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A listing on eBay promotes “a rare opportunity to build a home and operate a business inside a national park, with no connection to the National Park Service”
Notorious for snapping up private
inholdings surrounded by federal land and then reselling them for
big profits, Colorado developer Tom Chapman is at it again. Chapman
made a name for himself in 1992, when he used a helicopter to carry
building supplies for a luxury cabin into a 240-acre inholding
within the West Elk Wilderness Area. To stop the construction, the
government traded him 105 acres near Telluride for the wilderness
parcel, valuing both at $640,000. Chapman then sold the Telluride
tract for $4.2 million.
Chapman’s latest project is
within the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. TDX, the
Atlanta-based developer Chapman represents, purchased the 112-acre
property for $80,000 in 1998, a year before Congress designated the
area a national park. Although the federal government sued for a
conservation easement on the property, Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo.,
demanded the parties negotiate instead.
But
TDX grew tired of waiting for the Park Service’s appraisal,
says Aaron Clay, Chapman’s attorney. In May, the company
listed the property on eBay, an Internet auction site, for $1.24
million.
Although the Park Service might have the cash for
the property’s first appraised price of $280,000,
congressional approval would be needed to pay TDX’s current
asking price, says Jeff Dorschner, a spokesman for the U.S.
Attorney’s office in Denver, which is handling the
negotiations.
According to Chapman’s attorney,
Chapman and TDX simply specialize in marketing undervalued
holdings. “A lot of people aren’t interested (in
inholdings) because you fight the government all the time,”
says Clay. “It takes a certain personality to enjoy that type
of fighting.”
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Developer tries to make a killing off the Black Canyon.
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