Why property grabbers should be wary of supporting transfers by eminent domain.

Exhibit A, from last Friday's Palm Springs Desert Sun:

Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet's first State of the City address Thursday announced new customer service programs, desert landscape projects, eminent domain in downtown and groundbreakings for two hotels.

Palm Springs won't go to war with Wessman Development, but eminent domain will be considered if the developer doesn't submit its project in the next two months, Pougnet said.

"The city can ill afford to not move forward on the project," he said.

With the $200 million to $500 million that will be invested into the new Spa Resort Hotel and Casino, downtown will suffer if the Fashion Plaza doesn't get an overhaul, he said. When Pougnet said he would look into eminent domain to take over the property, the crowd applauded. Developer John Wessman sat quietly in the back row.

"I will look at any and all options," Pougnet said. "Either with Wessman Development or without them."

Pougnet said he didn't like reading in Thursday's Desert Sun that Wessman takes threats from the city with a "grain of salt."

"That grain of salt is being rubbed in the open sore of our downtown," Pougnet said.

Eminent domain is legal and Pougnet said he will use it if he needs to.

"When I say something, I mean it," he said.

Exhibit B, from theday.com (Connecticut):

Affordable-housing activists in Brooklyn, N.Y., are proposing eminent domain be used to seize a prime piece of New York real estate from Pfizer Inc.

Pfizer is the same company that inspired economic-development plans in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood of New London after the pharmaceutical giant started building its Global Research & Development headquarters there nearly a decade ago.

“Ah, irony,” says Scott Bullock, senior attorney with the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Justice, the group that defended Fort Trumbull resident Susette Kelo as the lead plaintiff in Kelo v. City of New London — the property-rights case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. The city won the case three years ago.

“It shows that once the power goes to government to take properties on behalf of private parties, the tables can easily be turned on you ... if you're out of favor with the powers that be,” Bullock said.