TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

The city calls it a useless sump. The developer says the city schemed to snatch his land.

Now they're in court, headed to a jury trial.

Millions are at stake over 40 acres near a city sewer plant in southeast Bakersfield, where a planned land swap soured.

The deal was born during the real estate boom. San Luis Obispo developer Mel Heinemann wanted to build 290 homes on a sand quarry located on the south side of East Planz Road, east of Cottonwood Road.

In June 2006, after city planning commissioners nixed the proposal for being too close to the wastewater treatment plant -- "These sewer plants stink," one commissioner said at the time -- Heinemann and city staffers struck a deal.

The city would trade 40 acres it owned further south for the sewer-hugging acreage, which partially bordered city farmland irrigated by treated wastewater.

An agreement signed in early 2007 contained one key requirement: Heinemann would fill in the sand-mining pits to a height "acceptable to the city" before the deal could close. The city would determine "in its sole discretion" whether the Planz site was farmable or whether it needed more work.

A city inspection that fall found the site unsuitable for farming.

Heinemann, through his company Land Lot 1 LLC, sued the city in March 2008, claiming damages of at least $3 million from loss of the property's heavy industrial zoning, the city's alleged contract breach -- the city approved the grading permit -- and an estimated $2 million to import up to 500,000 cubic yards of dirt to make the site level with adjacent farmland.

As the suit has dragged on, Land Lot's damage claims have gone much higher.

In the meantime, Heinemann's property was foreclosed on by Land Lot investors, who have now inherited the suit.

A plaintiff statement in May said a tentative settlement had been in the works that would have restored the Planz site's heavy industrial zoning and allow a permit for a concrete recycling plant.

But the deal fell through after the city twice deemed permit filings incomplete and demanded more studies, the filing said, so the plaintiffs want a trial.

The city, in a late October filing, called the matter simple.

"The City did not bargain for (a) sump," its statement says.

That Land Lot believes it is the victim of a city scheme to create a buffer zone around the sewer plant, the city's statement continues, is "merely fiction and cannot form the basis" of the suit.

A jury trial slated for November has been postponed until Jan. 4.