Railroads have given way to other modes of transportation, but when it comes to land deals, they still wield a lot of power.
For example, Arlington recently agreed to pay Burlington Northern Santa Fe $455,000 for half a block of abandoned railroad track. The city needs the land for a new $8.35 million police station and City Hall.
Arlington City Councilman Steve Baker said the city paid too much.
"It’s an absolutely worthless piece of property to anybody except for the city," Baker said. "It’s a shame the taxpayers have to pay for it."
Burlington Northern spokesman Gus Melonas described how his company arrived at the $455,000 price tag.
"The final price is based on a fair market value appraisal, which recently occurred," was all Melonas or Burlington Northern would say for this article.
Baker isn’t the only one who thinks Burlington Northern plays hardball with government agencies.
Everett City Councilman Mark Olson said getting the railroad company to bend on a land-swap and track relocation deal in Everett has been difficult.
"It’s like trying to negotiate with God," Olson said. "God probably ends up having to negotiate with B.N."
Everett city officials want Burlington Northern to move its tracks closer to I-5 in the Riverside neighborhood near Lowell, to make room for a waterfront development project. The city owns the alternate site, so negotiations are about how to pay for the relocation.
"You’d think we’d asked for their first son," Olson said. "It’s been very hard to come up with a financially reasonable solution to do that."
Olson also has experience with Burlington Northern as a member of the Sound Transit board, which is negotiating to squeeze some commuter trains into the freight schedule for the Seattle to Everett line.
In general, Olson said he wishes local governments had more leverage with railroads. They can’t use eminent domain — taking over the land for public use — as a bargaining tool, because federal rules don’t allow it.
Yet given the history of land grants that gave railroads their unique landowner status in the first place, Olson said the companies should cooperate more. He called the price Arlington paid "outrageous."
"You’d think they’d have some public spiritedness," Olson said of Burlington Northern.
Not everyone thinks the railroad company is impossible to deal with.
Marc Krandel, a planning supervisor for Snohomish County who has been in charge of the county’s portion of the Centennial Trail bike path, said Burlington Northern was tough but fair.
"It’s not impossible. They’re a business, and they run a hard bargain," Krandel said. "They’re not in a hurry, I can tell you that. But they deal in good faith."
The county got a much better deal than Arlington for one long stretch of a bike path to be built in the future between Arlington and Darrington. Snohomish County paid Burlington Northern $550,000 to be allowed to convert 27 miles of rails to a trail.
The key difference, Krandel emphasized, is the deal is essentially an easement that allows the railroad company to take it back if it can demonstrate that a new rail line there would be financially viable.
Another big difference is Arlington is buying downtown commercial property, not rural land, Krandel said. Even though the downtown land is rail-thin and not wide enough for a building, he said that does not matter in an appraisal.
The county got its own appraisal for a different property it wanted to purchase awhile ago from Burlington Northern, and it was similar to the railroad company’s price, Krandel said.
"We never felt that we got cheated by Burlington Northern," he said.
Still, Arlington is paying a lot for 38,000-square feet of downtown real estate. In addition, the city also will have to pay to pull up the 518 feet of ties and rails.
Architects are designing the project to be built on Third Street west of City Hall. To fit everything on the site, the city needed the sliver of land to the west that Burlington Northern owns, said Iain Draper, the city’s development and community services director.
The $455,000 price was set by an appraisal done for Burlington Northern. Baker asked if the city paid for its own appraisal to get a second opinion. Draper said no.
But Baker’s colleagues on the council ultimately chose to pay the price after Draper said a second appraisal might delay the project, driving up design costs, with no indication that the railroad could be dickered down.
"I guess what I don’t know is how negotiable the railroad is," Draper said later. "Burlington Northern has us between a rock and a hard spot, in my mind, so I don’t know if they would have bent."
Reporter Scott Morris: 425-339-3292 or smorris@heraldnet.com.
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