Homeowners Association BS...

[Steiny]

Man you guys are nuts. You live in the beautiful Rocky Mountain west, then pack yourself into one of those urban settings that has no more freedom or room to roam than Atlanta. Aren't there any open areas left out there?
I don't get it?

 

[sreekers]

I don't live in an association but the church I go to is in one. Its funny, the association has been trying to get new covenants passed for as long as I have been in Gillette. Well in that time I have seen two steel buildings built, where they say that no steel buildings can be added. They also say that you can't have chain link fences, well we have seen many of them added since the old covenants were approved. Reality is that if you don't enforce the covenants from the outset, you won't be able to make it work. Great idea, but people are too independant to make it work the way it is supposed to.

 

[Whiskers]

I live in one. I understand it is for everyone's protection.

For your protection!? Do they patrol your neighborhood? Or are you afraid someone might devalue your property with their old car!?
Give me a break, you guys want protection, so you give up your FREEDOMS?

Shame on everyone of you that would sell your FREEDOMS away to make sure your neighbor cuts his grass. I thought you westerners were hardier than that. I guess there are YUPPIES everywhere.

 

[BigHornRam]

Check This One Out From This Mornings Paper

Eureka land feud settled
By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian



EUREKA - The day the first tree fell up near Eureka, Craig McKay was on his seasonal commute to work.

He was in a Seattle shipyard, making his way north to the Alaskan fishing fields where he earns a living.

“I've put in 65 months on the most deadly and dangerous waters up there, just to pay for this place,” he said of his Montana home. And so when his wife called, “all crying and upset,” to say a big yellow dozer was tipping his trees, McKay turned right around and hauled it home, work or no work.


“I couldn't be in Alaska while my wife was back here in a Hatfield and McCoy situation,” he explained.

If the McKays were the McCoys, then the Hatfields were a resort-community development known as the Wilderness Club, and the two were surely locked in a modern-day land feud.

On Friday, April 4, the feud ended when a jury ordered Wilderness Club to pay $1.35 million to Craig McKay and his wife, Lisa. It is, he said, quite literally more money than he can actually imagine.

“But this case isn't over,” said attorney Sean Frampton, who represented Wilderness Club in the dispute. “We absolutely will be appealing.”

Wilderness Club is a sprawling and somewhat controversial gated golf community, expensive and exclusive and emerging from forest and farm land just west of Eureka.

For somewhere between a quarter- and a half-million dollars, the Canadian developers behind the project will sell you an empty lot and the promise of luxury life alongside the links.

The Wilderness Club comes with a vast timbered lodge, a clubhouse, spa, pools, tennis courts, all with a concierge to book your restaurant reservations or to organize a day of fishing, skiing, boating, whatever your taste.

“The Montana land rush is on!” cried the developers, after having sold $18 million in real estate in their first five hours on the market.

It is, according to their online brochure, an “authentic northwest Montana getaway.”

“Making the most of the glorious backdrop of three mountain ranges,” the brochure promises, “the homesites of Wilderness Club are oriented to glean the best views of the Rockies, tree-lined fairways and Wilderness Lake. Homes are tucked back into each site, balancing the unhindered views with privacy.”

Unless, of course, you live next door.

That's where the McKays live, in a woodsy rural subdivision called Koocanusa Estates.

Wilderness Club sits on about 550 acres, 50 of which have spilled into neighboring Koocanusa Estates.

That's where developers decided to put the maintenance buildings for their golf course, despite neighborhood covenants that restrict any use other than residential homes.

“The McKays had no idea what was coming,” attorney Amy Guth said. “When the loggers showed up on May 18, 2007, the neighborhood didn't have a clue.”

Amy Guth has been an attorney in the Libby area since 1989, but she didn't know the McKays until last spring.

That's when they came to her, complaining that Wilderness Club had cut a road across their property. The McKays argued Wilderness Club had no right - no legal easement - to do such a thing, and Guth asked District Court Judge Michael Prezeau to order a stop.

Prezeau did just that in July, issuing a temporary injunction against the developers.

“In the meantime,” Guth said, “the other neighbors also started looking into things.”

Koocanusa Estates is a tangle of 10- and 20-acre lots, complete with covenants. Some of those covenants restrict tree cutting. Some restrict commercial uses of residential lots.

“When the neighbors realized Wilderness Club intended to use their neighborhood to support the new golf course community, they filed a complaint,” Guth said.

Specifically, nine neighbors asked the court to consider the covenants.

“And then in August, Wilderness Club built, right on the McKays' north property line, these big storage bunkers,” Guth said. “They're big, concrete bunkers - that's the only way to describe them.”

The developers also cleared trees and poured the foundation for a 14,000-square-foot building.

“They clear-cut a huge city block right next to me,” McKay said. “They opened a big hole in our world, and didn't leave a stick standing.”

There was no “balancing the unhindered views with privacy,” McKay said. This was right out his bedroom window.

By early fall, the McKays were back in court, asking Prezeau to stop the Wilderness Club construction project next door. Prezeau ruled in November, but allowed Wilderness Club to “do what was needed to protect what was already built,” Guth said.

The developers took that to mean they could completely finish the building, which would be the groundskeeping and maintenance hub of the entire golf course portion of the development.

“It's down in a draw,” Guth said, “well out of sight of the Wilderness Club homes, but right in the face of the McKays.”

Last month, Prezeau was asked to find the developer in contempt, but instead the judge ordered everyone to trial starting April 1. Prezeau ruled, as a matter of law, that Wilderness Club had violated the covenants, but he wanted a jury to determine damages.

“What possible damages have they suffered?” defense attorney Frampton asked. “Was it the size of the building? There are no covenants restricting size. Was it the proximity to the property line? There are no setbacks in the covenants. Was it the look of the building? It's a beautiful building.”

If the McKays only claim is that the structure is for non-residential use, Frampton said, “then what does that mean? The building isn't even in use yet, so all damages would be based purely on speculation.”

As to that road bulldozed though the McKay property, Frampton insists a perfectly good easement exists.

As to the 14,000-square-foot building, “the covenants had already been violated.”

The Wilderness Club developers knew about the covenants, Frampton said, but thought they had been negated by the neighbors' failure to enforce them. Other buildings in the neighborhood appear to violate at least the letter, if not the spirit, of the covenants, he said, and there isn't even a neighborhood association in place to enforce the rules.

The developers thought the covenants had been abandoned.

Prezeau, of course, disagreed, saying the covenants were valid and Wilderness Club had violated them - “and we think that's an error,” Frampton said.

Error or not, “the jury took a ride up there and stood in the McKays' backyard and decided the property was a total loss,” Guth said.

The 11 women and one man concluded the property was worth $350,000, and ordered Wilderness Club to write the check. They then determined the trees cut by Wilderness Club were worth another $6,500, and ordered another check be cut.

And then, much to Craig McKay's continuing surprise, jurors found Wilderness Club had acted with “malice,” and so hit the developers with $1 million in punitive damages.

“Wilderness Club made a calculated decision,” Guth said, “that it would be cheaper to go ahead and build and then pay the costs than it would be to redesign and move the building. It was a calculated risk, and it was a bad choice.”

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Because the buildings will stay, and the commercial use will continue. The McKays actually didn't want money, Guth said. They just wanted the road and the buildings gone, the land restored.

But that's not the way the case went. Instead, the problem remains. The McKays have simply been paid to live with it.

Prezeau still must review the jury award, to determine whether it is, in fact, appropriate given the circumstances. Once he rules, Frampton will have one more chance to protest.

Then, he said, he'll appeal the case, arguing the judge erred in presuming a violation of covenants.

“This one isn't over,” Frampton said. “We have a long way to go yet before all the questions are answered.”

But McKay, for his part, is “feeling good, like there's an ending finally. We were getting run over, being lied to. It was diabolical. We were being told one thing while another thing was happening. I'm just glad to get back to normal.”

Normal, because those checks from Wilderness Club won't be arriving any time soon, despite the jury verdict. McKay is back on the rotation list, waiting his chance to get back up to Alaska and back to work.

“I still have to pay the bills on this place,” he said. “I still have to earn a living.

“And I'm still going to be a good neighbor. I'm already planting trees, putting up a buffer zone. And they can use the road as a fire road, or an emergency road. I'm not angry. I just hope it all ends up the right way.”

Reporter Michael Jamison can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at [email protected].

 

[Hntnhrd]

Article above shows how the system is broken. Big company went through the system and was found to be at fault. Now cough up the money and follow the rules. Instead they say " we will appeall". PAy the poor people and charge your rich perspective buyers more money for the lots to cover the cost. Instead the attorneys will make it all.

Sounds like a real mess.

 

[Calif. Hunter]

Yeah, they just decided to go ahead and build, figuring that the cost would be mitigated by not having to tear down and rebuild the facilities, considering that the worst case scenario might be that they would have to buy out the trailer trash neighbors.... Besides, the rich folks can pony up the money.

 

[ELKCHSR]

Sounds like the modern day "Great American Dream"

Used to be married, 2.5 kids, house, fenced yard, 2 car garage and a good job to pay for it....

Now it's married, 2.5 kids, house, fenced yard, 2 car garage and a good lawsuit to pay for it....