Huttig v. City of Richmond Heights, 49485
| Decision Date | 11 November 1963 |
| Docket Number | No. 2,No. 49485,49485,2 |
| Citation | 372 S.W.2d 833 |
| Parties | Margaret M. HUTTIG and Charles M. Huttig, Jr., Trustees Under the Will of Charles M. Huttig, Deceased, Appellants, v. CITY OF RICHMOND HEIGHTS, Missouri, Lee M. Duggan, Mayor of the City of Richmond Heights, Missouri, and Nelson L. Clark, Lester Watson and Clyde C. Espenschied, Councilmen of the City of Richmond Heights, Missouri, Respondents, and Dr. Stanley Hampton, Zola Carp and Murray Steinberg, Trustees of Lake Forest Subdivision, Respondents |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
Rassieur, Long & Yawitz, Elliott P. Koenig, and Allen A. Yoder, St. Louis, for (plaintiffs) appellants.
Louis A. Robertson, St. Louis, for respondents.
Murray Steinberg, St. Louis, for intervenors-respondents.
This is a declaratory judgment suit in which plaintiffs, as owners of a tract in Richmond Heights, sought to have the Court declare the City's general zoning ordinance No. 1685 invalid as to their tract because it was allegedly unreasonable, arbitrary and confiscatory as so applied. The trial court decided for the defendants; the individual defendants are city officials. The three last named respondents who intervened and later became defendants, are Trustees of an adjoining residential subdivision. Plaintiffs have raised various constitutional questions; these contentions, in all probability, do not involve constructions of our own or of the Federal Constitution, but merely require applications of the constitutional provisions in question to the zoning ordinance under the particular facts. Wrigley Properties, Inc. v. City of Ladue, Mo., 369 S.W.2d 397. However, we do have jurisdiction because of the amount in dispute, as shown by substantial evidence.
Plaintiffs are the owners of the strip of land in question which lies along the south side of Clayton Road in Richmond Heights; it is presently zoned for Class 'A,' single family residences, and plaintiffs have sought a 'G' commercial zoning; its east end is approximately 200 feet from the southwest corner (rounded) of the intersection of Clayton Road with Hanley Road. This tract is 532.33 feet long on its Clayton Road frontage, 414.64 feet long in the rear, and 130.06 feet deep; its easterly line extends 177.75 feet at an acute angle from its longer frontage on Clayton to the east end of its shorter rear line. The tract is vacant except for trees and shrubs. There is a stone wall perhaps 3 or 4 feet high along its front property line. This tract abuts the rear of Lots 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 in Lake Forest, a residential subdivision, upon which lots four rather large residences have stood for a considerable time. From the east end of plaintiffs' property a strip of land 20 feet wide extends along Clayton Road east to its intersection with Hanley Road; this was originally a part of Lot 1, Lake Forest; it was conveyed by the Trustees to Charles M. Huttig in 1939, and it is not involved in the present application for a rezoning. It lies between the remainder of Lot 1 and Clayton Road, and is wholly unoccupied.
The subdivision described as Lake Forest was platted and established by Lake Forest Development Corporation in 1929; sundry restrictions, conditions and reservations were imposed in a conveyance to Trustees on December 31, 1930. The subdivision extends approximately six blocks south of Clayton Road, and contains private roadways; it is bounded by Hanley Road on the east and by the east line of Lavinia Terrace, another subdivision, on the west. The tract now in controversy was not included in the subdivision but was reserved conditionally as a park for the use of the lot owners. As such, it was conveyed to the Trustees of the subdivision (on December 31, 1930) with the duty imposed to maintain it, and with the right to assess the lot owners therefor, but with the further provision that the conveyance, as such, would not be effective until the owners of 117 lots (out of a total of 124) had accepted and agreed to the provisions; also, with the further provision that the Trustees might abandon the park project and convey that property by quit-claim deed to the grantor or its successors or assigns. The requisite number of lot owners never accepted the conditions, and apparently none of the individual owners contributed to the maintenance of the park; in 1936 the Trustees conveyed this tract to Charles M. Huttig (recognized in this litigation as the successor or assign of the original grantor) upon condition that he maintain the park until December 31, 1955, when all rights of the original grantor and of the lot owners therein should cease, and title should vest in such grantee. On April 30, 1937, this was confirmed by a quit-claim deed to Huttig as the successor of the Lake Forest Development Corporation. Huttig took possession, paid the taxes and maintained the park until his death in 1952, after which his representatives (these plaintiffs) did so until the end of 1955. These plaintiffs have since claimed full ownership and no one disputes their title in the present case.
The City of Richmond Heights lies immediately west of and adjacent to the City of St. Louis; its population is about 17,500. It is bounded on the north by Clayton, on the south by Brentwood and Maplewood, and on the west by Ladue. Its main east and west traffic arteries are Clayton Road and the Daniel Boone Expressway. Its chief north and south arteries are Big Bend, Hanley Road and Brentwood. The northern boundary of Richmond Heights is the center of Clayton Road.
The intersection of Hanley Road (north and south) with Clayton Road (east and west) is rather intricate; a drive from Lake Forest comes in from the southwest and Hampton Drive from the southeast; Hanley itself jogs to the west before proceeding further noth. Bettendorf's, a large supermarket, lies just across Clayton Road to the north, in the path of what would normally be Hanley Road, extended. Traffic from at least one parking lot driveway of Bettendorf's spills out into the intersection; traffic from another comes out a little further east along Clayton. North of Clayton Road another drive (Biltmore) comes into Hanley and Clayton from the northwest. As one witness said, the traffic signals at the intersection have 'about seven' faces. Nevertheless, both Clayton and Richmond Heights permit left turns on light signal at the intersection and apparently more or less indiscriminately east and west of it.
To the east of Hanley on the south side of Clayton are single-family residences for some distance; beyond that are single residences mixed with duplexes; finally, there is a small commercial area as one approachess Big Bend Boulevard; all these areas are in Richmond Heights. On the north side, in Clayton, lies Bettendorf's with parking facilities for hundreds of cars; from that point on east there is an interspersing of large apartment buildings and residences to a point just west of Big Bend. The rear exposures of some of these apartments face Clayton Road.
To the west of the subject property (in Richmond Heights and along the south side of Clayton) and beginning immediately beside it there are, respectively: a restaurant (The Pancake House, built in 1934), a combination office building (Gulf Oil) and filling station, a vacant filling station, an occupied filling station, a Howard Johnson restaurant, a filling station, another office building and filling station (DX), a catering company, a restaurant, a florist shop, a drive-in restaurant, a filling station and another filling station. Some of these were built before 1941, some since. These uses extend to Brentwood Boulevard, where in and around the southwest corner (occupied by a filling station) is a very extensive shopping center called Westroads, which, with its parking lots for 2,500 cars, covers approximately a three-block area. This area was recently rezoned to a tract and Brentwood Boulevard has also been zoned 'G-1' and on this is located (somewhat back to the south of Clayton Road) a combination 48-lane bowling alley, restaurant and cocktail lounge. Around the corner of Clayton and Brentwood there is an intensive and large commercial development; the commercial zoning also runs to the south along Brentwood, as well as north and west from the intersection in the City of Clayton. Looking back now to the intersection of Clayton and Hanley, there is a continuous commercial development extending west all the way along the north side of Clayton Road (in Clayton) to Brentwood Boulevard. In this line there is only one vacant lot, which, of course, is zoned commercial. These buildings include a rather substantial insurance office building, miscellaneous stores (with an occasional vacancy), a bakery, a drugstore, small office buildings, a florist shop, gasoline stations, and west of Brentwood a bowling alley and stores. Many of these structures were there prior to 1941; others have been erected since.
The Pancake House (immediately west of plaintiffs' property) and the two filling stations just west of it, were built prior to the 1941 general zoning ordinance and those tracts have long been zoned as 'G' commercial; however, the commercial zoning along Clayton stops at plaintiffs' west property line. The 265-foot strip immediately west of plaintiffs' tract had also been owned by Lake Forest Development Corporation but was deeded to Audrey Realty Company in 1936; it (like plaintiffs' present tract) had not been included in the Lake Forest subdivision.
Clayton Road carries much through traffic, to and from St. Louis. The traffic count on Clayton Road at Hanley in April 1960 was 20,600 cars for 24 hours; at Brentwood Boulevard it was 22,200; on Hanley Road, south of...
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