Free Republic

Dear designers, copywriters, developers, business analysts and friends ... for those of you involved in one of these processes you will surely relate to this video (sent to me by a friend at an ad agency) ... let me know what you think.

Arts-Tortion Public art fund law legally suspect Clint Bolick Goldwater Institute Daily Email February 21, 2008 Avondale is the latest municipality to consider acquiring art by plunder rather than purchase. A proposed ordinance, modeled after laws in other Arizona cities, would require developers to pay one percent of the project construction costs, up to $100,000, into a “public art fund.” Alternatively, the developer can contribute art of commensurate value. Art is great. That’s why millions of Americans contribute voluntarily to art museums. But politicians have a better idea: rather than spreading the cost among all and being held politically accountable,...

When it came time to decide what to do with his family's Christmas tree farm in Monroe Township, Thomas Allen didn't have a lot of options. His grown children had no interest in the business, and Allen couldn't work the land while holding down his full-time job supervising town recreation. The farm in Middlesex County, where Christmas trees have been sold for 40 years, didn't generate enough profit to provide his sole income. So Allen did what so many farmers in New Jersey before him have done. He sold his land to developers. As farmers like Allen leave the cut-your-own...

When the Texas Department of Transportation begins work on the I-69/Trans Texas Corridor, the U.S. 77 leg from Victoria to Brownsville will be developed first. Cameron County Commissioners revealed the information during Tuesday’s Cameron County Commissioners Court meeting. County officials received the news from the state’s Turnpike Authority Division on Monday. In a letter to Cameron County, Turnpike Authority Division Director Phillip E. Russell said, TXDOT has identified U.S. 77 as “high priority” and the “first near term facility to be developed under the I-69/TTC Comprehensive Development Agreement.” The U.S. 77 Highway runs from Victoria to Brownsville. Precinct 3 Commissioner...

The political scandal that has engulfed Central Florida's toll-road agency, most powerful attorneys, biggest developers, best-known political activist, the Orlando Magic and a host of others started in an unlikely way: with a trespassing dog. When David Strong of Winter Park discovered that a neighbor's dog had done his business on Strong's lawn one too many times, he scooped up the evidence and, in a fit of anger, smeared it on the dog-owner's shirt and neck. Strong was charged with misdemeanor battery, took an anger-management class and performed community service, then forgot all about it. At least until he entered...

FRESNO Three environmental groups filed a motion Tuesday to join the legal defense of an air quality rule that would charge developers fees to help cut air pollution in one of the worst air basins in the country. The Fresno-based Medical Advocates for Healthy Air, Environmental Defense and the Sierra Club want to help defend the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, which last year approved rules allowing local air authorities to assess fees on new construction. Builder and local commerce associations sued the district in June over the rule, claiming it is an illegal tax because it does...

RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. — The builders of a multibillion-dollar redevelopment project are considering legal action against the state and city after being told eminent domain powers will not be used to seize property to make way for the plan. Viking Inlet Harbor Properties, a joint venture between Viking Yacht Co. and resort-development firm Portfolio Group, has already spent more than $50 million acquiring property in the redevelopment zone, said Mike Clark, president of Viking Associates, the real estate arm of the company. "Now I'm stuck with these properties but can't develop them because I can't fill in the puzzle pieces,"...

Where Wichita's housing director Mary Kay Vaughn sees a chance to rebuild faltering neighborhoods, some property rights advocates see an opening for big government to snatch away people's homes. Early discussions about creating a redevelopment authority in Wichita have sparked polarized opinions. The Wichita City Council is considering setting up a five-member redevelopment authority that could acquire rundown properties and turn them over to developers who want to renovate them or build new houses, apartments or businesses in their place. The authority would get the properties by buying them from willing sellers, buying tax-foreclosed properties, or forcing unwilling property owners...

If California voters reject the $10.4 billion education bond on the November ballot, the state's builders and developers will be on the hook for the full cost of every new school built in the state, starting at the end of 2007. The specter of having to cough up thousands of additional dollars in fees per home has California's builders and developers dumping millions of dollars into the education bond campaign. Two separate committees, funded largely by builders, developers, architects and engineers, already have contributed more than $1 million to help pass Proposition 1D, the school-bond measure. The powerful California Building...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could find a lot of reasons why the Legislature turned away his public works plan, but Paul Folino wasn't one of them. Folino's participation wasn't happenstance. His informal lobbying is just one example of the close and beneficial relationship Schwarzenegger shares with Folino and the rapidly expanding political action committee he helped establish, the New Majority. Members of the centrist group have donated or raised more than $10 million for the Republican governor's political ventures. And the New Majority is pushing to expand its influence. The group, which has about 250 members and funnels roughly $7.5 million...

With every developer West of the Mississippi drooling over the chance to develop some 1/4 acre of the Concord Naval Weapons Station, it seems every politician and city planner worth their salt is now talking about “affordable housing.” But what is “affordable housing” in California?Since normal people know that “affordable housing” doesn’t really exist in the regions of California where normal people really want to live, what is it that big-government, pro-redevelopment politcos really mean when they yap on and on about “affordable housing” this campaign season?Two words: Subsidized Housing.When you look at it, most everything about housing in California...

Real Angry Over Real Estate Why a recent Supreme Court ruling has lots of homeowners hot under the collar By Silla Brush 10/10/05 Stan Dunn and his wife, Barbara, had just sold their home in California and were about to retire to the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga this spring when they heard the rumblings: A developer might tear down their new home--and more than 300 other nearby houses--in order to build a new complex of apartments, townhouses, and businesses to eliminate blight and boost the economy. And while town officials are excited at the prospect, the Dunns say they have...

MIDI - THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND This land was your land...but you must be leaving And as we stole it...we saw you grieving Here's the bulldozer...it will be rubble This land is not yours anymore We want new buildings and bigger tax base So stop your whining...wipe the tears from your face Here's a little money...you have one more hour This land is not yours anymore With condemnation, we'll take what we're needing And we'll be deaf too all of your pleading Your memories you'll be taking with you This land is not yours anymore We make the...

The sales pitch for a planned subdivision promises safety: criminal background checks for homeowners and, guaranteed, no convicted sex offenders. It's a concept that might prove right for the times, said first-time developer Clayton Isom, one of three partners in a company that's creating Milwaukee Ridge on the outskirts of Lubbock. The high-profile deaths of two Florida girls allegedly killed by registered sex offenders inspired the idea, Isom said. "It makes me sick at my stomach every time I hear one of these stories about these innocent girls," said Isom, a graduate student in business administration at Texas Tech. He...

Jersey City's downtown waterfront market is one of the strongest real estate areas in this country. Developers pay millions to buy small parcels of land. Colgate sold an acre for $10 million. Before Bret Schundler ran for office, he spoke against tax abatements at council meetings. When he ran for office, his campaign literature (Special Election 1992) candidate Schundler said, "... reducing sales and property taxes for all will promote far more jobs than tax abatements for the powerful few." Previously, Mayor Cucci gave abatements linked to affordable housing. Avalon Cove, an abatement that Mayor Cucci turned down because it...

SAN QUENTIN – Maligning San Quentin State Prison as "an expensive mistake," two state politicians this week urged officials to shutter the aging facility to save cash-strapped California millions of dollars. They also urged the state to back away from a plan to spend $220 million to improve the prison's death row facility. The California Department of Corrections is scheduled to break ground on a new death row this fall on 40 acres west of the existing prison on the San Francisco Bay in scenic Marin County. The legislators support a bill set to go before the Assembly Appropriations Committee...

SACRAMENTO — In his State of the State address in January, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signaled that he would revise California's signature environmental protection law, which builders have long complained is cumbersome and restrictive. In the run-up to that speech and in the months since, developers and other businesses that have chafed under the California Environmental Quality Act's regulations have donated millions of dollars to support the governor's political agenda. In the last two weeks alone, committees supporting Schwarzenegger's political causes took in a total of $225,000 from three business groups that want to see CEQA changed . . . All...

Two months after Sacramento County enacted one of the nation's most aggressive affordable housing policies, the Building Industry Association of Superior California filed Monday to scrap the plan, calling it an unfair and unnecessary tax on developers that would drive up housing prices. During the two years county officials spent drafting a plan to provide housing for the poor, building industry officials resisted the plan and tried to loosen its stringent requirements. Affordability plan for low-income residents is called unfair tax that hurts others. The building industry's suit filed in Sacramento Superior Court reiterates those same arguments. "Is it fair...

Texas' highway capacity hardly is keeping up with the state's population and vehicle registration growth. The Texas Department of Transportation can't do much about that, since its budget increasingly must be devoted to maintaining current highways. The main plan to address long-term highway capacity is the Trans Texas Corridor. At 4,000 miles long and 1,200 feet wide, with a 50- to 100-year timetable and a $184 billion price tag, it is the biggest and most ambitious highway project since the U.S. interstate highway system was built almost half a century ago. It also is difficult to visualize, with so many...

IS YOUR HOME REALLY YOUR CASTLE? In Connecticut, the government wants to take away some guy’s house. Actually, it’s 15 houses and 15 families. In New London. There’s a tract of more than 100 houses, a neighborhood more than a hundred years old. Well kept, kind of middle-class. One lady lives in the same house where she was born, in 1918. Her son lives next door. But a developer wants to bulldoze them all. He wants to put in a big hotel and a conference center, some offices and about 80 luxury homes. Most of the people have sold out....