LONGMONT — Longmont has won the Dillard’s title fight.

A Boulder County District Court judge ruled Monday that Dillard’s must turn over the title to its property to the Longmont Urban Renewal Authority. In a 17-page written decision, Judge D.D. Mallard granted LURA’s request for vesting, allowing the $80 million redevelopment of the Twin Peaks Mall to proceed before a final price is set.

Mall owner NewMark Merrill Mountain States plans to shut down Twin Peaks at the end of the year. Managing partner Allen Ginsborg called the ruling welcome but “not very surprising.”

“We thought our arguments were very solid,” he said.

Attorney Leslie Fields, who represented Dillard’s in the case, could not be reached for comment.

Barring an appeal, the next step will be to set a down payment for Dillard’s, to hold until the eminent domain trial sets a price. That down payment is decided by a board of commissioners; both LURA and Dillard’s have until Sept. 3 to suggest three nominees.

A date for the eminent domain trial has not yet been set.

In her ruling, Mallard said the mall’s decline was obvious to any long-time resident. Except for finding that the mall’s title is defective, she wrote, “any citizen could walk around Twin Peaks Mall with a clipboard … and document or photograph observations” that filled the requirements for blight.

Under state law, she said, Dillard’s itself did not have to be blighted to be condemned — it merely had to be in an urban renewal area that contained blight. Twin Peaks has been designated a blighted area by the city more than once, most recently in 2012.

However, Mallard said, that blight couldn’t be fixed without taking Dillard’s title. Dillard’s owns its property and holds an agreement allowing it to veto any redevelopment of the mall. Attempts to negotiate with the store fell through this spring.

“The prospect of these parties reaching an agreement is dim,” Mallard wrote. “Dillard’s and NewMark Merrill each lay blame on the other for failure to compromise and reach agreement. The court need not determine why there was failure to reach agreement; it simply must accept the fact that there is no agreement and no likelihood of agreement to conduct its analysis.”

The judge also admonished Dillard’s for its claim that the condemnation was a sham, done solely to aid NewMark Merrill.

“The situation here involves more than a mere impediment,” she wrote. “Dillard’s actions have completely prevented any effort to implement a legitimate urban renewal plan. … Here, there is a complete shutdown of redevelopment, leaving Longmont with a blighted mall.”

Mallard also ruled that the blight determination was properly done, that LURA negotiated in good faith to buy the store and that Dillard’s attorneys had failed to prove the state’s vesting laws are unconstitutional.

Dillard’s had argued that while the Colorado Constitution permits “disturbance” of a property in some cases, divesting a title could not happen until a jury set a price; to do otherwise, Fields said in court, would lead to “irreparable harms that a monetary security deposit will not likely protect against.”

Mallard wasn’t convinced. Possession and vesting titles inhibit a property owner in many of the same ways, she said. The “irreparable harm” in this case, she said, appeared to be that Dillard’s would lose its veto power and that its title would be used by others to get loans.

The latter case, she said, was not the court’s problem.

“Dillard’s constitutional right is to just compensation for the value of its property,” she wrote. “Dillard’s does not have a constitutional right to determine how the title to its property is used by subsequent property owners.”

Staff writer Victoria A.F. Camron contributed to this story.

Scott Rochat can be reached at 303-684-5220 or srochat@times-call.com.