Cite as: 520 U. S. 725 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
offers the possibility of a variance from its facial requirements, a landowner must go beyond submitting a plan for development and actually seek such a variance to ripen his claim.
Williamson County Regional Planning Comm'n v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U. S. 172 (1985), confirmed Hodel's holding. In Williamson County, a developer's plan to build a residential complex was rejected by the local planning commission as inconsistent with zoning ordinances and subdivision regulations in eight different respects. This Court acknowledged that "[r]espondent ha[d] submitted a plan for developing its property, and thus ha[d] passed beyond the Agins threshold," 473 U. S., at 187, but nonetheless held the takings challenge unripe, reasoning that "among the factors of particular significance in the [takings] inquiry are the economic impact of the challenged action and the extent to which it interferes with reasonable investment-backed expectations," id., at 191, "factors [that] simply cannot be evaluated until the administrative agency has arrived at a final, definitive position regarding how it will apply the regulations at issue to the particular land in question," ibid. Thus, a developer must at least "resort to the procedure for obtaining variances . . . [and obtain] a conclusive determination by the Commission whether it would allow" the proposed development, id., at 193, in order to ripen its takings claim.
MacDonald, Sommer & Frates v. Yolo County, 477 U. S. 340 (1986), reaffirmed Williamson County's requirement of a final agency position. In MacDonald, a developer purchased property and presented a tentative subdivision plan to the local planning commission. After the commission treated the proposal as inconsistent with the zoning regulations in several respects, the developer immediately filed suit. Without even relying on the character of the dry run in the submission of a merely tentative plan, we emphasized that in the course of litigation two state courts had given opinions that development of the property was possible
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