Green Bonus! Bad Real Estate Market Means More Parks and Nature Preserves

Just a couple short years ago, real estate developers were spending money like Lindsay Lohan in a liquor store. They would snatch up nearly any property, with no particular plans in mind, but confident that they’d be able to build McMansions, strip malls or ubiquitous corner drugstores without a problem. Once the market crashed, developers were left sitting on tons of property they couldn’t unload and no longer had the cash to build on. Luckily for us, that means they’ve resorted to selling it for use as public parks, nature preserves and other low-cost uses.

From the Wall Street Journal:

One of the big beneficiaries is Trust for Public Land, a San Francisco nonprofit group that specializes in buying land for conservation. The Trust often struggled during property-boom years to find sellers among land owners near urban centers. Now, U.S. property owners from Massachusetts to Hawaii are flocking to it.

In addition to the Trust, the Nature Conservancy, Arlington, Va., is among the national groups working on similar deals. Their purchases tend to be larger — involving thousands of acres. “Two to three years ago, local farmers and ranchers were eager to sell off their land and cash out,” says the Nature Conservancy’s Cristina Mestre. “Now, we’re being approached en masse” to buy development rights.

In rural Minnesota, thousands of former Camp Fire girls rallied to stop a 71-acre camp from being turned over for development. The property had operated as a Camp Fire camp for 77 years until being closed two years ago. But last August the developer failed to secure $5 million in financing, say officials of Camp Fire USA’s Minnesota Council. They have since begun negotiations to sell the property for $3.8 million to the Trust, which proposes to convert it into a regional park, says Andrea Platt Dwyer, chief executive officer of the Minnesota Council. She expects a deal to close by December.

So, not only do we get more untouched natural land out of the deal, we also have less crappy hastily built condo developments going up all over the U.S. Sweet. Huzzah for bad subprime mortgages!

Link [Wall Street Journal]
Photo credit: Flickr user Drylcon

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