SWAMPSCOTT — The town has settled its lawsuit with National Grid, which in 2021 accused Swampscott of taking the company’s property for construction of a bike path without proper compensation.
The Select Board voted to sign a 99-year ground lease with National Grid, allowing use of the company’s property without taking easements, at its meeting Wednesday night. The agreement relieves the town’s easements of National Grid’s property in exchange for the lease and settlement of the company’s litigation against the town.
“The real substantive issue which National Grid has held from day one is they have strongly preferred a ground lease option for the rail trail, not an easement taken by eminent domain for the rail trail. That is consistent with what they have done with other communities,” Select Board member Peter Spellios said.
In 2003, the town’s Recreational Train Study Committee studied the feasibility of constructing a multi-use bicycle and pedestrian trail that would start at the Commuter Rail station and run to the Marblehead town line. The committee reported that the project was “feasible” but would entail “significant challenges.”
Two years later, Town Meeting voted to approve Article 25, which allowed the town to acquire, through eminent domain, a recreational easement on the property extending 10 feet from the centerline of the corridor between the Swampscott Commuter Rail station and the Marblehead border at Seaview Avenue.
One of the easement’s conditions was to ensure that all necessary conditions for an eminent-domain taking of National Grid’s 7.6-acre property located between Stetson Avenue and Humphrey Street had been met.
According to the complaint, the original 2005 Town Meeting rail-trail vote preceded three others approving easements in 2006, 2009, and 2017, although National Grid alleged that the taking conditions had not yet been met.
“The conditions remained unsatisfied, and the town had still not required an easement. Nonetheless, the Town Meeting renewed the authorization to acquire the easement again in 2009 by adopting Article 8,” the complaint stated.
The town signed another order of permanent easements in 2019, which prompted National Grid to sue. The company claimed that although the town’s easements of the property were appraised at $1.4 million, the town only offered the company $100 in damages for the taking.
The settlement, which will go into effect once National Grid signs the 99-year ground-lease escrow agreement, will allow the company property rights, enabling it to make necessary repairs.
“This would meet the funding requirements and meet the requirements of National Grid to make sure National Grid has the controls that they need to make sure that the provisions of service, both now and in the future, are protected and they have the ability to make sure that there’s no interruption to their primary service,” Spellios said.
