler said in other cases involving the same section of the state property code, courts ruled if the group that tried to condemn a piece of property, then cancels the condemnation, that group is to pay the landowner “reasonable and necessary attorneys’ fees.” In this case, MCC was the condemner.

The two sides, with a mediator, settled on the $429,360.07 figure Friday, Michaelis said.

A manager for Affordable Housing was unavailable for comment Monday afternoon.

Both settlements will be paid out of a $533,369 surplus from the 2007-2008 budget, Michaelis said at Monday’s meeting. Therefore, tax rates will not be affected.

Trustee chairman Randy Cox said paying the settlement for attorneys’ fees was “a really tough pill to swallow,” although he said he understood why the school had to pay the $65,000 to Affordable Housing.

Cox said the school wasn’t willing to roll the dice on a jury trial for the nearly $1.3 million Barron and Adler were asking for.

“We weren’t confident that we would get a reasonable decision from a jury trial, so it came down to, ‘How big of a chance are we willing to take, faced with a $1.3 million possible outcome?’ ” Cox said. “We just felt like it was in the best interest of the college and the taxpayers, rather than to (possibly) incur more legal fees.”

twoods@wacotrib.com

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