It looks like the long-simmering dispute about the operations of Grand Canyon Skywalk finally came to a head — the Hualapai Tribe used eminent domain to seize the complex from the developer, reported the Reuters news service.
Skywalk is a horseshoe-shaped superstructure with a glass floor that extends 70 feet over the edge of the Grand Canyon:
The Reuters report said:
The dispute at the heart of the crisis appears to center on specifications including who was supposed to provide infrastructure — power, water and sewer — for the project, with both sides accusing the other of acting in bad faith.
What is not in dispute is that a visitors’ center overlooking the Skywalk — a beautiful building on the edge of the canyon with floor-to-ceiling windows where a restaurant might have been — is nothing but a shell.
Construction on the center stopped several years ago — the sides disagree as to why — and the building lies unfinished and vacant, with bales of insulation piled up and gathering dust on its bare concrete floor. […]
The Hualapai council members say the unfinished site is an embarrassment to the tribe, which approved the project despite some internal objections about building on land roughly 30 miles from a place central to the Hualapai creation story. Traditional tribal belief places man’s origin on Hualapai lands. […]
The tribe set compensation for the seizure at $11.4 million, a sum they said represents the fair value of a project that the Las Vegas-based developer says is worth over $100 million.
A big sticking point about the tribe using eminent domain is a fuzzy Supreme Court decision that indicates Indians may have limited power over non-Indians. However, that ruling was non-specific enough so even using it as precedent is a dubious proposition.
In the meantime, the Hualapai is getting estimates on finishing that visitors center.
Although no one is innocent in this dispute, the developer should shoulder most of the blame for this. Building Skywalk without first completing a decent, paved access road or a basic visitors center is the proverbial putting the cart before the horse.
The developer’s effort was so haphazard, Skywalk didn’t even have permanent bathrooms when it opened to the public. The developer used Port-a-Johns instead.