Unearthing a profit through easements
| August 24, 2008 |  View for printing |
For Eugenia "Bini" Abbott and her husband, Meade, it was never about the money. The conservation easement placed on their land in 2004 was about preserving pristine ground that decades ago held winter wheat along Stanley Lake's western shore in Arvada.
The easement was to prevent the houses creeping over the southern hill from reaching their back door.
"We didn't want the kids to have to sell half of it to keep half of it," Bini Abbott, 76, said of her decision in 2004 to conserve a 5-acre piece of their 85-acre ranch. "We wanted them to always have it."
But the Abbotts never took their parcel's tax credits — the state giveback to a landowner who protects property from development through an easement — preferring to let someone else handle it.
Instead, the credits went to a land holding company set up by Denver tax lawyer Rodney Atherton, who handled the easement deal for the Abbotts.
In the end, the principals of the company — people unknown even to the Abbotts — could have pocketed nearly $60,000 in profit, records show.
By David Migoya
Full Story: http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_10281107
The Denver Post 
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