Eminent Domain, and How You Can Help
Two weeks ago a friend and I visited a small business in Wheaton, Maryland, called Barry’s Magic Shop, whose owners have been serving their community for 31 years. We visited because we had heard a rumor that the town of Wheaton was in the process of using the power of eminent domain to seize the land and demolish the building. What we discovered was considerably more disturbing than what we were prepared to find.
The journalistic acccount of how a one-man development plan is destroying a livelihood is ably told by Jacob Grier at Eternal Recurrence. Jacob also reports the response he receives from his inquiry to the county executive. Keep in mind as you read that what’s left out, because of difficulty in corroborating with multiple sources, is a back story of political antagonism and backroom dealing that’s incredibly disturbing when considering what the consequences are for the affected individuals.
For additional information, I encourage you to read the comments and click on the links. If you have a medium of communication that would be appropriate to tell this story, I sincerely hope you’ll pass it along. A huge thanks in advance to those of you who are able to spread the word and make this particular instance of eminent domain abuse as difficult to implement as possible.
Quiet Declarations » The Barry’s Magic Shop Saga Ends wrote:
[…] Personally, I find this to be an extremely distasteful outcome, albeit probably the best possible solution one could expect given what had already happened by the time the story broke. Montgomery County spent $987,000 of taxpayers’ money to buy the land under the shop from George Chaconas, who later claimed to have been strong-armed into the deal. They’ve now spent $260,000 to relocate Barry’s Magic Shop. They haven’t even begun to pay for the demolition of the old shop and the actual construction project. And what are the taxpayers eventually, at an unknown future date, going to get? An alley that saves Metro travelers (who probably already chose to come to Wheaton to shop) from having to walk 100 yards to the stop light to cross over to White Flint Mall. […]
Posted on 15-Apr-07 at 11:18 am | Permalink