New Market Potential Target of Eminent Domain
• WATE 6For the first time, New Market property owners are talking about offers from a company that wants to buy their land for a proposed rail facility...The company has the option to acquire the land through eminent domain if property owners refuse to sell.
Here you, this says it all (and actually, what is a surprise is that more and more corporations haven't started a land grab based on this precedent):
"Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005)[ was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States involving the use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another to further economic development. The case arose from the condemnation by New London, Connecticut, of privately owned real property so that it could be used as part of a comprehensive redevelopment plan. The Court held in a 5–4 decision that the general benefits a community enjoyed from economic growth qualified such redevelopment plans as a permissible "public use" under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment."
Translation: the Court decided that it was okie dokie for a town to take away land from homeowners to give it to a developer so they could build a shopping center.
Nice, eh?
and after New London confiscated the property and gave it to Kelo, the property was cleared but not developed.
Whoops!! They took it fom Kelo.