| Shelby court may hear land case
August 25, 2003 By Malcomb Daniels Birmingham News staff writer mdaniels@bhamnews.com or 205-325-2435 Fax: 205-325-3345 Birmingham, Alabama To submit a Letter to the Editor: epage@bhamnews.com The question of whether the City of Alabaster may use eminent domain to acquire residential land where developers want to build a shopping center is likely to land in Shelby County Probate Court this week. The city is moving toward trying to condemn about 10 acres within a 400-acre site near Interstate 65 and U.S. 31, where Colonial Properties Trust wants to build a shopping center containing a Wal-Mart Supercenter and several other large stores. Land brokers have acquired the remainder of the site. The standoff between the city and nine families who have refused to sell their land has begun to draw national attention. In recent days, syndicated radio host Neal Boortz has blasted Alabaster on his show and Web site, and has set up a legal defense fund for the holdouts, some of whom said the offers they received weren't attractive enough and some of whom said they just don't want to move. The owners and their supporters say it would be a misuse of eminent domain to take their land for a commercial development. City officials say the move would serve several public purposes. The area needs redeveloping to eliminate blight, they said, and they are discussing building a city hall, library and civic center near the planned shopping center. The city has hauled more than 20 truckloads of trash from the site this year, officials said. The land in question contains several occupied houses, a trailer park, a cinderblock church and a couple of rundown, vacant houses. Alabaster had given the nine families a Friday deadline to accept offers to buy their property; none did, said Greg Morris, a lawyer representing the city. Morris said he would talk with Mayor David Frings about the city's next step. The City Council a week ago authorized Frings to direct Morris to file eminent domain complaints if the residents had not accepted the offers by Friday. Morris has said complaints could be filed by Wednesday. Jim Pino, a lawyer representing six property owners who have not sold, said he notified the city before the deadline that his clients would reject the offers. "We're not going to negotiate with the City of Alabaster until some judge tells us they have the right to take their (the owners') property," Pino said. "I don't think the city has the legal authority to take their property through eminent domain for a commercial development such as a Wal-Mart Supercenter." Pino said he has been flooded with e-mails in support of his clients from across the nation after appearing on Boortz's radio show last week. "This situation has put Alabaster on the national map," Pino said. "Unfortunately, it has not put it on it in a favorable light." He said he's prepared to contend that the city would be improperly using a state law that he said was intended to be used to redevelop slums. Pino said his clients live in a rural area, in homes where they'd like to stay. "The larger issue is whether they should be forced to sell their property," he said. On his Web site, Boortz wrote that the residents' refusal to sell "should be the end of the story. ... If governments can abuse the concept of eminent domain in this manner, then your private property rights are virtually nonexistent. You own your home only so long as the local politicians tolerate that ownership." Morris declined to respond to Boortz's comments on the issue. Eminent domain traditionally has been used to acquire land for public purposes such as schools, streets and sewers. Michael Howell-Moroney, a professor of public administration at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said the concept of using eminent domain for redevelopment is a relatively new idea done mostly in urban areas, where a couple of city blocks might be razed to make way for a mixture of public and private development. He said eminent domain was first used for such purposes in areas such as New York City and Philadelphia during the 1970s. The idea started to spread elsewhere during the 1980s and 1990s. Howell-Moroney said he doesn't know the specifics of the Alabaster situation, but he said many urban scholars view the use of eminent domain for redevelopment as "using the public hammer for private benefit." |