Ohio couple accuses city of grabbing land
The Gambles dispute a claim of eminent domain
By Anne Thompson
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 6:26 p.m. ET Jan. 31, 2005

NORWOOD, Ohio - On Atlantic Avenue, two visions of the future are on a collision course. The city of Norwood sees an upscale mall and apartment complex here. But Joy and Carl Gamble see the rest of their lives in the house they bought 35 years ago.

“It's my home. It's my only home, the only home I ever had,” says Joy.

“We've got a little castle,” says Carl.

But it may not be theirs much longer. The city has ordered them to leave by February 3 after buying 99 homes and businesses to make way for the mall and declaring the neighborhood "deteriorating."

What makes it deteriorating?

“The noise, the congestion and everything.” says Norwood Mayor Thomas Williams. “This used to be a quiet neighborhood. It's not anymore.”

The Gambles say this is an abuse of government power.

“They're taking one piece of private property, taking it away from us and giving it to someone else who is a private individual,” says Carl. “And that is not fair.”

How is this possible?

Using a law called “eminent domain,” governments have long been able to force the sale of private property for public uses such as courthouses and highways, but the practice now includes making way for private developments.

“It could be office parks, industrial parks, big box stores, on the theory that these will provide taxes, bigger tax breaks and more jobs,” says Columbia University professor Richard Briffault.

While most of the Gambles' neighbors want to sell, the Gambles are holding on and taking their fight to court.

If the developer fails, Mayor Williams says Norwood will lose big time — $1- to $2-million a year in taxes. But if it succeeds, the Gambles say what they will lose is priceless.

A judge upheld the city's sale of the property and awarded the Gambles $280,000 for their three bedroom house.

Joy Gamble says there is no amount of money that could get her to move.

Two visions — with no room for compromise — that will change forever the future of a city or a family.
© 2005 MSNBC Interactive

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6891224/


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I keep seeing more and more cities, towns, counties and so on using
eminent domain laws to grab land for dirt cheap money so they
can give it to a developer. This has got to be changed

We must start petition law makers to outlaw this flagrant abuse of powre

If its the house they want, then a compromise would be to move he house to a plot of land as compensation. I never a big fan of eminent domain laws as the owner almost always gets the shaft. The owner should be compensated at least 10% above appraised values on in these cases/

The only solution to the eminent domain problem is anarchism and I think that is one thing we can agree is NOT a good idea.

excuse me? your house is worth fmv $300,000 your city uses a legal way to give it to a developer for $50,000 how would you feel?

What would you do?

Well, I'm sure there would be a way to get a fair value (including some compensation) for it. Anyway, I live by the Axl Rose principle...if it were MY house there would be holy hell. Of course, that's selfish. So what?

There wasn't a brownfield site in the area that could be re-developed? Land gone to seed that couldn't be rehabilitated?
This nation has gotten horrible about trying to take sites with historical significance, parks, farmland, and residential sites, to almost give to developers, while leaving formerly developed sites to rot after the big box store closed or the corporation abandoned the factories to ship jobs overseas...
For now, my comments are "anecdotal", there might be a little research out there, and some government officials talk about brownfield rehab, but whenever I hear about the eminent domain version of corporate welfare, I usually suspect that other sites were available, just not "virgin" enough for developers.
That is the direction tax incentives and abatements and corporate/government partnerships should be going...

1. many homes can't be moved
2. No one cares about the house it's whats there that makes it home, neighborhood, friends, view, commute, and so on.

This was done in many cities over the last few decades/scores, the government called it Urban Renewal but it's known to most city dwellers as "Negro removal." To say 10% is fair compensation for ripping someones life out from under them is weak at best. This is do to poor planning and if the government is not asked to pay a clear price for their mistakes they will continue to make them.

The town and the developers are just following Bush's lead in acquiring land in Dallas-Ft.Worth for the Texas Rangers stadium.

They grabbed the land, made the taxpayers pay for the stadium and then sold out, making Bush a millionaire. (I think his initial investment was $160K.....)

From consortiumnews.com (Sorry about the incorrect investment figure. Gdidi)



Not a bad return for investing his profits from insider trading when he sold his Harken stock!!!!!

I'll guess the reason that brownfield sites is not very popular to develop in the states is the same as over here, here it is a matter of surprises, *surprise.. your land is contaminatet whit pesticides/chemicals/carsiogens, you will have your development delayed another 3 months, and have to pay for the removal of all the dirt in a deepth of 10' feet, and disposal of same + your expences in making the foundations is raised by 50%...*
We only got old industrial sites to live again by a law on federal level that excused new developers on old sites if they were found contaminatet IE a kind off superfound system to clean up old sites whit federal and lokal money, the old firms guilty for poluting the sites were only procecutet if it was illigal at the time the polution toke place. (All to often it was not )