There has always been a big battle when it comes to open space, state parks, and land set aside and zoned for no development. This is easily observed merely attending any local planning commission meeting at any city hall in any suburban area. The big debate becomes very political in the types of views that various people have. Most Conservatives and Republicans would agree that private property ownership rights include the ability of the owner of that real property to develop that property if they'd like.
Others on the Democratic side of the coin believe that there should be land set aside for the public, and that it's not fair if everyone develops their property anyway they'd like because that would make the cities unlivable, and take away from nature. Then there are those land conservation groups and nature conservancy groups who are willing to split the divide, and take on donations, or match with government funds the ability to buy property from those who own it, and then they can set it aside because they have property rights which allow them the freedom to not develop their properties.
That makes sense right? Well now due to the global economic challenges, real estate in many parts of our country is still very depressed. That means there are big chunks of land available for sale for much less than they ever have been in the last 30 years. Many conservation groups have prime pieces of real estate that were set aside previously, and they can sell those now for a huge profit, and therefore use that money to buy even more land. That makes sense too.
Now then, a word of advice; those Nature Conservancy type groups should indeed buy up these properties before the economic recovery has all the prices of that type of real property increasing at a rapid rate. Indeed, they may even wish to buy more than they need, and hold some of that property to sell for later at a profit to buy even more property thus parlaying their investment in open space, and undeveloped land.
Not too long ago there was a very interesting article in the Wall Street Journal, which was part of a multipart series, the second chapter of the series of articles was published on June 10, 2010 titled; "Natural Causes - A Head for Business, a Green Conscious and a Former Treasury Secretary Inspired Mark Tercek to Quit a Highflying Career at Goldman Sachs to Run the Nature Conservancy," and in this article I believe it speaks to some of my comments above, about the window of opportunity which was created by the economic real estate collapse and fiasco.
In any case, I hope you will please consider all this and think about it, as it does seem that the proper way to set aside real property without hurting private individual property rights, is clearly to buy that property, and then set it aside using your new found property rights as the owner.
Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes writing 23,777 articles by 7 PM on June 27, 2011 is going to be difficult because all the letters on his keyboard are now worn off now..
