Michigan Supreme Court to revisit 1981 Poletown decision (eminent domain landgrabs)

Detroit News and AP ^ | 4-3-04 | David Runk

[Dan from Michigan]

DETROIT -- In a case that could redefine the power of Michigan governments to take property for development projects, the state Supreme Court is revisiting its landmark 1981 decision that allowed the clearing of the city

[Dan from Michigan]

This is huge.

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[SamKeck]

Where's Poletown, Dan? Izzat some kind of suburb of Hamtramck?

[Dan from Michigan]

I believe it was a neighborhood on Detroit's East Side.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[Kieri]

Back in the mid-1980's I worked briefly as a contract employee at the Poletown plant. I'd heard of the legal and political squabbles involved in its construction, but when I actually arrived my first day there I was surprised to find it crammed into an older neighborhood. There weren't burned-out houses on the street like Detroit, and I felt bad for the residents who had to suffer with such an invasive neighbor.

[rogue yam]

I was living in SE Michigan at the time. As I recall, GM wanted to build a new Cadillac assembly plant. They didn't want to shut down and rebuild their existing one because they didn't want the down time. They somehow obtained the right to level a big chunk of a neighborhood in Hamtramk (a separate incorporated town geographically located within the city of Detroit) called Poletown. It was a bunch of brick homes, apartments, churches, etc. long inhabited by predominantly Polish, Catholic, working-class Americans. A community was destroyed. If I am not mistaken the Cadillac plant was soon after closed down and replaced by assembly plants in Mexico.

[jennyp]

Yep, GM & Detroit mayor Coleman Young were seduced by this vision of a "public-private partnership", where the government could hand over what was once a neighborhood to a private company. Surely shining new neighborhoods would grow in the shadow of the new plant.

I don't know if the Poletown plant was shut down soon after being built, but AFAIK it never did live up to expectations, nor did it turn out to be much of a net positive for Detroit.

(It sure didn't keep me from leaving. :-)

[apackof2]

Thanks Dan, will be watching this one

[Clemenza]

Particularly important as Mayor Blunderberg is about to force over 1,000 people from their homes to build a Basketball Arena and office towers in Brooklyn. If the case is revisited and the decision comes out in favor of the community referenced, it will set legal precedent.

[A Jovial Cad]

You're right, and I hope the Michigan Supreme Court comes down on the side of property owners and the Fifth amendment.
Here in my home state a man who has owned a restaurant for twenty or more years has been told by the city his business is located in that they're going to demolish his building and send his business packing to make way....for a new strip mall. Not a road, not a bridge, not a new city park, but a *strip mall*. You see, the man's restaurant is located close to a huge military base, and he naturally gets tons of business based upon this (and the fact that the food is great, of course, but the proximity helps). So what the city wants to do is use their "eminent domain" power to take such prime private real estate out of the hands of one business owner in order to put it into the hands of another. It's absolutely outrageous.
I hope the property owners prevail in this case.