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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowAnderson Wigwam high school basketball arena owners have lost their appeal of a final determination upholding the assessment of its real property for the 2015 tax year at more than $2 million.
In Wigwam Holdings LLC v. Madison County Assessor, 18T-TA-15, Wigwam Holdings failed to convince the Indiana Tax Court that it was entitled to an injunction against the collection of property taxes based on a valuation in the amount of $2.12 million.
That figure had already been reduced from an initial assessment of $11.42 million when the Madison County Property Tax Assessment Board of Appeals reclassified the property as utility and storage.
Wigwam Holdings previously argued to the Indiana Board of Tax Review that the correct assessment should be $68,500, and that the Wigwam’s “highest and best use” was as vacant land due to the facility’s asbestos contamination, noncompliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and lack of air conditioning and sprinkler system.
But the tax court denied Wigwam Holdings’ petition to enjoin in December 2018, and after fully briefing the matter in March 2019, ultimately affirmed the Board’s final determination upholding the $2.12 million assessment.
Wigwam Holdings unsuccessfully appealed that final determination, requesting the tax court reverse the final determination for being “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, unsupported by substantial evidence, and in excess of its statutory authority.”
It specifically alleged that the board erred in upholding the assessment because it made a prima facie case by introducing into evidence a Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice-compliant appraisal; established that it acquired the property for $0 in a market transaction in September 2014; and demonstrated that the assessment failed to account for the significant abnormal obsolescence that diminished the value of its property.
On the first issue, Judge Martha Blood Wentworth initially noted, among other things, that none of the numerous cases Holdings cited indicated that “there is a per se rule that presenting a USPAP-compliant appraisal automatically establishes a prima facie case for reducing an assessment under Indiana’s market value-in-use assessment system.”
She further found that the undisputed and unique facts of the case indicated that Wigwam Holdings’ appraisal estimating the Wigwam’s market value, without something more, failed to accurately reflect the property’s market value-in-use at first blush.
Wentworth additionally found the holding was not erroneous because a reasonable mind could find the final determination was supported by substantial evidence in the record and that Wigwam Holdings provided no evidence to quantify the purported obsolescence.
The tax court thus affirmed the Indiana Board’s final determination.
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