Kelo Rears Its Greedy Head in Houston

For landowners, their is no more controversial case than the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Kelo v. City of New London permitting the use of eminent domain to transfer private property from one owner to another under the guise of furthering economic development. In response to this 2005 decision, dozens of state legislatures passed bills curbing the effects of Kelo, including Texas, which made it illegal for a municipality to condemn property solely for private economic development. Yet that is exactly what Mayor Bill White and the City of Houston have seemingly done. Read more

Plum Creek Completes First Phase of $150 Million Montana Timber Sale

The nation’s large private landowner — Plum Creek Timber (NYSE:PCL) — took the initial step towards completing the sale of an estimated 130,000 acres of Montana forestlands last week. In the first step of a three phase plan, the company received $150 million in cash from The Nature Conservancy and The Trust for Public Land ($1,153 per acre). The complete announcement from Plum Creek’s corporate website follows: Read more

Obama to Nominate Salazar for Interior

Landowners in the West will have one of their own heading up the Interior Department in the new Obama Administration. According to published reports, Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO) will be named the 50th Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior later this week by President-elect Barack Obama. Read more

More Details Emerge on the Crested Butte Mountain Resort Sale

Last Friday’s sale of Colorado’s Crested Butte Ski Resort, part of a three-ski-area package acquired by CNL Lifestyle Properties from Triple Peaks LLC for $132 million, marks the second change in ownership for the Gunnison County landmark in less than five years. In 2002, Triple Peaks, which is owned by Tim and Diane Mueller, was set to buy Steamboat Springs Ski Area from American Skiing Co. (ASC) for $91.4 million, but ASC backed out. The Muellers perservered, however, and two years later they acquired Crested Butte from the Callaway and Walton families in March 2004. Here’s the official lowdown on last week’s sale, which was broadcast via email earlier today:

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Resilient Montanans Rally Around Timber

Worthwhile read in the New York Times today by Kirk Johnson for the National Desk. The focus of the article is less about timber or timberland as an investment and more about the Montana logging communities whose lifeblood has been altered by forces far from home, including the mortgage meltodown, climate change, and the drop in demand for … wood chips. Read more

U.S. Sugar Approves Sale of 180,000 Acres in the Everglades for $1.34 Billion

Today U.S. Sugar announced that its board of directors had approved the sale/leaseback of 180,000 acres to the South Florida Water Management District for $1.34 billion ($7,444 per acre). The transaction ranks as one of the largest of 2008 and is the culmination of intense negotiations between the privately held company and the water district that will create a natural flow of water between Lake Okeechobee and the southern Everglades. The complete press release from U.S. Sugar follows.. Read more

Interior Department to Allow Firearms in Parks and Refuges

On Friday the Interior Department ruled that Americans will be able to carry concealed weapons in some federal parks and wildlife refuges. The announcement overturns a decades-old Reagan Administration regulation that required all guns brought into national parks and wildlife refuges be unloaded and kept in an out-of-the-way place such as the trunk of the car.

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Potential for Massive Wildfires Next Summer in the West

The great plague that is the pine beetle infestation has now destroyed millions of acres of timber across the western U.S. and into Canada. The extent of this calamity is so enormous that last month we covered the devastation at this website. This week Jim Robbins at The New York Times picked up the storyline and filed his own excellent report about the disappearing forest. Here are some of his key observations: Read more

Federal Reserve Bullish on Great Plains

Farmland in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and parts of New Mexico jumped 20 percent in the third quarter of 2008, according to a report released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City this week. Here are some of the reasons why. Read more

Florida Renegotiates Largest U.S. Land Purchase of 2008

The $1.75 billion purchase by the state of Florida of 187,000 acres in the Everglades belonging to U.S. Sugar has been renegotiated and substantially bettered. The state will no longer take title to the company’s high-tech mill, its citrus processing plant, or its rail lines. The number of acres has also been decreased by 6,000 to 181,000. Net savings? A whopping $400+ million. Read more

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