With an emergency ruling, the Council of State has cleared the way for the construction of a residential care building on the site of the old post office at Zuideinde in Meppel. The Meppeler real estate developer WVG has plans for this.
Another project developer – Lithos – wants to build more than ninety apartments on the adjacent old KPN site. Lithos filed an objection against WVG’s plan, but the highest administrative court sees no reason to shelve it. Both developers have a conflict about who owns a strip of land between the two building plans.
According to Lithos, developer WVG cannot start building the residential care apartments in the center as long as the ownership dispute over the strip of land has not been resolved. The Council of State thinks otherwise. It can only intervene if a land dispute creates “obvious private-law obstacles”. And that is not the case here, according to the administrative court.
The dispute concerns a two meter wide strip on the edge of the Zuideinde building plan. Only a few parking spaces are planned on that strip of land. The actual building block, within which WVG will realize the new building, is located another two meters from that strip. Because no construction will take place on or near the controversial strip, the Council sees no insurmountable obstacles and WVG can in principle get to work.
Earlier during the court case, a spokesperson for WVG did not want to say whether the developer will start construction soon, or whether it is still awaiting a land registry investigation, or whether the case is with the Council of State on the merits, which will serve later this year. In any case, WVG can in principle get to work with this ruling.