Philly Artist Fights City Hall Over Eminent Domain Abuse
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GooglePhiladelphia's James Dupree is an accomplished artist whose work has appeared in museum all over the world, including his hometown's Philadelphia Museum of Art and African American Museum.
In 2005, Dupree bought a dilapidated warehouse in the City of Brotherly Love's Mantua neighborhood and worked to turn it into a studio that hosts his personal workshop, art classes, and even visitors through Airbnb.
That's all being threatened by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority (PRA), a local government agency that is supposed to revitalize distressed neighborhoods.
PRA made plans with Aquinas Realty Partners to convert the block that Dupree’s studio is on into a multi-use area with retail shops and a high-end grocery store. PRA designated the studio as blighted and moved to take it via eminent domain, the government's right to seize property for public use. It planned to give the property to the private developer Aquinas. Part of the eminent domain process is that dispossessed property owners must be offered fair and just compensation. PRA offered Dupree $640,000 for his property even though the estimated market value is $2.2 million.
Taking private property and then giving it to a developer constitutes abuse of eminent domain, says Institute for Justice senior attorney Scott Bullock. "A grocery store is like any other private business," he explains. "It is about as far away from a public use as one could imagine." Historically, eminent domain was used to build things such as roads, public schools, and hospitals. Increasingly, though, it's being used by governments to give favored developers sweetheart deals.
Bullock was the lead counsel in the 2005 Supreme Court case Kelo v. New London, which involved a municipal government in Connecticut seizing property and giving it to a private developer to build a hotel complex. The high court ruled that it was constitutional as long as the government said they were trying to increase tax revenues. The Kelo decision was highly controversial and led many states and municipalities to pass tighter restrictions on the use of eminent domain.
Ironically, the inefficiency of municipal bureaucracy may give Dupree his best chance of winning his case. When PRA classified Dupree’s property as blighted, it ended up condemning only two of the three addresses his property sits on.
Dupree has begun an online petition and has taken PRA to court. A decision is expected later this year.
About 5 minutes.
Produced by Joshua Swain. Narrated by Nick Gillespie.
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Glad Virginians came out of their stupid-hole for two seconds and voted for a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting private development via eminent domain. The Democrats opposed it, for course. Said the law was "fine" as-is.
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If I didn't know for a fact that Team Blue was on the side of working and middle-class property owners (against whom eminent domain is almost always invoked), I would almost be tempted to think that all they wanted was higher tax revenues and more government power.
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What does/did that Virginian law really look like? Did it have an 'compelling government interest' exception?
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Property rights? We don't need no stinkin' property rights!
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If you have ever been to Philadelphia it can be pretty difficult to separate the blighted from the unblighted. Still, if you're going to abuse bureaucratic power to favor your friends you should at least make sure you've dotted your i's and crossed your t's.
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Finding blight in any city is easy:
There's a public school, there's a police station, there's a multistory condominium block in a TIF district, there's an alderman's house...
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*golf clap*
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So you use the same definition as the bureaucrats? Whatever strikes your fancy?
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my friend's mom makes $62 hourly on the laptop . She has been laid off for nine months but last month her paycheck was $18955 just working on the laptop for a few hours. learn the facts here now...........
http://www.Works23.us -
a high-end grocery store
Another food desert in the making.
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Funny, I work in City Hall, and heard that that was one of the reasons why the government decided to buy off this block. Never mind the fact that a quick Google map search reveals more restaurants and food stores than I can count.
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Yes. But they need to come up with something to justify another (in a long line) corrupt money grab.
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I am from Philly. I love that city. But politically and economically, it represents a libertarian's worst nightmare. On the other hand, it is heaven on earth for big government progressives and crony capitalists. It's ironic that it is home to the Liberty Bell.
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The most ironic part of this whole thing is that the original property in Kelo v. New London is still sitting, undeveloped, after all this time. The deal to do the construction on that property fell through, and the property is sitting vacant.
The Kelo decision needs to be reversed. It's unconstitutional, wrong-headed, and ultimately wasteful.
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Well, that is The Nature of The State...
... The State, in short, arrogates to itself a monopoly of force, of ultimate decision-making power, over a given territorial area—larger or smaller depending on historical conditions, and on how much it has been able to wrest from other States. If the State may be said to properly own its territory, then it is proper for it to make rules for anyone who presumes to live in that area. It can legitimately seize or control private property because there is no private property in its area, because it really owns the entire land surface...
