CHESAPEAKE — Twin two-lane segments of the new U.S. 17 stretch flat and black through tasseled corn and green soybeans. The asphalt looks surreal without painted lines or signs or guardrails, as if this wide ribbon dropped suddenly into the fields.

Cars won't begin rolling on the new U.S. 17, which curves east of the existing 17, until November 2005. But even then, the Virginia Department of Transportation may still be battling the owners of the surrounding land over what constitutes fair compensation.

VDOT officials took strips of land for rights of way and easements on 40 different properties for the new U.S. 17. In government projects like these, landowners don't usually have the option not to sell; they can only accept or challenge the amount they're paid.

The owners of 18 properties accepted VDOT's offers for their land. For the remaining 22 parcels, VDOT condemned the land and filed certificates of take. This allows the agency to begin building while the landowner retains the right to negotiate the amount of money that VDOT pays him or her.

That's what happened to Raymond D. Cartwright and members of his family. The Cartwrights say their land, about 1,000 acres, would be worth millions (based on similar land sales in western Chesapeake ) if U.S. 17 hadn't come barreling through it.

To VDOT, the land is worth no more than its market value – at the time of condemnation – as farmland, which is "the highest and best use of the property," VDOT attorney Kelly Daniels-Sheeran said.

According to the Cartwrights, the land's true value is defined by its potential for development. "You would never sell to Mr. Farmer," said their attorney, Joseph T. Waldo, because developers would offer much more money.

The difference of opinion led VDOT to take the Cartwrights to court when the family and the department couldn't agree on what was fair. Now, the Cartwrights are seeking more than $3 million in recompense for the land taken for the new U.S. 17 and for damages to six pieces of property.

As part of the condemnation process, VDOT writes a check for "the amount estimated by the Commonwealth Transportation Commissioner of Virginia to be the fair value of the land or interest therein. …" The landowner can cash the check and still retain the right to dispute the matter.

According to court files, VDOT offered a total of $367,180 for three pieces of property it took from the Cartwrights, which amounted to 29.27 acres and 2.9 acres in easements. The Cartwrights recently reached a settlement on one of these properties, for an undisclosed amount.

By comparison, VDOT initially offered another nearby landowner, Hattie Johnson, $124,000 for about 20 acres. VDOT later raised that offer to $226,000, said VDOT spokeswoman Tiffany Elliott, but a panel of commissioners decided in the end to give Johnson what she asked for, about $738,000.

Neither VDOT nor the Cartwrights would disclose further details about offers, negotiations or settlements, since cases are currently in litigation.

"Obviously, what we want most is to make sure that they're happy and that we come to a fair agreement with them," Elliott said of the landowners affected by U.S. 17.

The Cartwright family asserts that VDOT sliced profitable tracts in two when taking right of way for the new highway, isolating some pieces from existing roads and ruining them for future residential development.

Several family members, including Raymond Cartwright and his two surviving brothers, jointly own each of the six properties, though in different proportions.

On a map, the six parcels – which generally lie north and south of Glencoe Street and west of Belle Haven Street – appear to combine into one more or less contiguous swath of land, with several opportunities for road access.

But riding along the unfinished lanes of the new 17, features appear that complicate the situation: deep ditches between fields, dirt roads bisected by the new highway, a severed crop-duster runway and the thin beginnings of the Northwest River.

And the North West Canal now little more than a weedchoked ditch that runs alongside Glencoe Street is a historic pre-Civil War waterway that can't be disturbed, Waldo said.

Nor could the Cartwrights build a road onto their land from U.S. 17 – it's a limited access highway, meaning there can be no more entrance points than the ones VDOT has established.

Sure, the Cartwrights can still move farm equipment over a neighbor's land to get from one piece of land to another, Waldo said, but that access is not guaranteed forever. And if the Cartwrights want to sell the land to a developer, Waldo said, "they're not taking tractors. They want to know how you get a car there."

Beginning this September and continuing well into next year, the attorneys are expected to argue in court to determine the true impact of U.S. 17 on the Cartwrights' land and what VDOT ought to pay.

Thus far, two of the Cartwright condemnations have been settled outside of court.

"I'm not exactly happy," Raymond Cartwright said. "If you win the award that you're going for, you really don't win."

One-third of the amount goes to Waldo, and Cartwright will have to pay court costs. Defendants in condemnation disputes can't ask for VDOT to also pay their legal expenses or costs for expert witnesses and appraisers, if victorious.

Raymond Cartwright, the youngest of five sons, has lived all his 51 years on his family's farm east of the Great Dismal Swamp. "I'm down in my little corner of the world," he said.

Cartwright currently grows soybeans and feed corn on his land. But he is the last farmer in the family, and he knows Chesapeakes future doesn't lie in farming. The infrastructure for it is gone, he said, and the land is too valuable to farm – but the coming of U.S. 17 has changed his land's potential.

"How do you pay for damage forever?" Raymond Cartwright asked. "How long is forever?"

The new section of U.S. 17 in Chesapeake is shown here under construction. When the Virginia Department of Transportation takes on a project such as this, they claim the land surrounding it. Owners only have the option of accepting or challenging the purchase price.