• San Pablo leaders voted in 2005 to use eminent domain to take possession of a mobile home park after negotiations with the owner stalled. The city and the owner eventually agreed to a purchase deal without going to court. The city was assembling property for 200 units of market-rate modular housing.
• Hercules leaders voted this spring to use eminent domain to acquire property owned by Wal-Mart in order to stop the retailer's plans to build a store there.
• After negotiations fell through in August, Livermore school district officials voted to use eminent domain to acquire a funeral home on land on which they wanted to build 10 new science classrooms.
• Concord used eminent domain to assemble land for the upscale, 259-unit Legacy Apartments downtown, which opened in 2003.
• Alameda used eminent domain earlier this year to seize a downtown theater and turn it over to a developer with plans for a cineplex.
• M&L Hardware went out of business after Oakley used eminent domain to seize adjacent property for a highway widening project. The owner says the construction and lack of access contributed heavily to his company's demise.
• Pleasant Hill used eminent domain in the early 1990s to clear the way for the city's 27-acre downtown complex, which includes a movie theater, shops, homes, offices and restaurants. The city eventually took two property owners to court and negotiated settlements with 28 others under the threat of eminent domain.
• Contra Costa County used eminent domain in the mid-1990s after officials were unable to purchase three of 25 parcels needed for the North Richmond Town Center, a mixed use neighborhood with a health center, housing and retail. Several of the properties were entangled in fights among heirs.
• Contra Costa County used eminent domain in the 1980s to obtain the final 10 parcels needed for a mixed-use development around the Pleasant Hill BART station. It includes affordable housing, offices and the picturesque Iron Horse Lofts.
-- Times research by Lisa Vorderbrueggen
Communities have no rights. Either you are talking about the individuals of the community, in which case those individuals have the same rights as any other ones; or you are talking about governments which have powers, but not rights.
Did anyone watch CSI:Miami last night? The murders involved an eminent domain case. This topic is getting out into the general public.
Environmentalists are horrified that these laws might pass. They impose their will on other folks and take all of the credit for good things, but the dirty little secret is that individuals carry the burden. They do not wnat anyone to know how much it costs to save the "giggy whiggy", especially if it is found that it also causes a lot of problems.
I hope everyone of them get passed.
"Prop. 90 would bar governments from taking private land, through a legal process called eminent domain, for the purposes of turning it over to a private developer."
Works for me!
Eminent domain was NEVER intended by the founding fathers to be used (more to the point, MISUSED)to enrich a private developer.
A home -- however humble -- is one's castle.
I would keep an eye on those that are against eminent domain reform.
Oh! And this ain't no editorial. She wrote this as a news story!