Being informed is always a plus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Coking
Vera Coking
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Coking house at 127 S Columbia Pl, between the steel framework of the planned Penthouse Casino; photographed by Jack Boucher for Historic American Buildings Survey, c.1991
Vera Coking was a retired homeowner in Atlantic City, New Jersey whose home was the focus of a prominent eminent domain case involving Donald Trump.
In 1961, Coking and her husband bought the property at 127 South Columbia Place as a summertime retreat for $20,000.[1]
In the 1970s, Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione offered Coking $1 million for her property in order to build the Penthouse Boardwalk Hotel and Casino. She declined the offer, and Guccione started construction of the hotel-casino in 1978 around the Coking house, but ran out of money in 1980 and construction stopped. The steel framework structure was finally torn down in 1993.[2]
In 1993, Donald Trump bought several lots around his Atlantic City casino and hotel, intending to build a parking lot designed for limousines.[3] Coking, who had lived in her house at that time for about 35 years, refused to sell. When Coking refused to sell to Trump, the city of Atlantic City condemned her house, using the power of eminent domain. Her designated compensation was to be $251,000,[4] about one quarter of what Guccione had offered her 10 years earlier.
With the assistance of the Institute for Justice, Coking fought the local authorities, and eventually prevailed.[5] Superior Court Judge Richard Williams ruled that, because there were “no limits” on what Trump could do with the property, the plan to take Coking’s property did not meet the test of law. But Williams’ ruling did not reject the practice of using eminent domain to take private property from one individual and transferring it to another, which would eventually be upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in Kelo v. City of New London.
Two other properties that prevailed against eminent domain eventually did sell: Sabatini’s restaurant received $2.1 million and a pawnshop sold for $1.6 million. Their lots became part of a large lawn flanking a taxi stand for Trump’s casino.[1][6] Coking remained in her house until 2010, when she moved to a retirement home in the San Francisco Bay Area near her daughter, Claudia Casey Coking and her grandchildren, Ed Casey, Raymond Casey and Claudia Casey- Fernandez
Casey subsequently tried to sell the house, putting it on the market in 2011 with an initial asking price of $5 million.[1][7] By September 2013 the price had reduced to $1 million,[8] but it still did not sell as Atlantic City continued to suffer the lingering effects of the financial crisis of 2007–08 and over-building during the boom that preceded it.[citation needed]
The property was finally sold for $583,000 in an auction on July 31, 2014.[9] Neither the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority nor the owners of Trump Plaza expressed any interest in the auction.[1] The buyer was Carl Icahn, who held the debt on Trump Entertainment, owner of Trump Plaza. He subsequently demolished the house on Wednesday, November 19, 2014.[10]
The adjacent Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, the property for which Trump wanted Coking’s property to begin with, closed on September 16, 2014 due to lack of business.[citation needed]
Exactly! Trump was using eminent domain to kick her out of her house! She had to hire lawyers and spend time fighting to keep her house. That is un-American. Especially for a casino parking lot.
Stop posting that reality. It is not fair!
Amazing how many times you post what really happened, the mentally deficient keep posting their lies/bs.