Much of the construction practice at Larkin Hoffman involves the civil construction industry. Our interest in the current state of civil construction in the U.S. was piqued by our review of a recent study by the national accounting firm, CliftonLarsonAllen LLP (CLA). We thought the study and findings would be of interest to you, so we asked Jon Weston of CLA to post a guest blog regarding its study and the current state of the…

Property owners forced to move their business locations through condemnation for the Metropolitan Council’s Southwest Light Rail Transit project are generally entitled to compensation on two fronts—first, they are entitled to just compensation for the taking of their real property; second, they are entitled to relocation benefits for the costs and expenses of moving their business operations to new business premises. Navigating the weird amalgam of federal statutes, federal regulations and state statutes governing “relocation…

In August 2019, the Minneapolis City Council adopted an ordinance banning new drive-through windows in the city. With the adoption of the new Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan, beginning in January of 2020, all gas stations will soon be prohibited, as well. These policy changes are part of the City’s aggressive goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. While these goals are laudable, the impact of these policies is likely to be…

This is the sixth post in our Construction series, Protecting Payment. In the last post I suggested surety bonds as one way an owner could either avoid or “remove” liens.   Consistent with our focus on the theme of protecting the right to payment, this post will focus on payment bonds for private construction.  Payment bonds usually provide a shorter and straighter path to payment than construction liens, but bond claims are not fool proof.  Every…

This is the fifth in our series of blog posts regarding the protection of the right to payment in construction with a focus on mechanics and construction liens. This time the focus is reversed. There are obviously two sides to the payment and lien equation. An owner’s perspective on lien claims is that there should never be a lien on a project. It is a fact that state lien laws create involuntary rights to liens. …