Five years after the infamous Kelo v. New London decision, private property owners continue to suffer from eminent domain abuse. Fox 17 reports in Michigan:
The building at 38 Front Street doesn’t look like a whole lot from the outside, but it’s worth millions of dollars. It’s a piece of prime real estate on the river. Leaders with Grand Valley State University are determined to make it the home of one of their fastest growing departments, the Seidman College of Business.
"It’s so big that we simply don’t have any other space on our Grand Rapids campus for additional building construction," said Matthew McLogan of Grand Valley State University.
The want to break ground on the 20 million dollar project soon and have it up and running in 2013. But there’s a problem. They don’t own the property. It’s owned by DeVries Development Properties.
After ten months of negotiations, they haven’t been able to settle on a price.
"We just simply were not able to come to an agreement," said McLogan.
That’s not stopping the University. They filed a complaint in court against the developer, trying to get the property through what’s called Eminent Domain. That’s where the state seizes private property for the benefit of the public.
