Posted on 06/24/2005 8:16:19 PM PDT by InvisibleChurch
Freeport moves to seize 3 properties Court's decision empowers the city to acquire the site for a new marina By THAYER EVANS Chronicle Correspondent
FREEPORT - With Thursday's Supreme Court decision, Freeport officials instructed attorneys to begin preparing legal documents to seize three pieces of waterfront property along the Old Brazos River from two seafood companies for construction of an $8 million private boat marina.
The court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that cities may bulldoze people's homes or businesses to make way for shopping malls or other private development. The decision gives local governments broad power to seize private property to generate tax revenue.
"This is the last little piece of the puzzle to put the project together," Freeport Mayor Jim Phillips said of the project designed to inject new life in the Brazoria County city's depressed downtown area.
Over the years, Freeport's lack of commercial and retail businesses has meant many of its 13,500 residents travel to neighboring Lake Jackson, which started as a planned community in 1943, to spend money. But the city is hopeful the marina will spawn new economic growth.
"This will be the engine that will drive redevelopment in the city," City Manager Ron Bottoms said.
Lee Cameron, director of the city's Economic Development Corp., said the marina is expected to attract $60 million worth of hotels, restaurants and retail establishments to the city's downtown area and create 150 to 250 jobs. He said three hotels, two of which have "high interest," have contacted the city about building near the marina.
"It's all dependent on the marina," Cameron said. "Without the marina, (the hotels) aren't interested. With the marina, (the hotels) think it's a home run."
Since September 2003, the city has been locked in a legal battle to acquire a 300-by-60-foot tract of land along the Old Brazos River near the Pine Street bridge as well as a 200-foot tract and 100-foot tract along the river through eminent domain from Western Seafood Co. and Trico Seafood Co.
Eminent domain is the right of a government to take private property for public use upon payment of the fair market value.
The tracts of land would be used for a planned 800- to 900-slip marina to be built by Freeport Marina, a group that that includes Dallas developer Hiram Walker Royall. He would buy the property from the city and receive a $6 million loan from the city to develop the project.
Freeport Marina would then invest $1 million in the project and contribute a 1,100-foot tract of land, valued at $750,000, to it before receiving the loan.
Western Seafood spokesman Wright Gore III said the wholesale shrimp company was disappointed with the Supreme Court decision, but believes the ruling does not apply to the city's eminent domain proceedings.
He said there is a provision in state law that allows residents of a city to a circulate a petition to call a vote on whether the city can take property using eminent domain.
"(This) is far, far from over," Gore said. "(We) would have liked to have seen a victory on the federal level, but it is by no means a settled issue."
Gore said Western Seafood's 30,000-square-foot processing facility, which sits on the 300-by-60-foot tract, would be forced to close if the land were seized.
That facility earns about $40 million annually, and Western Seafood has been in business in Freeport since 1946, he said.
City officials, however, have said the marina will still allow Western Seafood and Trico Seafood, which did not return telephone calls or e-mail Thursday, to operate their facilities.
In August, U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent ruled against a lawsuit filed by Western Seafood seeking to stop the city's eminent domain proceedings. The seafood company then appealed its case to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, a request that initially was denied.
The appeals court then decided it would take the case, but not rule on it until after the Supreme Court made a ruling on the New London, Conn., case.
If this were my property the project would suffer a number of not-so-mysterious fires and equipment sabotage.
It's more than slightly ironic, and really strange, that the same court that virtually eliminated the concept of federalism/states' rights with their decisions in the 2000 election and the medical marijuana cases (as well as a couple of others), now finds that states and local governments are better at determining the definition of a public pupose than the common sense of everyone else.
HA! That's rich. Link bookmarked for plenty of future reference, the way things are going! Thanks, Blackbird.
That is REALLY depressing.
Cultural Jihad: Sure, if anyone is interested in Nazi-like intimidation tactics.
Dirty tricks preceded Nazi Germany by hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.
"The public good is always being served when jobs and industry are created."
Put on your thinking cap and see if you can discern the difference between "public use" (our Constitution) and "public good" (the Hillary Klinton Manifesto). It isn't difficult but you must make an effort.
I think it's past time worrying about the
next S. Ct. nominations; that won't help
soon enough.
Haven't you heard? Hildabeast gets to pick the next 3 or 4 SCOTUS justices.
President Bush will be unable to confirm any of his nominations past the U.S. Senate. So he will have recess appointments.
Then the Hildabeast gets elected and the Tyranny of Judiciary emerges into a new level that we cannot possibly imagine at this point.
And yes, Big Brother is watching us.
I'll be sure to break out the Crayolas.
A marina is about as elite as you can get!
CJ, it's more like What goes around comes around. Another one, Fight fire with fire! Another one, Screw me, Screw you! See the big picture yet? Blackbird.
BTW CJ, where do you live? I know a couple of Property Developer's that might want what you have, you know, for the Public Good and all! Don't be coy, I just want to give back what you seem so interested in foisting on the rest of US. Blackbird.
"any hints?"
If and when this situation arises in your town, stand in solidarity with the folks who are getting thrown out. Make them haul not just Granny in her rocking chair out of the house, but 1000 other folks too. Do that each and every time, everywhere in the country.
But let's be clear. You yourself would never run out to an elected official's home and smear it with fish entrails. That job of bravely acting upon your own deeply-held convictions invariably belongs to someone else. The Salon Bolsheviki are more than happy to advocate that others act with threats of violence and intimidation.
bttt
how odd that someone with a handle of Cultural Jihad doesn't understand "civil disobedience".
But let's be clear. You yourself would never run out to an elected official's home and smear it with fish entrails. That job of bravely acting upon your own deeply-held convictions invariably belongs to someone else. The Salon Bolsheviki are more than happy to advocate that others act with threats of violence and intimidation.
No bub, I don't send anyone out to do my dirty work, rather presumptious of you. I just want to see you'll put your mouth where your property is. You're happy to have it befall on others, just not yourself. What City Council do you sit on? Long live the State. See I've been converted! Blackbird.
Greetings, all! Have you noticed how few to NO community, or more importantly, national leaders, Republican/Democrat, liberal/conservative have come to the defense or condemnation of the Supreme Court's erosion of our 5th Amendment rights last week?
Thomas Jefferson had THIS to say --
"To consider the judges (the legal industry) as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges (the legal industry) are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves."
Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277
Then --
"In denying the right [the Supreme Court usurps] of exclusively explaining the Constitution, I go further than [others] do, if I understand rightly [this] quotation from the Federalist of an opinion that 'the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the government, but not in relation to the rights of the parties to the compact under which the judiciary is derived.' If this opinion be sound, then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de se [act of suicide]. For intending to establish three departments, coordinate and independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has given, according to this opinion, to one of them alone the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one, too, which is unelected by and independent of the nation. For experience has already shown that the impeachment it has provided is not even a scare-crow . . . The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please."
Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819. ME 15:212
Catch that last line again: "The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please."
As I've been saying for so long, "It's the legal industry, stupid." They've been playing us against each other while they've quietly been taking control.
Regrettably, it appears that except for local and national "conservative" talk-show hosts, the nation has been lulled back to sleep.
Nevertheless, we've still got our flag upside down for the fourth. Take care, all!
HDRabon
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