Eminent Whaaa?

I'm no expert on the Supreme Court, and law school is just an expensive glimmer in my eye at this point. Luckily, the rules of anonymous blogging don't require me to actually know anything, so I can go ahead and opine anyway.

I'm going to leave aside questions that are bigger than I am -- questions about whether eminent domain is ever appropriate, whether in the case of a highway, a hurricane or a baseball stadium. What I do know is that this ain't right.

The residents of DC's Anacostia neighborhood suffer from all sorts of ills that can be found in just about every overlooked, poor, minority neighborhood of any major city. Except that these residents are isolated from the rest of the District by a body of water, and have the distinction of living in an overlooked, poor, minority neighborhood in a city whose HIV, illiteracy and incarceration rates are already off the charts. Fair enough. You'd expect me to welcome any incremental improvement the DC government could muster to improve the lives of those who live in Ward 7 and 8.

To a point, I do. Office building? Wonderful. First supermarket in ages and ages? Great. Interest from the cowboy developer who owns half of downtown? Stupendous!

But then we have the story of the Skyland shopping center. From this morning's WaPo:

The National Capital Revitalization Corp., a publicly chartered economic development firm, is seeking permission in D.C. Superior Court to buy the 1940s-era Skyland Shopping Center and several additional acres of land, even though the owners do not want to sell.

The NCRC wants to replace the rundown strip of shops with a larger, more modern complex that would be anchored by a Target store and include other nationally known retailers and sit-down restaurants, commodities that are almost impossible to find in the District east of Capitol Hill.

I don't think you'd find too many people to argue that a liquor store and parking lots full of broken glass are better than Target and a sit-down restaurant, even if it's a cholesterol paradise like TGI McChiligan's. And it's not as though the land is about to be outright stolen -- the owners will be given whatever the government decides the land is worth, for whatever that's worth.

So basically, the District government is hoping to seize land containing a pile of businessess, level them, and put in a pile of different businesses. The "public good" demands it. And the recent Kelo ruling may make it possible.

Anyone else find this slightly frightening? If I were Mayor and wanted to seize the land under a Wal-Mart to put in a Costco, because I prefer the latter chain's labor standards and 2-gallon jugs of SoftSoap, who would stop me? Or suppose a Seattle's Best operator approached me and offered to sell nothing but fair-trade coffee if I would seize a Starbucks location for him?

On second thought, this sounds pretty appealing. Maybe I should get me one of them exploratory committees...