ESCONDIDO -- Helen Redding's fragile 94-year-old frame has difficulty navigating the soft soil of the steep slope that was once an avocado grove and the pride of her family.

But with the help of her daughter, she is scrambling in a race to buy the 10-acre site at the end of Puebla Street from the city, which purchased it from the Redding family for $345,000 as part of an eminent domain proceeding in 1995.

The city is now selling the land and the Redding family says it should be the first in line to buy.

The Reddings sold the property to the city after the City Council declared the land was part of a new water reclamation system. That project, however, never came to fruition.

"We had never had any hope of getting (the land) back," Helen Redding said. "It's amazing. But it was a doozy, because they've had it for (10) years and never did anything with it."

Actually, the city did do something with it. After receiving a purchase offer from a local developer last year, it decided to sell the land -- a plan that didn't sit well with Helen Redding's daughter, Jane.

After a former neighbor informed her of the pending sale late last month, Jane Redding, who lives in Nebraska, immediately contacted Escondido officials crying foul play and flew to San Diego to deal with the matter.

"They were going to make a huge profit on it," said Jane Redding, who serves as secretary of M.D. Redding MD Inc., her family's medical business, which once owned the site.

How much to pay

City officials said they had decided to accept the developer's offer because the land wasn't needed. But making a huge profit wasn't part of the equation.

And once they learned of the Redding's interest, city officials immediately started working with family members to sell them back the land, at a rate below market value.

"We didn't build the public improvement," said Mayor Lori Pfeiler. "And the best and most we can do is to let the ones who care about (the land) have it back."

This week, the city agreed to sell the land to the Reddings for $596,000, a price that includes the original purchase price, $13,500 in property taxes the city has paid, and $238,000 to compensate for lost interest returns had the money been placed in Escondido's investment portfolio.

But the Redding family has balked at the offer.

Jane Redding said she has no problem covering the taxes -- something her family would have had to pay, regardless. But she rejects the idea of covering the city's losses had it simply kept the money in the bank.

"They are the ones that sat on it," Redding said, adding that she intends to put forward a counteroffer. "Why should we be paying for the appreciation?"

Selling the family land

After all, for the Redding family, the expansive parcel was meant to be their heritage.

Marion Redding, a San Diego surgeon, had purchased the hilltop land in the unincorporated area in 1957, with the hopes of passing it down through the generations, said daughter Jane Redding.

For decades, the family would while away their weekends picnicking beneath the avocado and orange trees they had planted. They regularly sold some of the fruit to markets, but mostly they just gave it to friends and neighbors, Jane Redding recalled.

"More than an income-producing thing, it was a great joy for the family," she said.

Redding said the family believes the City Council's move to adopt a "Resolution of Necessity" that cleared the way for the city to acquire the property contributed to the death of her father, who was battling cancer at the time.

In 1995, shortly after the family patriarch passed away, the Reddings agreed to sell the land, on the advice of their lawyer.

After that, the story of the land is told in the brown tree stumps, dried grass and blossom on nine remaining orange trees that line portions of the roadside.

A plan abandoned

Escondido had gone after the land in order to house storage tanks as part of a water reclamation project it had proposed in conjunction with the city of San Diego. The project would have nearly doubled the city's reclaimed water capacity and piped water to San Pasqual Valley, parts of southern Escondido and other areas.

But shortly after the city purchased the land, San Diego backed out of the project, said Pat Thomas. the city's public works director.

Even without San Diego's participation, Escondido officials still felt they could move ahead on the project, Thomas said. But around 2001, the city dropped those plans for good.

The city cut off water to the site a couple of years after the sale, and for the last decade, the land has lain fallow. Neighbors said they later cleared dying trees and regularly cut down the brush that would grow on the slope, presenting a fire hazard to the community.

"The city was genuine at the time," Councilman Ed Gallo said. "And things change over time, and it became surplus (property)."

Changing the law

That surplus property is now valuable land.

After receiving an unsolicited offer for the property, the city decided to advertise the sale of the property last spring and received just two offers. The highest was from Clifton C. Morgan Construction Inc, the company that first inquired about the land, said Tom Nutt, the city's real property negotiator.

After further investigating the land, Morgan Construction began renegotiating the sale price, dropping the company's initial offer of $1 million to roughly $775,000 -- well above the $700,000 appraised value, according to Nutt.

In general, cities and other California entities that exercise eminent domain have seven years to make use of properties they condemn.

City Attorney Jeffrey Epp said that, in this case, he did not believe the clock was ticking, since the property was ultimately purchased outright and not condemned.

State law does not provide former owners any recourse if the land seized from them is not used for its intended purpose or is later put up for sale.

However, a proposed amendment to the state's constitution would provide that right if a government entity abandons the intended use or doesn't develop the property within 10 years.

The amendment, authored by Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, is one of many such measures being drafted around the nation, in the wake of a Supreme Court decision last year upholding governments' right to exercise eminent domain to further private development.

Bringing back family history

Today, the only remnant of the Reddings' family retreat at the end of Puebla's cul-de-sac is a rusted chain-link gate that once led to lush avocado groves that lined the slope and still yield a panoramic view of the Escondido valley.

The view would no doubt be a selling point to anyone who built on the land, which is zoned for up to four single-family houses.

Jane Redding, however, has other plans.

A self-described conservationist, she said that she would like to build one house for her aging mother, and a guest house for herself and her sister, who lives in the Los Angeles area.

And while the glory of the family's grove is probably lost for good, Jane Redding said she intends to replant the hillsides, perhaps with native California vegetation.

"It looks like a dust bowl," Jane Redding said. "We want to beautify it and bring it back."

Contact staff writer David Fried at (760) 740-5416 or dfried@nctimes.com.