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I have actually been involved first-hand with an iminent domain situation. Several years ago I used to live right next to a local high school in Orlando. They were expanding because of overcrowding, and iminent domain was used to allow the expansion. They gave a pretty good penny price for the houses when the first offerings were made. Some people wanted to hold out, thinking they could demand a higher price if they were the last ones. Little did they know that as time progressed, the offers went DOWN and some people wound up with very little money for their property.
Although I do agree that taking property away for PRIVATE developers is a bad thing, sometimes good things come of the use of this law. Living now in Daytona Beach, we have the old Boardwalk that is being forced out by a private developer who is taking use of the iminent domain laws, using blight as a descriptor for their reason. Anyone in the area here knows how run down it has been getting in that area. The developer I have heard is planning on making mid level condos at the location. Not exactly what I would like to see, but at least it is better than the homeless wandering around the beach area harrassing the tourists and local businesses.
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"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison
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