The long Island city of North Hills wants  seize a golf course to use as a… golf course…  This is eminent domain gone haywire.  The Kelo Decision  is the abomination that causes actions such as this.

More on the situation at Newsmax:

 
John Wilson, a 20-year member of Long Island’s 175-acre Deepdale Golf Club, established in 1955, is mad as hell that the nearby exclusive village of North Hills, N.Y., wants to seize the venerable club through eminent domain -– not for a road or a public hospital, but to use as its own community golf course.

Wilson is just one of many Americans who have discovered that the traditional concept of eminent domain -– which allows government to appropriate property for public use -– has been turned upside down by recent court rulings and greedy government officials.

"(T)hat is absurd: to steal somebody else’s golf course, to give it to somebody else as a golf course so that their home values increase," Wilson recently told Fox News.

Furthermore, the angry citizen points out, the town of North Hempstead, of which North Hills is a part, already has eight municipal golf courses.

… 

There are many more eminent domain issues across the United States that have gone crazy because of the Supreme Court ruling.

Previous Posts on the Kelo Decision here.

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 Future site of "Hotel Lost Liberty"?

Justice Souter’s home New Hampshire may become a hotel because of the Kelo Decision.

From State College Centre Daily:

A group opposed to a U.S. Supreme Court decision on eminent domain gathered signatures Saturday in support of turning Justice David Souter’s home into a hotel.

About 25 volunteers gathered at Weare Town Hall before setting out in teams to canvas the town. William Deans of Allentown, Pa., said he joined the effort because Allentown officials are dealing with urban blight by seizing homes and property in his neighborhood.

"I’m here today because I believe in the cause and my personal home is in eminent domain proceedings," Deans said.

The idea of requiring the town to seize Souter’s farmhouse and develop a "Hotel Lost Liberty" on the property started with Logan Darrow Clements of Los Angeles, who wanted to protest the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Kelo v. City of New London.

Souter joined the majority in ruling New London, Conn., could seize residents’ homes to make way for a hotel, convention center, office space and condominiums near Pfizer Inc.’s new research headquarters because it would benefit the public by creating jobs and increasing tax revenues.

A group of Weare residents calling themselves the Committee for the Preservation of Natural Rights already has gathered the 25 signatures required to place the seizure measure on the town ballot in March. Souter, through a spokeswoman for the court, has declined to comment.

Clements came to Weare this weekend to demonstrate the extent of local support for the measure and distribute copies of the court’s decision. He gathered nine signatures on Buzzell Hill Road in less than an hour, with only one resident declining to sign.

"I’ve got support across the board on this today – liberal and conservative," Clements said. "It’s great that all Americans can come together at least on one issue."

Roland Beauregard, who stopped his car to sign Clements’ petition, said he whole-heartedly supported the plan to seize Souter’s home.

"If he’s going to make a rule, then he’s got to live by the rule," he said. "This kind of thing makes me angry. What’s to say somebody won’t come along and decide my house might make a great resort? I only pay a few thousand in taxes, and if they could get more taxes to build something there, what’s stopping them from taking away my house?"

What goes around comes around….

Nothing would more apropos than Justice Souter losing this property as a result of the Kelo Decision.  If Souter wants to stay there maybe they could hire him as a bellhop.

 More Articles on  Kelo Decision abuses

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Riviera Beach officials are starting to backtrack a little from the land grab that is about to take effect in that community.  Now Mayor Brown,an eminent domain lawyer, claims that the land grab won’t be as large as originally planned.

This from the Palm Beach Post:

                                                                                        […

"There’s been a terrible spin nationally" to the city’s eminent domain plans, Mayor Michael Brown said.

Only 283 owner-occupied parcels of land need to be acquired, said Ian Meredith, a partner in Portfolio Group LLC, which has teamed with Viking Marine to be the master developer of the project. The hope is that owners will agree to sell their properties at 130 percent of their appraised value and avoid eminent domain, he said.

"People do want to sell us land voluntarily," Meredith said.

Another 1,000 or so renters also could be displaced, Meredith said. In some cases, residents may be relocated a short distance away; in others they won’t have to leave at all, and their homes will be rehabilitated.

Early estimates were that as many as 5,100 residents could be displaced. City Council Chairwoman Liz Wade said that the plan undoubtedly will be tweaked in the future and until it is finalized, nobody can say with certainty how many residents will be affected.

She and others spoke at a workshop on Singer Island aimed at assuaging residents’ concerns. But perhaps three-quarters of the 50 people attending were city staff and people with a financial interest in the project.

Wade and Meredith said absentee landlords and speculators angling for a financial windfall own most of the homes in the redevelopment area. "The reason this city is blighted is absentee landlords," Wade said.

Officials are concerned enough about how the project has been perceived that the master developer is interviewing national public relations firms to counteract the negative publicity.

The project will move part of U.S. 1 and dig a man-made lagoon. A basin for megayachts would be created and high-end residential waterfront housing, retail and office space and a 250-room hotel are planned. Moderately priced housing also would be built, and the working waterfront would be expanded. There also are plans for a 96,000-square-foot aquarium and expansion of Bicentennial Park.

Just what is needed on the southeast shore of Florida is another aquarium. All they need is a fleet of Glass Bottom boats.  It would be cheaper and wouldn’t displace so many residents.

• Previous Posts: Discord In Riviera Beach

                        Riviera Beach To Displace 6000 Residents

                       Sean Hannity is Hot On The Riviera Beach Story

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The Riviera Beach land grab for commercial development continues. City officials claimed the property to be seized was blighted, a condition for eminent domain to be enacted.  The official city report has been discredited by  citizens who did their own investigation.

This from the Palm Beach Post:

It looked like "it was done by two guys sitting in a bar and saying, ‘let’s throw this in,’ " Babson says.

She offered to share her findings at a June 2001 city meeting. No one took her up on it. So she wrapped the study in plastic and put it on her kitchen shelf. It gathered dust for a few years. When silverbugs started chewing on her paperwork, she says, "I figured I had better take it out."

Until The Palm Beach Post inquired, she had shown it to no one.

Now Babson’s dog-eared report has taken on new significance, given the controversy over Riviera’s potential for massive eminent domain.

Among the findings:

• The city’s blight study reported that the north side of a 10th Street block was vacant. It wasn’t. Four- and five-year-old homes dotted the street.

• Where some homes had double lots, the second lot was listed as vacant, inflating the number of unused properties.

• Homes in good condition were classified as dilapidated and beyond repair.

• Hundreds of mobile homes, including some that later weathered Hurricanes Frances, Jeanne and Wilma, automatically were classified as blighted due to undocumented safety problems or criticism such as "a tendency to blow over in storms."

• There were no findings of high crime rates or fires, a key justification of blight. City computers were being tweaked to accommodate a new system, according to the city’s study, and so the numbers could not be retrieved.

• Buildings in good shape were declared "functionally obsolete," defined generally as a structure which, if torn down, could be replaced with something that generated more money.

None of Babson’s findings sways Riviera Beach Mayor Michael Brown.

Elected four times — always on a redevelopment platform — Brown is the person mostly closely identified with the redevelopment plan. In recent days, he’s twice defended it on TV to FOX News’ Sean Hannity.

Back at his Singer Island law office, Brown grows impatient with criticism of the redevelopment. Eminent domain almost always involved poor or black people, he says. "Now, not all of the faces are black. Now, all of a sudden it’s tyranny."

Mayor Brown is an eminent domain attorney. It seems that there is a conflict of interest:

Related Posts: Discord In Riviera Beach, Riviera Beach To Displace 6000 Residents, Sean Hannity Is Hot On Riviera Beach Story

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Sean Hannity will be in Riviera Beach this week.  The displacement of all these people is nothing to ignore. This could happen to any community in the United States.

From The Sun Sentinel:

Riviera Beach townhouses planned

Coral Gables-based Cornerstone Group and a Chicago company have a joint venture to build 1,029 townhouses in Riviera Beach.

Groundbreaking on Mediterranea, at the corner of Military Trail and Blue Heron Boulevard, is due to begin early next year. Prices start in the low $300,000 range, and the development is expected to be sold out in three to four years.

Cornerstone has built two other townhouse projects in Riviera Beach. Its partner in Mediterranea is Randolph Equities, a newly formed real estate company that plans to spend $200 million to finance deals in Florida and the Midwest.

From The Desert Dispatch:

What the Kelo decision has wrought

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s disastrous decision in Kelo vs. the City of New London (Conn.), upholding the "right" of local governments to take property from private owners and give it to developers, Congress and state legislatures have been debating proposals to limit the impact of the decision.

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution allows eminent domain – the government’s taking of private property, upon compensation to the owner – for public uses, understood historically to mean needs such as highways and schools. But the highest court OK’d its use to take property from homeowners and business owners to benefit private interests, i.e., to turn property over to other private owners.

In the debate over these laws, supporters of the Kelo decision – a ruling overwhelmingly derided nationwide by conservatives and liberals – have warned that restoring traditional constitutional property-rights protections could have "unintended consequences." Such consequences mainly revolve around limiting government regulations and planning, which are consequences we, and most Americans, certainly would be glad to live with.

The real unintended consequences come not from protecting property rights, but from the Kelo decision itself and other efforts by the courts to undermine the idea that a person’s home is his castle. For an idea of what the Kelo decision has wrought, Americans would do well to pay attention to a massive eminent-domain plan now taking shape in Riviera Beach, Fla. The predominantly African-American beachfront city, just north of West Palm Beach, is a nice place, albeit one that is far less upscale than many nearby coastal communities.

It’s a mostly blue-collar area, and residents have enjoyed the fact that one needn’t be wealthy to live near the ocean and the intercoastal waterway. City officials, however, do not like the area’s downscale image. They want it to be more like tony Palm Beach and other wealthy coastal cities. So they have approved a $1 billion plan that would move 6,000 residents out of their homes and businesses and sell the land to a yacht company and Australian builder for a planned fancy resort.

The modest ranch houses would give way to high-rise condos. The mostly blue collar and black residents would no doubt give way to other sorts of residents. It’s a classic case of Robin Hood in reverse and an example of what happens when government officials are given power over other people’s lives and when property rights are not treated with the respect afforded in the Constitution.

As in California, eminent domain cannot take place in Florida for economic development unless blight is declared. What is happening there, and what we’ve seen happening here, is that officials get quite creative in determining what amounts to blight. Note also that poorer and minority residents often are targets of these redevelopment plans as influential developers lobby cities to help them gain land that they would have trouble gaining on their own.

In a free society, individuals get to choose where they live. If a developer wants the property, then he is free to try to buy it. But he has to walk away if the owner refuses to sell. When the government steps in to take the land on behalf of the developer because the government covets the promised new tax revenue, it distorts the market in favor of those with the most political clout. Freedom evaporates, as individuals are forced to leave their dreams so others can benefit from their property.

This is the world the Supreme Court has endorsed. The Kelo decision allows individual states to pass laws restricting eminent-domain abuse. In California, Democrats – supposedly the advocates for the poor and working class – stopped such reforms this year. Perhaps the Riviera Beach abuse will remind lawmakers of the real consequences of eliminating property rights.

And This:

Previously posted: Discord in Riviera Beach & Riviera Beach To Displace 6000 Residents.

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Basil’s Blog-Supper12-06-2005

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Riviera Beach ,Florida is going to displace up to 6000 Residents to build a yacht Club and housing for upper middle class residents. This will be the largest displacement of residents in the history of the U.S.    Now the displacement is coming to fruition.

We can thank the Supreme Court for this mess with the  Kelo Decision.

From the Los Angeles Times:

The residents are trying to fight back.  But it looks as though it will be to no avail.

In Florida, the law allows local officials to take private land for redevelopment if they deem it "blighted." In May 2001, a study conducted for the city found that "slum and blighted conditions" existed in about a third of Riviera Beach, and that redevelopment was necessary "in the interest of public health, safety, morals and welfare."

A skeptical Babson, who lives in a single-story, concrete-block home painted aqua that she shares with parrots and a dog, did her own survey. For three months, she walked the streets of Riviera Beach photographing houses classified as "dilapidated" or "deteriorated" by specialists hired by the city.

The official study, she said, was riddled with errors and misclassifications. Lots inventoried as "vacant" (one of 14 criteria that allow Florida cities or counties to declare a neighborhood blighted) actually had homes on them built in 1997, she said. One house deemed "dilapidated," she found, was two years old.

Rene Corie has lived for nine years in a custard-yellow home near the Intracoastal. When the house was earmarked for acquisition under eminent domain four years ago, the 56-year-old seamstress became so depressed she couldn’t put up her Christmas tree. She and her husband decided to fight City Hall in order to keep their home, or at the least, be paid a fair market price for it.

"We tried to elect a new mayor, we went around to churches, we stood on street corners with signs," Corie said. "When we got home from work, me and David would get into the truck and go door to door, and all day Saturday and Sunday."

Corie said she could be served at any time with another letter of acquisition for the house and the double lot it sits on. "My home is no longer my own," she said.

Previous post:  Discord In Riviera Beach

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This From  The Washington  Times:

Florida’s Riviera Beach is a poor, predominantly black, coastal community that intends to revitalize its economy by using eminent domain, if necessary, to displace about 6,000 local residents and build a billion-dollar waterfront yachting and housing complex…

(Mayor)  Brown said Riviera Beach is doing what the city of New London, Conn., is trying to do and what the U.S. Supreme Court said is proper in its ruling June 23 in Kelo v. City of New London. That decision upheld the right of government to seize private properties for use by private developers for projects designed to generate jobs and increase the tax base.
    "Now eminent domain is affecting people who never had to deal with it before and who have political connections," Mr. Brown said. "But if we don’t use this power, cities will die."

But in another article posted August 24,2005 on local news channel WPEC News 12:

  Riviera Beach Mayor Michael Brown is proceeding with his lawsuit against his own city and it’s redevelopment agency.
He’s suing for excluding him from redevelopment discussions.
Those discussions include plans for a major waterfront revitalization project.
Brown wants those plans halted until his lawsuit is settled.
Brown also wants the court to stop the city from barring him from a seat on the dais.
Wednesday, a judge told the mayor he’ll have to re-file his complaint.
Brown and the redevelopment board will be back in court on September 8.

What is going on in this small burb of Palm Beach?  Maybe this study presented by  THE FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING dated The Spring Of 2004 explains the problem in it’s conclusion:

Conclusion:

After a thorough review, it has been determined that the City of Rivera Beach has many
different programs and several organizations that assist with the implementation of those
programs. There is a vast difference in the number of community development programs in
place and the number of economic development programs in place. Specifically, the City does
not fund any economic development initiatives. Rather, the City concentrates all of its efforts on
the community development side. The Palm Beach County Department of Housing and
Community Development Department funds various economic development initiatives through
LISC or the Northwest Rivera Beach CRC that are implemented in the City. The City of Riviera
Beach is effectively addressing the community development issues, but lacks a focus on the
human element.

Further, the City should seek to obtain additional grant funds that will allow
implementation of economic development initiatives. It has also been determined that numerous
economic development initiatives exist through Palm Beach County, the U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development and other organizations. However, the City of Riviera Beach
is not participating in these initiatives. Therefore, its residents are deprived of services that could
assist in improving their quality of life. Finally, the City should re-evaluate and redevelop its
30
community and economic development strategy and develop a plan for full implementation of
the new strategy.

The Inlet Harbor Redevelopment Plan is a well-prepared plan. However, the City lacks
the ability to implement the initiatives due to insufficient funding. Specifically, the City has not
provided the necessary funding to the CRA to allow it to provide incentives to obtain
commitments from developers to build in the CRA redevelopment area.

The CRA has found that
developers are not willing to utilize their money for projects without a match from the City.
The CRA is now depending on gaining additional tax increments from two new projects.
Those projects, the Marina Grande Condominiums at Inlet Harbor and the Singer Island
Condominiums Limited, are currently being built. The CRA will be able to utilize the Tax
Increments from these projects to obtain bonds that will allow it to begin implementation of
additional initiatives included in the Inlet Harbor plan. This strategy further delays the
implementation of the plan.

As a result of the CRA’s Inlet Harbor Plan and the relocation of U.S. 1, residents and
businesses will become displaced as the plan moves forward. The CRA has developed a
relocation plan that meets the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development standards
for relocation. Residents and businesses will have two options for relocation. Option 1 will
allow the CRA to purchase the property of residents and businesses desiring to relocate outside
or inside the City. Option 2 will allow residents or businesses to relocate within the CRA area.

Will affordable housing exist in the CRA? Conceptually, the CRA plans to provide
affordable housing in the redevelopment area. Some of the properties included in the Inlet
Harbor Plan will provide opportunities for affordable housing. It has not been determined how
much affordable housing will be available or whether it will be enough to accommodate the
31
need. Will residents be able to qualify for and afford to purchase the newer properties? The
CRA says “yes”.

Finally, the City of Riviera Beach should carefully re-evaluate its community and
economic development strategy while continuing to implement current initiatives. The City
should commit funding to this effort and also seek additional funding. The City should continue
to collaborate with non-profit organizations and the County to leverage resources to continue to
improve the quality of life for all residents.

This Report was written long before The Kelo Decision by the Supreme Court.

Another article from the Palm Beach Post.

Some more from Mayor Brown on the 2000 Election:

Riviera Beach Mayor Michael Brown expressed amazement "that we have a candidate for the highest office in the land who would say with a straight face that we shouldn’t count every vote."

Oh, I forgot to mention that post is from the PWW .

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