'No one's business is safe': U.S. city using dark scheme to steal property
(Photo by Joe Kovacs)
Business owners in one Missouri location are fighting their local government to prevent the politicians and bureaucrats from taking their properties.
The Institute for Justice explains officials in Brentwood, a St. Louis suburb, decided they wanted a new row of new mixed-use development projects along a prominent street, Manchester Road.
Their problem? There already were business there, longstanding businesses whose owners built their American Dream in the neighborhood.
So the city decided to use eminent domain to get rid of them.
Officials decided everything along that street was "blighted" even though the businesses "are well-maintained and thriving and none of them have received warnings about the condition of their property."
"Instead of supporting its local businesses, Brentwood is using a bogus blight designation to raise the tax rolls," said IJ Attorney Bob Belden. "But no business should lose its location because a local government wants to replace it with another, more favored, business."
The IJ pointed out, "Simply calling businesses blighted does not make them blighted," and they've decided to sue Brentwood over its "bogus" designation.
Bringing the fight to the city are Feather-Craft Fly Fishing, a retail and online operation passed down from father to son; Time for Dinner, a meal prep business owned by two sisters; and Convergence Dance and Body Center, offering dance classes and chiropractic care and owned by a husband and wife.
"Each of us have invested years of hard work and significant amounts of money in our Brentwood businesses." said Bob Story, owner of Feather-Craft. "We should not lose everything we built simply because the city thinks it can replace us with businesses it thinks will bring in more tax revenue. If we can lose our businesses, no one’s business is safe."
Part of the problem is a Supreme Court ruling from 2005, Kelo v. New London, that claims taking property through eminent domain solely to help a different private business is not unconstitutional, yet Missouri's law allows such confiscations only for public uses like roads.
"Since Missouri law does not allow cities to take property for private development, Brentwood also pinned the blight designations on the potential for a 500-year flood. But the city just completed a $120 million project to upgrade the streets and mitigate flooding in the Manchester Corridor," the IJ explained.
"Missourians clearly do not want the government to be able to take property just for private economic development, but that’s exactly what Brentwood wants to do," said IJ attorney Bobbi Taylor.
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