The City of Dallas is eying private property and, like a guy with a pocketful of roofies, isn’t going to let a simple “no” stand in its way.
It’s a small rectangle of asphalt 25 feet wide and hardly big enough to squeeze a tractor-trailer on. It sits on Young Street, just west of Lamar Street, and is surrounded on three sides by walls protecting the construction site of the city’s convention center hotel.
The land isn’t needed to build the hotel. But it will be necessary for City Hall’s larger vision of a development complete with shops and restaurants and rail lines.
And even though they’re trying to lawyer their way around state law which prohibits theft of real estate eminent domain for economic development, they’ve already admitted the truth.
But city officials acknowledge the land would help support the hotel project, and there’s little question the hotel project is about economic development.
I thought we’d had enough of this nonsense after Kelo which, as a project, ended about the same way the government-run hotel will, if every case study in history is correct.
When did the city ever let the law get in the way of “progress”? I think the landowner should hold out as long as possible. If the Convention Center Hotel ever becomes a successful project, the land will be worth exponentially more than it is now.
Don’t worry about the size. The ladies working the Fuel City taco stand seem to do pretty good in their tiny space. (Like my neighbor’s wife says, “Size doesn’t matter, it is how you use it that counts!”)
Didn’t you get the memo? Hotels are government entities now.
The people have voted, and they can not be wrong.
Must get back to the Borg.
You libertarians are so anarchy-edgy! And so macho with your guns and tough talk! I’m getting all wet just reading all this testosterone!
Trey, do you know the status of the DMN parking garage? Will it be shared with the hotel/center or demolished to use in the footprint of the new facility? I know this was brought up during the vote debate, and many felt the DMN editorial position was swayed by the value of their real estate downtown.
Boondoggle…great word for this project.
If they need this strip of land, they are going to have to pay for it, anything else is just plain wrong.