ABSTRACT
The city has an excavation and fill ordinance for the protection of hillsides. A developer seeks a building permit for a proposed high-rise residential building to be developed on a steep, environmentally sensitive hillside overlooking a river and a scenic parkway. The parkway is generally considered to be the best scenic drive in the city. The developer claims that the city's decisions impose economically impractical limits on the use of her property and argues that the city has, in effect, taken her property. The city's action in rezoning the property to low-density residential and the denial of the application for a building permit raises the issue of the extent to which the constitution limits community choices in regard to legitimate public purposes—a Substantive Due Process question. In addition, the developer points to a popular theory that large scale development can provide hillside stabilization through engineering techniques.
