More than 80,000 people have signed a petition urging the Dallas City Council not to force a popular mechanic to close the Ross Avenue garage he’s run for 30 years.
Supporters of mechanic Hinga Mbogo will rally in front of Dallas City Hall at 11:30 a.m. to support an appeal the council will hear at 1 p.m.
Texans amended their state constitution to ban eminent domain after the Supreme Court’s controversial ruling in Kelo v. City of New London, but Dallas wants to force Mbogo off his property anyway — without compensation.
Mbogo’s has attracted widespread media attention since the Institute for Justice took up his case.
“What’s happening to Hinga is nothing other than eminent domain abuse by another name — the city is clearing out a business it does not like and replacing Hinga’s shop with businesses city planners prefer,” said IJ attorney William Maurer. “But unlike eminent domain, Hinga will not even be compensated for the city’s unethical property-rights abuse. This is nothing other than government-mandated gentrification.”
In 2005, Dallas rezoned Ross Avenue to get rid of garages and used car lots. Officials had a vague, grandiose notion that the street should be a “gateway to the Arts District” that’s found on the other side of Highway 75.
The law doesn’t allow city officials simply to close down a sound business on the spur of the moment, but it does allow for a procedure known as amortization, whereby a business owner is given a number of years to earn back his investment before he has to close.
Other auto businesses have closed, but Mbogo has gotten a couple of extensions from the city. The city’s vision for the street, contrary to reports in the local news, has turned out about as well as centrally planned schemes for funky authenticity usually do.
The Dallas Morning News insists that “(s)ince the rezoning, Bryan Place has boomed with apartments, restaurants and trendy cafes,” but a quick tour of the block via Google Maps shows otherwise. There are vacant lots up and down the block left by the businesses the city closed, along with a few generic multi-family housing developments of recent construction.
Not two miles to the southeast, however, is a blighted entryway to downtown that’s very much in the city’s power to improve: the 277-acre eyesore called Fair Park that officials are barely reckoning with.
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