Feb. 2, 2020
CHESAPEAKE — Every year or two, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers warned the Peterson family against building new doctors’s offices on their commercial corner at the entrance to the Deep Creek Bridge. Every few years, the Petersons asked the same question and got the same assurances.
The Corps promised a fair price, so the Petersons trusted the Corps and held off. They never built the offices; each year that passed they lost more and more rental income.
That was more than 20 years ago.
Now the Corps has finally gotten serious about a new bridge. But it has offered a fraction of the land’s value, an offer the family has refused. The Corps could condemn the land, start work on the new bridge and settle the compensation issue in court, but has refused.
Instead, it has chosen to bring public pressure on the Petersons to sell. In a Virginian-Pilot story examining why the bridge has not been built, the Corps blamed the Petersons as greedy holdouts who are forcing their Deep Creek neighbors to endure long back ups at the bridge each day.
Waldo & Lyle attorney Brian Kunze’s efforts to defend the good name of the Petersons and to secure a just payment was detailed in a recent front page story in The Virginian-Pilot.
Read the story:
