ZANESVILLE – After the Ohio Supreme Court’s denial, time was always going to tell how much Barnes Advertising’s two Welcome Center billboards and their 30-year easements were worth.
That exact figure and the two-year eminent domain case between Barnes and the Muskingum County Convention Facilities Authority (CFA) will now have to wait a bit longer.
A jury trial to establish compensation for the billboards’ removal and easements’ revocations was scheduled for March 26, but the court moved it to April 23, explained Stephanie Winland, the CFA’s executive director.
While negotiations have been open for a potential settlement, and will remain open until the trial starts, Barnes and the CFA have been far apart in their valuations – $1.07 million, in fact.
According to a court brief, Barnes and its attorney Mike Galasso asserted one fair-market valuation of $1.2 million, based on the owner-expert testimony of co-owner John Barnes from Jan. 28.
An owner can testify to the value of the property, assuming they have appropriate familiarity with the land, according to court documents. However, the owner has to value it as if they weren’t an owner and often times have to provide rationale that support credibility on that assessment.
It’s difficult to find an appropriate value for the easements given the unique nature of their usage and since other reasonable, theoretical buyers would likely be limited to just other outdoor advertising agencies, Galasso said in a brief March 11.
“In this case, there are factors that the appraisal…cannot capture, which affect the overall just compensation owed to Barnes. Included in those factors are the uniqueness of the easements, the location of the easements relative to Barnes’ overall billboard portfolio, and how those factors affect a billboard company’s value of the same,” Galasso said.
The CFA’s good-faith offer from December 2023 was $130,000, based on their own third-party appraisal.
“A property’s fair market value is defined as the purchase price for the property that would be agreed upon by a typically motivated, willing seller and buyer when negotiating a voluntary sale of the property on the open market,” cited CFA attorney Brodi J. Conover in a court brief March 11.
Barnes maintained the perpetual rights to keep the billboards up and continue advertising with them in the Welcome Center’s parking lot after a sale of the property to the CFA and port authority in 1996.
The billboards are in the way of the CFA’s around five-year plan to build two community pavilions using parts of the parking lot. The project is just one piece of the larger Gateway Project meant to reinvigorate several areas of downtown Zanesville and make the district more appealing to Interstate 70 passersby.
The supreme court declined review of the case in October 2025 and shot down a motion for reconsideration in November. Common Pleas Judge Kelly Cottrill and the Ohio Fifth District Court of Appeals both previously ruled in the CFA’s favor in October 2024 and May 2025.
Shawn Digity is a reporter for the Zanesville Times Recorder. He can be emailed at sdigity@gannett.com or found on X at @ShawnDigityZTR.
This article originally appeared on Zanesville Times Recorder: Eminent domain case could be settled, but there’s a million-dollar problem
Reporting by Shawn Digity, Zanesville Times Recorder / Zanesville Times Recorder
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