Wrandom
ramblings

Thursday, June 23, 2005
  Fifth Amendment? What’s that?
Story Here

A business wants some property so that it can build a research facility and the government says “Here take this property. Never mind that someone’s living there.” And the Supreme Court upholds that decision.

Not to be a doomsayer, but where do we draw the line? Sure the public would benefit form the research done, but is that “public use”? If the government takes some land to build a strip club or a strip mall would that be public use too? I mean it would sure be an economic benefit to the community.

And apparently Justice John Paul Stevens doesn’t think that four of his colleagues operate by either precedence or logic. Nice. That’s not how my Mom taught me to talk about my playmates.
 
Comments:
The City of Tulsa is trying to build a new arena (which will fail miserably) so they appropriated the land in the middle of downtown from the owners. Most of them were paid well, but one restaurant wouldn't sell out (since they have been there like 57 years).

What'd the mayor do?

He condemned the land underneath the restaurant and evicted the property owner, paying them less then $90K to move. Now the site sits barren and alone in the middle of three Federal buildings that the City can't do anything about. This was about 6 months ago.
 
That's why I've always found the phrase "city planning" a bit funny.
 
Yeah, I heard the Denver Grill (the restaurant mentioned in Patrick's post) will be moving, but it will no longer will located on (duh!) Denver Street. I think it was pretty crappy of Tulsa to do that to one of their historic eateries. I can only hope that they end up with all kinds of egg on their face when that arena fails. And more to the point, that they realize what they had done.
 
Will be? It moved like 4 months ago. To a 2nd floor lobby in a HOTEL on 17th street...over 6 blocks from its location on Denver Ave.
 
This Supreme Court decision is very scary if local governments actually start acting on it. Hopefully cities and state governments will get their acts together and pass laws against this ridiculous practice. Though I am very much against the property owner's right to pollute his/her own land, I find this decision strange indeed. I need to read the actual decision to see upon what precedent or logic they based their decision.
 
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