Real Estate & Property Law

Condemnation Driving Urban Renewal

By Alan Ackerman

Maryland Daily Record

For many people, the words “condemned building” bring to mind a creaky, dilapidated house with boarded-up windows and caution signs posted: somewhere you don’t dare go without a hard hat.

But in Baltimore, the use of condemnation powers — otherwise known as eminent domain — has become synonymous with urban renewal. The government’s right to condemn and seize private property, sometimes perfectly intact and well-maintained, and convey it to another private owner is the engine driving many of the city’s most important development efforts.

Despite several recent court cases and laws that check the powers of municipalities to take property, condemnations are accelerating in the city: More than $22 million in eminent domain seizures have been authorized this year, up nearly 250 percent from 2007, and nearly 12 times the inflation-adjusted dollar amount of seizures authorized in 2003, The Daily Record has found. These statistics were determined as part of an examination of nearly 1,000 pages of public records covering the last five years.

To put that number in context, $22 million is about seven times what the city expects to spend in fiscal 2009 to fight homelessness, and about 10 percent of what the city will spend on schools...

Here is an article worth reading. There are times the process of taking for transfers might work for the community. However, the risk\reward analysis is a difficult balancing act even in the best of situations.

Full post as published by National Eminent Domain Blog on December 13, 2008 (boomark / email).