Have you experienced the rancor that can develop when a local government decides to exert it's powers to declare a portion of the community Blighted and use it's powers of Eminent Domain? Traditionally, State and Local governments can use Eminent Domain when there is a public purpose, something that is seen as a benefit to the community as a whole. Examples of this would be: schools, libraries, freeways. Even utility companies can get into the picture and purchase or acquire homes for the future development needed to sustain the utility. The freeway 'taking of houses' can get dicey when new entrance or exit ramps are desired and all of a sudden your house sits where they want the highway exit ramp to be! Even dicier though, is when governments started allowing the use of Eminent Domain for the building of private development, like condominiums or town homes. In order to do this, for private development purposes, an area has to be declared Blighted, which means deteriorated. You might think a home has to look like the shack on the left to fit this category, but that is not the case.
So what does Eminent Domain mean, officially? It is the acquisition of private property, usually with compensation to the owners of that property. This issue became a full blown, rancorous event in the City of Lakewood Ohio, resolved only about a year ago. Lakewood is a dense inner ring suburb with about 56,000 residents. What it does not have in abundance, is build able land. There was a proposal put forth to blight an area in western Lakewood so that a large new construction project of mixed use development could be built. It wound up garnering the support of a large group of people, including elected City officials - and I believe our local Board even chimed in it's support. Not everyone was pleased! Especially the people in the 'blighted' area, who had homes that were definitely NOT of the falling down in shambles variety! Lawyers were hired, a long drawn out debate ensued. In the end, this area was not declared blighted, eminent domain was not declared, and the project did not move forward. Linda Davis made a comment on one of my posts about turning lemons into lemonade, and that applies here as well. What this issue DID do, was mobilize the community. I believe because of this issue, a grass roots group of people got together and formed a terrific organization called Lakewood Alive! What prompted me to write this post was getting another email from them today. They are now active in making all of us aware of what is going on in Lakewood. There is a meeting scheduled to talk about land erosion on Lake Erie in Lakewood and how it will affect Cleveland as well. They promote the meetings occurring on school renovations; new business plans; historic preservation. It certainly let everyone know that regardless of where they stood on the issue of Eminent Domain in Lakewood, we all need to be active in our communities so we know what our governments are proposing.
I'm wondering if any of you have had similar experiences, especially with regard to the issue of the taking of land to build new construction projects; did it work? Did it not work? How was it handled. I suspect this issue is a big deal in areas just like Lakewood where build able land is either non existent or at a premium. I'm just glad that now the Lakewood Community can be more involved in what happens with their City so that no one is blind sided by any proposals, and so that residential and commercial property owners alike can be a part of what happens in Lakewood. Isn't that the best solution for all communities? And how do you feel about Eminent Domain?
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