Imminent Eminent Domain
Friday, 14 September 2007 by Jacob TomawOutside of the Walgreen’s at Laurence, Lincoln, and Western there is a statue of Pres. Lincoln. Inscribed at the base of the memorial is “Free society is not, and shall not be, a failure.” The stores Lincoln has his back to are not sure that the PRChi is part of a free society.
Ben Joravsky in the Chicago Reader this week reports these shops have been sent letters of Eminent Domain intent from the City. It is the Cities intention to transfer their property to another private owner. Why does the city want to do this? Higher tax revenue of course, but also for the small business owners own protection.
The acquisition letters set off a panic among the merchants affected. But their local alderman, Eugene Schulter of the 47th Ward, insists that the acquisition authorization letter’s part of a process he’s initiated over the last couple of decades to protect small businesses. Schulter says he’s routinely bombarded with calls from developers eager to buy up property and tear it down so they can build big-box monstrosities “like you see on Clybourn near North Avenue.” He claims the threat of eminent domain wards off that kind of development: if property owners can’t sell their property, big-box developers can’t buy it up.
Thanks Mr. Schulter, thanks for keeping people from keeping these business owners from making sound business decisions. Good thing the city knows what is best use of land or we might just go around developing things people want to go to and turn a profit.
The city has not come to take their land away yet. Just the treat isdamaging though.
But there are still problems for property owners under the threat of eminent domain. For one thing, it’s harder to get bank loans for improvements or expansion. “What bank is going to lend me money if they know the city might take my property?” asks Hidvegi. And even if merchants were invited to return to whatever gets built on the block, they’d most likely be coming back as tenants rather than tenant-owners. “We may wind up paying rent for less space,” says Hidvegi—not to mention no equity.
Silly Chicagoans, one day we will learn. In the People’s Republic of Chicago we are all renters, deeds are childish attachments to the past.
Posted in Chicago, politics
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September 16th, 2007 at 6:06
Eminent domain gained strength through a series of rulings by the Clinton-appointed Supreme Court. We will start eeeing more and more of this - as we already are here in United Soviet State of Minnesota (USSM). Government will take property from one private citizen and deed it to another for “the betterment of the masses.”
Here’s a fantastic idea if we really want to better society. Let’s let the masses decide how much a property is worth and what should go there. That way, only the strongest, most beneficial businesses or residences will own those profitable properties. But that would be called capitalism…something it seems like we have less and less of everyday.