## Facts

- 181 Incorporated owned an irregularly shaped tract in Woodstown, Salem County, New Jersey, fronting Elm Street (County Road 40) and U.S. Route 40.
- After purchasing the property in December 1971, 181 Inc. applied to the Salem County Planning Board for site-plan approval to construct a law office.
- The Planning Board’s site-plan review committee recommended approval conditioned on, among other things, dedication of an 8.25-foot strip along the Elm Street frontage for a proposed road-widening shown on the county’s official map.
- The planned widening would increase Elm Street from 49.5 feet to 66 feet, but the timing of any widening was indefinite.
- The dedication condition was based on a county resolution directing the Planning Board to require additional right-of-way dedications where needed for road improvements.
- Plaintiffs timely objected that the forced dedication was a taking of private property for public use without just compensation.
- The Planning Board overruled the objection and imposed the condition; the Salem County Board of Freeholders affirmed on appeal.
- In an action in lieu of prerogative writs, the Law Division initially remanded for a hearing and a fuller evidentiary record; after testimony and record development, the matter returned for decision on the condition’s legality.

## Issues

1. Whether a county may constitutionally condition site-plan approval on an uncompensated dedication of private land for future road widening.
2. Whether, on the developed record, the required 8.25-foot dedication bore a reasonable relationship to needs created by the proposed law-office development or instead served a general public improvement.

## Decision

- The Law Division reversed the decisions of the Salem County Planning Board and the Board of Freeholders.
- The court held the dedication condition was not justified on the factual record and, as applied, constituted an unconstitutional taking without just compensation.
- The court treated prior precedent upholding a similar dedication scheme as fact-dependent and not controlling where the record failed to show a sufficient development-related basis for the exaction.

## Legal Principles

- A dedication condition may be valid when authorized by law and reasonably related to impacts or needs created by the proposed development.
- A compulsory dedication that primarily advances a general public improvement, without a concrete, development-specific justification, constitutes a taking requiring just compensation.
- The validity of an uncompensated dedication depends on a fact-specific showing that the condition is tied to the development’s contribution to the asserted public need, not merely to a long-range plan with an indefinite timetable.

## Conclusion

The court invalidated an uncompensated right-of-way dedication imposed as a site-plan condition because the record did not show the proposed law office created a need proportionate to the demanded strip, and the condition functioned as uncompensated acquisition for an indefinite, general road-widening project.


181 Inc. v. Salem Cnty. Planning Bd., 133 N.J. Super. 350, 336 A.2d 501 (Law Div. 1975)