Eminent Domain Policies May Decide Mayor’s Race

Bill Freeman just lost another point with me today with a Facebook post in which he says he would use eminent domain to take PSC Metals property for redevelopment.

Eminent domain is the government taking of ones property for a public use. Traditionally “public use” meant taking a property to build a road or a school or some such use. Starting in the 50’s with urban development government began taking property to clear blight. Now “public use” means we don’t like what you are doing with your property and we will take it away form you and give it to someone else who will do something better with it.

One of the most egregious examples of abuse of eminent domain in Nashville is the city taking hundreds of acres west of Vanderbilt University sometime in the 60’s and giving it to Vanderbilt. Hundreds of people were forced out of their homes and much of the land still sits vacant or used for surface parking. A heroine of the decade-long fight against that condemnation was Fannie Mae Dees who the city named a park after. Many people call that park “the dragon park,” but the name of the park is “Fannie Mae Dees.”

Another high profile fight over condemnation, in which the city lost, was downtown on Church St. It was sometime in the 80’s and I was serving in the council at the time.

The city wanted to take the property across from the downtown Presbyterian Church for Third National Bank to build a large bank office building. One of the owner’s of a piece of property did not want to sell. This lingered for months in the council and the council was almost evenly split as I recall. The developer redrew their plans as to be able to build their building without taking that particular piece of property and also they offered a much higher price than was originally offered for the property and the owner voluntarily sold. I think that is one of the nicest large building downtown and it was one of the first tall buildings build downtown. The architecture pics up some Egyptian design elements inspired by the historic church across the street and the gabled top of the building reflects the Ryman auditorium design. I would prefer however that the building never be build than to abuse eminent domain to build it.

Another high profile local eminent domain case occurred across from (continue reading)

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