The Winston Salem Journal reports:
Winston-Salem officials are considering a new push to take possession of the Davis Garage, a historic train depot — and working auto shop — near Winston-Salem State University.
The city wants the building for a future transportation hub that would include a spur railroad track connecting with high-speed rail in Greensboro.
“That’s one of those futures of transportation, as we become more and more urbanized,” City Manager Lee Garrity said. “When the high-speed rail does come from Raleigh to Charlotte, it’s important that we’re connected to it.”
You guessed it —if Davis doesn’t sell, the city will consider using eminent domain. Commenter ‘Stonewall’ sums it up best:
They took a building that was no longer being used, repurposed it, and have made it into a successful business. Their asking price is based on the location of the business and the projected money they would lose if they had to move to another location.
Pay them their asking price, and waste our money renovating a train station into a nice, modern and empty train station for trains that don’t exist and if they do, won’t be used.
Easy to attribute this to Obamanomics, but in the interest of being fair and balanced, I’ll note that Winston-Salem “first approached Davis in 2004, when it won a $1.3 million grant from the federal government to buy the building and start renovations.”