An Eminent Domain High Tide

Subject: Times: Phooey on Eminent Domain (but not NY Times)
Date: 29-Nov-05 7:13:08 Eastern Standard Time
From: tenant@tenant.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)


An Eminent Domain High Tide
Riviera Beach, Fla., wants to displace about 6,000 of its residents and
raze their homes to build a yachting and residential complex.

By John-Thor Dahlburg
LA Times Staff Writer
November 29, 2005

RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. ­ It's across the inlet from Palm Beach, but this town
­ mostly black, blue-collar and with a large industrial and warehouse
district ­ could be a continent away from the Fortune 500 and Rolls-Royce set.

But Riviera Beach's fortunes may soon change.

In what has been called the largest eminent-domain case in the nation, the
mayor and other elected leaders want to move about 6,000 residents, tear
down their homes and use the emptied 400-acre site to build a waterfront
yachting and residential complex for the well-to-do.

The goal, Mayor Michael D. Brown said during a public meeting in September,
is to "forever change the landscape" in this municipality of about 32,500.
The $1-billion plan, local leaders have said, should generate jobs and haul
Riviera Beach's economy out of the doldrums.

Opponents, however, call the plan a government-sanctioned land grab that
benefits private developers and the wealthy.

"What they mean is that the view I have is too good for me, and should go
to some millionaire," said Martha Babson, 60, a house painter who lives
near the Intracoastal Waterway.

"This is a reverse Robin Hood," said state Rep. Ronald L. Greenstein,
meaning the poor in Riviera Beach would be robbed to benefit the rich.
Greenstein, a Coconut Creek Democrat, serves on a state legislative
committee making recommendations on how to strengthen safeguards on private
property.

With many Americans sensitized to eminent-domain cases after a
much-discussed ruling by the Supreme Court in June, property-rights
organizations have been pointing to redevelopment plans in this Palm Beach
County town as proof that laws must be changed to protect homeowners and
businesses from the schemes of politicians.

"You have people going in, essentially playing God, and saying something
better than these people's homes should be built on this property," said
Carol Saviak, executive director of the Coalition for Property Rights,
based in Orlando. "That's inherently wrong."

"Unfortunately, taking poorer folks' homes and turning them into higher-end
development projects is all too routine in Florida and throughout the
country," said Scott G. Bullock, a senior attorney for the Institute for
Justice, based in Washington. "What distinguishes Riviera Beach is the
sheer scope of the project, and the number of people it displaces."

In June, a divided U.S. Supreme Court approved the plan of New London,
Conn., to force some homeowners to sell their properties for a private
development that was supposed to generate more jobs and tax revenue. That
ruling has led to moves in Congress and at least 35 states, including
Florida, to restrict the use of eminent-domain seizures of private property.

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.

Mayor Brown and Floyd T. Johnson, executive director of the Riviera Beach
Community Redevelopment Agency, did not respond to repeated requests from
The Times for an interview.

The redevelopment agency's website says the plan will "create a city
respected for its community pride and purpose and reshape it into a most
desirable urban [place] to live, work, shop, and relax for its residents,
business and visitors."

In past media interviews, Brown has said his city was in dire need of jobs,
and that if officials weren't allowed to resort to eminent domain to spur
growth, Riviera Beach could perish. '

Dee Cunningham, who made an unsuccessful bid for mayor in 2003, said the
blueprint was written to benefit developers. Her own flower shop has been
classified as "functionally obsolete" under the plan and could be razed.

"People here are so stressed out from being under threat of eminent
domain," said Cunningham. "It's like living in Iraq with a bomb threat."

The median household income in Riviera Beach in 2000 was $32,111 compared
with $94,562 in nearby Palm Beach, the U.S. Census said.

The redevelopment project designed to bootstrap Riviera Beach to prosperity
is supposed to take 15 years. It involves moving U.S. Highway 1 and digging
an artificial lagoon to serve as a yacht basin.

In September, the City Council chose a joint venture between a New
Jersey-based yacht company and a builder of condominiums in Australia to
serve as master developer. The developer, Viking Inlet Harbor Properties,
and the city now must agree on a contract.

Residents affected by the plan are supposed to be eligible for new homes
elsewhere in Riviera Beach and compensation for business damages. But the
uncertainties have been maddening for some.

For 25 years, Bill Mars has sold and serviced luxury sportfishing boats in
Riviera Beach. He hasn't been told yet, he said, whether a place in the
redevelopment zone has been kept for him.

Under the plan, his sales and service center is supposed to make way for an
aquarium.

"If you look at our business, we're one of the shining stars of Riviera
Beach," Mars said. "Yet no one has come to us to say, 'We're going to take
care of you and relocate you.' " That despite the plan's incorporation of a
"working waterfront," including boat sales and repair.

The owners of another business in Riviera Beach's downtown accuse local
leaders of not enforcing city codes in order to produce the decay that
redevelopment is supposed to remedy.

"They want to leave everything in a dilapidated condition so it seems to
everybody and to the government like it's blighted," said Mike Mahoney, a
Riviera Beach native who runs Dee's T-Shirts.

Some foes of the redevelopment plan have attended seminars in Washington
organized by property-rights advocates to learn how to better fight to save
their homes.

Some residents have accepted offers from developers and moved out; others
have retained lawyers to try to get a better price from the city. Still
others are waiting to see what happens, noting the troubled history of
local redevelopment efforts. "This is the fourth eminent domain CRA plan
I've seen since I've been here," said Mars. "I survived those, and I may
survive this one too."

Babson said she was counting on the Florida Legislature, as well as public
interest kindled by the recent Supreme Court case, to halt the developers.

"We're definitely in Tiananmen Square: one little guy in front of all of
those tanks," Babson said. "We've slowed them down, but we haven't stopped
them."