Greenhills Home Owners Corp. v. Village of Greenhills

• Decision Date: 16 March 1966
• Docket Number: No. 39229-39231,39229-39231
• Citation: 215 N.E.2d 403,5 Ohio St.2d 207
• Parties: , 34 O.O.2d 420 The GREENHILLS HOME OWNERS CORP., Appellee, v. VILLAGE OF GREENHILLS et al., Appellants. (Two cases.) The STATE ex rel. The GREENHILLS HOME OWNERS CORP., Appellee, v. VILLAGE OF GREENHILLS et al., Appellants.
• Court: Ohio Supreme Court

Page 207

5 Ohio St.2d 207

215 N.E.2d 403, 34 O.O.2d 420

The GREENHILLS HOME OWNERS CORP., Appellee, v. VILLAGE OF GREENHILLS et al., Appellants. (Two cases.)

The STATE ex rel. The GREENHILLS HOME OWNERS CORP., Appellee, v. VILLAGE OF GREENHILLS et al., Appellants.

No. 39229-39231.

Supreme Court of Ohio.

March 16, 1966.

Rehearing Denied April 13, 1966.

Syllabus by the Court

1. A court will not exercise its power to determine the constitutionality of a legislative enactment where other issues are apparent in the record, the determination of which will dispose of the case on its merits.

2. A 'comprehensive zoning ordinance' is one which effectively provides for that variety and quantity of land uses deemed necessary to the orderly development of the entire territory of the legislative authority enacting it.

3. Whoever (1) insistently encourages, solicits and procures a municipal corporation to adopt a comprehensive zoning ordinance, notwithstanding that that part of the ordinance is objectionable which restricts the use of a portion of the land affected thereby to public park and recreational purposes only, (2) fails to disclose to such municipal corporation that legal counsel has advised that the proposed ordinance with respect to such park and recreational lands is unconstitutional, (3) thereafter purchases substantially all the land affected by the ordinance, and (4) requests and receives from the seller a reduction in the purchase price to the extent that the portion of the land restricted to park and recreational uses is transferred substantially without consideration, is estopped from invoking the judicial power to grant relief from such restrictions of the ordinance on the ground that it constitutes a taking of private property without compensation or due process within the meaning of the federal and state Constitutions.

Charles P. Taft, Thomas H. Mongan and Robert E. Dolle, Cincinnati, for appellee.

C. R. Beirne, Cincinnati, and Robert G. Woellner, City Solicitor, for appellants.

Lindhorst & Dreidame and Robert F. Dreidame, Cincinnati, for intervenor-appellants.

SCHNEIDER, Judge.

In the 1930's, the United States of America erected a model town, in the rural outskirts of Hamilton County, which it called 'Greenhills.' Surrounding a central commercial area, single-family and multi-family residences were constructed for rental to lower-income family units. Churches, schools and other public meeting houses were provided. The plan included public commons, parkways and playgrounds interspersed with curving streets and graceful walks. Circumscribing all was a corridor of varying width of grassland and woodland, as a rampart against the intrusion of further urbanization from within as well as from without.

The town was incorporated as an Ohio municipal corporation. After World War II, the government determined to sell the town as an entity to any person or group of persons which could reasonably be found capable of continuing to operate it in accordance with the original plan. Alarmed by this decision, a group of citizens and tenants associated themselves together as a corporate body, the Greenhills Home Owners Corporation (GHOC), for the purpose of qualifying as that purchaser. The purchase was finally accomplished but not without many long months of agonizing negotiations within the corporation and with the Federal Housing Administration as agent for the United States.

The circumferential strip of woodland, known as 'Greenbelt,' is the focal point of the controversy between GHOC, the plaintiff-appellee, and the village (now a city), a defendant-appellant. A large number of residents of the community whose interests parallel those of the municipal corporation itself joined the proceedings in the trial court as intervening defendants and appear here separately as appellants. The three separate actions seek mandamus, declaratory judgments and injunctions, and were consolidated for trial. The objective of GHOC was the invalidation of the zoning ordinance of Greenhills to the extent that it thwarts GHOC in developing Greenbelt for residential use. The Court of Common Pleas found for the village, holding that the ordinance's restriction of Greenbelt to no other use except public park reservation, playgrounds, public recreational buildings, allotment gardens, farms, nurseries, gardens, public utilities, churches and bus passenger stations, constituted, under all the circumstances, as revealed by an exceedingly complex record, a valid restriction engrafted upon the title of GHOC to Greenbelt. In appeals on questions of law, the Court of Appeals found the zoning ordinance to be unconstitutional so far as it limits the use of Greenbelt as indicated and reversed and judgments of the Court of Common Pleas.

Our view of the matter will not require a lengthy excursion among the myriad facets of a basically simple case, vastly over-complicated, to paraphrase the trial judge.

Although its conception and bith were the subject of meticulous study and planning by government experts, Greenhills, for the decade and one-half during which it remained under the ownership of the government, was, unlike the usual community, unneedful of, and in fact without, a zoning ordinance to protect its existing arrangements and to control its future development according to its original plan. As overlord, the United States regulated the use of every inch of land and of every blade of grass. However, prior to its purchase of Greenhills, GHOC determined to see to that zoning was adopted.

After the professional planner who had previously designed Greenhills for the United States was engaged to draft a zoning ordinance incorporating his original concepts of the model community, including the Greenbelt, and after that draft was presented to the proper village authorities for consideration, GHOC delegated its vice-president and a member of its board of directors, Charles Stamm, as its permanent emissary to the planning commission and council of the village in the matter of the adoption of that draft, notwithstanding that two other board members were also members of the planning commission and two other board members were village councilmen.

For over a year and a half prior to August 1949, the labors of the commission and the council extended throughout day and night, in informal meetings and formal hearings. On the second day of that month and year, without any objection whatsoever, so the written records indicate, a zoning ordinance identical to the original draft as to that part which is in controversy here was duly adopted by the council after favorable recommendation by the planning commission.

In addition to the Greenbelt district, the ordinance divided the entire village into four other districts, three involving residential uses and one for commercial purposes. It regulates the density of uses within the districts, the height of structures, lot usage, and so on. In short, it is a comprehensive zoning ordinance in that it provides for that variety of land uses deemed necessary to the preservation of that portion of the village plan already executed and to the orderly completion of that plan.

Always in attendance at each meeting considering the zoning ordinance, and always insistent that the ordinance be adopted, was GHOC's representative, Stamm, fortified by the official written position of GHOC's board of directors that the proposal ought to be adopted. From...