The city of Beaverton and the Biggi family have been arguing/negotiating over some land in Beaverton that the city would like to use to build a stadium for the Portland(will they change the name to Beaverton) Beavers. Negotiations broke down and the Mayor started talking about eminent domain. Once he agreed to back off that idea the Biggi family went back to negotiations.
What is eminent domain?
The Fifth Amendment grants the federal government the right to exercise its power of eminent domain, and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment makes the federal guarantee of just compensation applicable to the states. State governments derive the power to initiate condemnation proceedings from their state constitutions, except North Carolina, which gains its power through statute. The constitutional and statutory provisions require federal, state, and local governments and subdivisions of government to pay an owner for property taken for public use at the time the property is taken.
The power of eminent domain was created to authorize the government or the condemning authority, called the condemnor, to conduct a compulsory sale of property for the common welfare, such as health or safety. Just compensation is required, in order to ease the financial burden incurred by the property owner for the benefit of the public.
Most often you hear about eminent domain when it involves expanding roads and freeways. Portland has some history with that when they added Tom McCall Waterfront and removed Harbor Drive downtown. Revolutionary and progressive at the time, what makes it even better is that it worked.
So should they use eminent domain to take the land from the Biggi family? As many as 19 properties were codemned for the new Cowboy’s Stadium. I hope there are other events happening besides the 8 regular seasons NFL games. New York is a developer’s paradise if the government likes their proposal.
I don’t think the government should be able to strong arm someone into selling. I don’t think a stadium is a public necessity especially for a team that averages 5,000 ticket holders each game. What do you think?
