Urban renewal on trial: Eminent domain case pries veil off downtown redevelopment
“After listening to the city’s lawyers repeatedly press his client about the timing of his challenge to the $9 million downtown Grand Rapids urban renewal plan, Harold Sawyer finally had enough.
Sawyer, a well known Grand Rapids attorney who was later elected to the U.S. Congress, jerked out of his seat with a strenuous objection.
“It was first assumed the city knew what it was doing, but now we have learned that this is the worst half-baked program ever conceived,” he thundered.
Sawyer’s heated critique came near the end of a critical but largely-forgotten eminent domain trial that put multiple Grand Rapids officials in the hot seat and forced them to justify and explain the massive civic face-lifting project that was then just sputtering to life downtown.
By the time of the Michael Abraham Skaff trial in July 1962, it had been nearly two years since Grand Rapids and Kent County voters agreed to tax themselves to pay for urban renewal downtown. The ambitious redevelopment project was threatening to bog down in a tangled web of negotiations with downtown property owners, some of whom were not eager to vacate long-time quarters.”
Ellison, Garret. Michigan Live 22 May 2014.
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