Rutherford County

Jackson County settles suit with landowner

More than four years ago, Jackson County officials decided they needed about .07 acres of J.B. Alexander's property on Maysville Road to build Steve Reynolds Industrial Parkway, an access road into a Jackson County Industrial Development Authority industrial park.

Several thousand dollars in legal fees, one demolished warehouse and multiple headaches later, attorneys for the county and Alexander have settled on a price for the strip of land barely 20 feet wide.

Alexander sued the county for the $400,000 his appraiser believed the property was worth and the income he has lost since the county took ownership in 2006. The county initially offered only a few thousand dollars, then increased that offer to $150,000 after a second appraiser reviewed the case.

The suit was scheduled to go to trial today, but last week, both parties settled on a price of $250,000.

Darrell Sims, who sold the abandoned saw mill to Alexander in 2004 for $215,000, thinks the county made the eminent domain seizure process more difficult than it had to be in an effort to get the land at a discount.

The portion of the land the county took ruined the 5-acre parcel for industrial use, and Alexander should have been paid for that loss of use in addition to price of the land, Sims said. The two men believe Alexander could have charged an industrial tenant $3,500 a month in rent for the site, yielding $126,000 in three years.

In 2004, the local government began the proce

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