Donald Trump's eminent domain love nearly cost a widow her house

Donald Trump's eminent domain love nearly cost a widow her house
David Boaz Wednesday 19 August 2015 11.45 EDT

ty mogul hoped eminent domain would help move out a widow who stood in the way of a planned limousine parking lot
Since he shot to the top of the presidential polls, Donald Trump’s serial bankruptcies and bullying nature have made big headlines. But no one seems to have brought up a bullying business practice he’s particularly fond of: eminent domain.

The billionaire mogul-turned-reality TV celebrity, who says he wants to work on behalf of “the silent majority,” has had no compunction about benefiting from the coercive power of the state to kick innocent Americans out of their homes.

For more than 30 years Vera Coking lived in a three-story house just off the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. Donald Trump built his 22-story Trump Plaza next door. In the mid-1990s Trump wanted to build a limousine parking lot for the hotel, so he bought several nearby properties. But three owners, including the by then elderly and widowed Ms Coking, refused to sell.

As his daughter Ivanka said in introducing him at his campaign announcement, Donald Trump doesn’t take no for an answer.

Trump turned to a government agency – the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) – to take Coking’s property. CRDA offered her $250,000 for the property – one-fourth of what another hotel builder had offered her a decade earlier. When she turned that down, the agency went into court to claim her property under eminent domain so that Trump could pave it and put up a parking lot.

Peter Banin and his brother owned another building on the block. A few months after they paid $500,000 to purchase the building for a pawn shop, CRDA offered them $174,000 and told them to leave the property. A Russian immigrant, Baninsaid: “I knew they could do this in Russia, but not here. I would understand if they needed it for an airport runway, but for a casino?”

Ms Coking and her neighbors spent several years in court, but eventually with the assistance of the Institute for Justice they won on July 20, 1998. A state judgerejected the agency’s demand on the narrow grounds that there was no guarantee that Trump would use the land for the specified purpose. “TRUMPED!” blared the front page of the tabloid New York Post.

It wasn’t the only time Trump tried to benefit from eminent domain. In 1994, Trump incongruously promised to turn Bridgeport, Connecticut, into “a national tourist destination” by building a $350m office and entertainment complex on the waterfront. The Hartford Courant reported: “At a press conference during which almost every statement contained the term ‘world class,’ Trump and Mayor Joseph Ganim lavished praise on one another and the development project and spoke of restoring Bridgeport to its glory days.”

But alas, five businesses owned the land. What to do? As the Courant reported: “Under the development proposal described by Trump’s lawyers, the city would become a partner with Trump Connecticut Inc and obtain the land through its powers of condemnation. Trump would in turn buy the land from the city.” The project fell apart, though.

Trump consistently defended the use of eminent domain. Interviewed by John Stossel on ABC News, he said: “Cities have the right to condemn for the good of the city. Everybody coming into Atlantic City sees this terrible house instead of staring at beautiful fountains and beautiful other things that would be good.” Challenged by Stossel, he said that eminent domain was necessary to build schools and roads. But of course he just wanted to build a limousine parking lot.

In 2005 the Institute for Justice took another eminent domain case to the Supreme Court. By 5-4 the Court held that the city of New London, Connecticut, could take the property of Susette Kelo and her neighbors so that Pfizer could build a research facility. That qualified as a “public use” within the meaning of the Constitution’s “takings” clause. The case created an uproar.

Polls showed that more than 80% of the public opposed the decision. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor issued a scathing dissent: “Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms … The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result.”

Conservatives were especially outraged by this assault on property rights. Not Donald Trump, though. He told Neil Cavuto on Fox News: “I happen to agree with it 100%. if you have a person living in an area that’s not even necessarily a good area, and … government wants to build a tremendous economic development, where a lot of people are going to be put to work and … create thousands upon thousands of jobs and beautification and lots of other things, I think it happens to be good.”

When Donald Trump says: “I give to everybody. They do whatever I want,” this is what he’s talking about: well-connected interests getting favors from government. Vera Coking knows the feeling.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...st-widow-house
the way of a planned limousine parking lot

A.C.'s little house on the prairie sells for $530,000

By Amy S. Rosenberg, Inquirer Staff Writer
Posted: August 02, 2014

ATLANTIC CITY - Vera Coking finally cashed in. And like the rest of Atlantic City these days, the price came at a steep discount.

The white boardinghouse that Coking could have sold for millions to Donald Trump years ago fetched $530,000 Thursday at a lackluster auction in the shadow of a now-hobbled Trump Plaza.

With a 10 percent commission price, the winning bidders, Atlantic City lawyer Pat Agnellini and Stanley Realty Co., will pay $583,000 for the three-story property.

Agnellini declined to identify himself at the auction except to state the obvious - that he was not representing Donald Trump. He later came forward to say he was the buyer of the iconic property, at a fraction of what Trump was willing to pay.

"I don't exactly know what I'm going to do with the property yet," Agnellini said. "Beyond that, I have no comment."

Coking, who purchased the house for $20,000 in 1961, became a folk hero after turning down millions from Trump, who wanted her house for a limousine staging area for the Trump Plaza.

She had stood firm while Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione built an iron structure literally up and over her house. Perhaps most significant, Coking successfully resisted state efforts to take the property by eminent domain.

The winning bid came after about an hour of action in the parking lot separating Trump Plaza from the 29-room boardinghouse owned by Coking.

Some onlookers suggested that the home be preserved to honor Coking's fight; others, specifically Trump Plaza employees, hoped the winning bidder would also buy the casino, slated to close Sept. 16. (Unlikely, said Agnellini.)

The house had been listed for $995,000 for about a year. For a time Thursday, as auctioneer Oren Klein dipped his opening bid price below $200,000, it seemed nobody wanted to bid at all.

"It's a piece of history," he urged the group of potential bidders. "You're in the path of progress."

At another point he said, "This woman didn't fight for nothing. There is a lot of value here."

Indeed, the property sits tantalizingly close to the site of the new Bass Pro Shops and is one block from the Boardwalk.

Klein speculated that the owner of the property might eventually sell to whoever takes control of the Trump Plaza property.

Coking, 91, now lives in a retirement home in California. For decades, her refusal to sell helped define Atlantic City - a place where casinos were supposed to lead to an urban renaissance, but one that frequently called upon citizens to sacrifice in the name of further casino development. Many called her a hero. Others blamed Atlantic City's failings on the difficult climate created by holdouts like Coking.

The sale price nearly matched the property's assessed value of $580,000, but fell far short of the asking price of $995,000, and was a fraction of Trump's alleged offers from years before.

Among the losing bidders was a contractor from Hammonton who said he was also trying to buy the tower of Trump Plaza, and Ned Sakhai of New York, who said he wanted to turn the property into a go-go bar.

Members of the family listened in on the phone to the auction and approved an opening bid of $175,000, below the stated minimum bid of $199,000. They did not respond to efforts to contact them.

Trump said this week that there was no convincing Coking.

"She could have lived happily ever after in Palm Beach, Fla.; instead, she was an impossible person to deal with," Trump told the Associated Press.

In addition to millions of dollars, Trump said, he had offered Coking housing for the rest of her life in one of his properties.

But Coking never wanted to sell. Her family has said it was never about the money. She simply wanted to remain in the home she had bought with her husband.

The auction attracted a small gathering of onlookers, including several employees of Trump Plaza, a once-dominant casino now scheduled to close Sept. 16. It presages next week's high-profile auction of the Revel casino and hotel, also expected to sell at a deep discount.

Lois Chiles, visiting from New Haven, Conn., said the home was historic and should remain as a tribute to Coking. "She's a model," she said. "She stood her ground."

The Casino Reinvestment Development Authority spent five years trying to force Coking to relinquish the property through eminent domain. A judge ultimately sided with Coking.

Glenn Zeitz, the attorney who represented Coking in the eminent-domain case, said her fight set an important precedent for New Jersey homeowners.

"She's a heroine," he said Thursday. Any public officials who think she obstructed development in Atlantic City, he said, should "look in the mirror."

"They had an opportunity that was squandered," Zeitz said. "That's really what happened. Imagine what they'd done if they'd really reinvested in the city. It's a shame."

BY THE NUMBERS

$20,000

What Vera Coking and her husband paid for the 29-room boardinghouse

in 1961.

$530,000

Price fetched

at auction.

$995,000

Asking price.

$2M

Amount Donald Trump offered

as recently as several

years ago.

arosenberg@phillynews.com

609-823-0453

@amysrosenberg

www.inquirer.com/

downashore

http://articles.philly.com/2014-08-0...g-donald-trump

Donald Trump was right on the Vera Coking deal and he tried for a long time to do the right thing for her, his business and the community. She wanted $5 million instead of the $2 million plus another place to live at his expense for the rest of her life and relocation costs he offered. It wasn't about her husband, it wasn't about her "home", it was a rat-tap boarding house. But she "stood her ground", cost herself and her family a lot of money, made the Casino Area of Atlantic City ugly and incomplete, and showed no concern at all for the businesses, investors, employees, residents, customers or the community at large. This case didn't have anything to do with the Kelo Case, because it was years before.

In her case, she won. But she didn't win anything. Donald Trump walked away from it, never got the property, and never bull-dozed it down. As soon as her war with progress ended and Trump walked away to leave her in peace, she moved to California. So it wasn't about her "home", the property was a rat-tap business property, a rooming house.

But if that's the "conservative" view of who is a "heroine" and a "villain", the people might need to make sure when their time comes to "stand their ground", they at least know what it is they're fighting for, because Vera Coking wasn't fighting for anything except money, and she lost on that one, big-time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Judy

Donald Trump was right on the Vera Coking deal and he tried for a long time to do the right thing for her, his business and the community. She wanted $5 million instead of the $2 million plus another place to live at his expense for the rest of her life and relocation costs he offered. It wasn't about her husband, it wasn't about her "home", it was a rat-tap boarding house. But she "stood her ground", cost herself and her family a lot of money, made the Casino Area of Atlantic City ugly and incomplete, and showed no concern at all for the businesses, investors, employees, residents, customers or the community at large. This case didn't have anything to do with the Kelo Case, because it was years before.

In her case, she won. But she didn't win anything. Donald Trump walked away from it, never got the property, and never bull-dozed it down. As soon as her war with progress ended and Trump walked away to leave her in peace, she moved to California. So it wasn't about her "home", the property was a rat-tap business property, a rooming house.

But if that's the "conservative" view of who is a "heroine" and a "villain", the people might need to make sure when their time comes to "stand their ground", they at least know what it is they're fighting for, because Vera Coking wasn't fighting for anything except money, and she lost on that one, big-time.

---

You're dead wrong on this! Trump was wrong in his attempt to take her property through eminent domain. Of course I guess the court judgement has already proved that.

Quote:

---

But Coking never wanted to sell. Her family has said it was never about the money. She simply wanted to remain in the home she had bought with her husband.

---

Deleted by me.

Quote:

---

But Coking never wanted to sell. Her family has said it was never about the money. She simply wanted to remain in the home she had bought with her husband.

---

Her family lied. It was always about the money. I lived up in that area when this was going on, we all know the whole story, MW, the real one. Her son is the one who tried to negotiate the $5 million but it was too much money for the land which was the only value the property had to the Trump Casino. He offered her more than 10 times the real value plus probably another $1 to $2 million in fine housing and relocation expenses for the rest of her life wherever she wanted to go and be happy.

She won, she saved her rat-trap ugly boarding house you rent out by the room, Trump walked away and left her alone, she got what she wanted, so where's the story? Oh maybe the unwritten one where her husband is rolling over in his grave yelling why didn't you take the deal, you stupid greedy woman?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Judy

Her family lied. It was always about the money. I lived up in that area when this was going on, we all know the whole story, MW, the real one. Her son is the one who tried to negotiate the $5 million but it was too much money for the land which was the only value the property had to the Trump Casino. He offered her more than 10 times the real value plus probably another $1 to $2 million in fine housing and relocation expenses for the rest of her life wherever she wanted to go and be happy.

She won, she saved her rat-trap ugly boarding house you rent out by the room, Trump walked away and left her alone, she got what she wanted, so where's the story? Oh maybe the unwritten one where her husband is rolling over in his grave yelling why didn't you take the deal, you stupid greedy woman?

---

The story is Trump thought it was acceptable to take the ladies property after she refused to sell.

Quote:

---

Her son is the one who tried to negotiate the $5 million but it was too much money for the land which was the only value the property had to the Trump Casino. He offered her more than 10 times the real value plus probably another $1 to $2 million in fine housing and relocation expenses for the rest of her life wherever she wanted to go and be happy.

---

Sorry, I'm calling B.S. on this one. I've read a lot of different versions of the story on how Trump tried to run her out, but none of them match your version.

Quote:

---

The story is Trump thought it was acceptable to take the ladies property after she refused to sell.

---

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/c...cc4c002e0.html

Empty Atlantic City boarding home near casinos selling for $5 million

Vera Coking's house on Columbia Way in Atlantic City, Thursday, August 25, 2011. Vera Coking fought and won a battle with Donald Trump to keep her home.

Posted: Sunday, August 28, 2011 10:00 pm

By DONALD WITTKOWSKI Staff Writer

ATLANTIC CITY — In the shadow of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino stands an old house owned for decades by an elderly widow who has symbolized the conflicts between Atlantic City homeowners and the giant casinos.

Over the years, Vera Coking thwarted attempts by casino mogul Donald Trump and others to buy or force her out, but now she has left on her own — her three-story former boarding house is empty and up for sale.

The asking price is just under $5 million.

Stephen N. Frankel, a Ventnor real estate broker whose firm is selling the home, said the Coking family does not want any publicity about the sale and has instructed him not to talk to the media.

“They don’t want to be an issue in the press anymore,” said Frankel, declining further comment.

Property records show that Coking, who is in her 80s, transferred ownership of the house to her daughter, Claudia Coking Casey, on June 2, 2010. Attempts to reach Coking and her daughter for comment were unsuccessful.

The Coking property is assessed at $580,100, tax records show. A nearly $5 million sale price may seem extraordinarily high for a weather-beaten home pockmarked with missing or broken windows, but the Coking property at 127 S. Columbia Place is in the middle of prime casino-zoned land, just steps from the heart of the Boardwalk.

Trump Plaza, owner of the rest of the land on the block, is the logical buyer for the Coking property. However, parent company Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. has made no offers since the property went on the market and is not looking to buy it at this time, an executive said.

“They haven’t contacted us and we haven’t contacted them,” said David Hughes, Trump Entertainment’s chief financial officer.

For years, Donald Trump sought to buy the Coking home in private negotiations. Frustrated by not being able to reach a deal, Trump tried having a state development agency condemn the home so that he could use the property for a hotel expansion at Trump Plaza or as a parking area for limousines. Coking steadfastly held out against Trump.

In a nationally publicized New Jersey court case in 1998, a judge sided with Coking when Trump tried to use the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to acquire the home through eminent domain. The ruling was celebrated as a victory for private property owners who have been pressured by casinos to give up their land.

The Trump battle evoked memories of a headline-grabbing fight years earlier between Coking and another powerful businessman, Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione. Coking refused Guccione’s reported $1 million offer for her house in the 1970s, so he began building the steel superstructure of the proposed Penthouse casino around her.

Guccione ran out of money for his project and halted construction in 1980, but the rusting steel frame of the half-completed casino surrounded Coking’s home. Finally, the old Penthouse hulk was torn down by Trump in 1993 after he bought the Guccione property for Trump Plaza’s expansion.

Trump and Coking sniped at each other over the years during their failed attempts to strike a deal. Trump accused Coking of allowing the property to deteriorate into a “slum-like” condition.

Coking criticized Trump for the alleged hardships she endured living next to Trump Plaza. She also blamed Trump for the impasse in negotiations for her property.

“He thinks he’s God,” she said in a 2006 interview with The Press of Atlantic City.

Coking and her husband Raymond, an engineer who died in 1967, bought the house in the 1960s for $20,000. Before the arrival of casino gambling in 1978 dramatically changed the city’s landscape, the Coking house was part of a cluster of homes and small businesses in the Columbia Place neighborhood.

With all of those homes and businesses now gone, the Coking house stands alone, up for sale.

Quote:

---

Coking criticized Trump for the alleged hardships she endured living next to Trump Plaza. She also blamed Trump for the impasse in negotiations for her property.

---

"She blamed Trump for the impasse in negotiations for her property."

See? She always wanted to sell, she just wanted more than they could justify. Someone else who owned another Casino project had tried to buy it from her. Same thing. They offered her $1 million in the 70's. Trump offered her a lot more in the 90's but she wouldn't make a deal. She fought the eminent domain expecting him to come back afterwards and offer her even more money, but she miscalculated. He walked away and stayed away even when it was up for sale.

Quote:

---

Trump Plaza, owner of the rest of the land on the block, is the logical buyer for the Coking property. However, parent company Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. has made no offers since the property went on the market and is not looking to buy it at this time, an executive said.

“They haven’t contacted us and we haven’t contacted them,” said David Hughes, Trump Entertainment’s chief financial officer.

---

She missed the boat and lived all those years without any money enduring her hardships of living next to Trump Plaza.

Quote:

---

Coking criticized Trump for the alleged hardships she endured living next to Trump Plaza.

---

See the problem here MW? She claims she loves her home and doesn't want to leave, yet claims it's no good any more enduring the "hardships" of living next to Trump Plaza. She claims she doesn't want to sell, yet blames Trump for the impasse in negotiations on the property.

You and everyone else who "read the versions" were duped.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Judy

"She blamed Trump for the impasse in negotiations for her property."

See? She always wanted to sell, she just wanted more than they could justify. Someone else who owned another Casino project had tried to buy it from her. Same thing. They offered her $1 million in the 70's. Trump offered her a lot more in the 90's but she wouldn't make a deal. She fought the eminent domain expecting him to come back afterwards and offer her even more money, but she miscalculated. He walked away and stayed away even when it was up for sale.



She missed the boat and lived all those years without any money enduring her hardships of living next to Trump Plaza.



See the problem here MW? She claims she loves her home and doesn't want to leave, yet claims it's no good any more enduring the "hardships" of living next to Trump Plaza. She claims she doesn't want to sell, yet blames Trump for the impasse in negotiations on the property.

You and everyone else who "read the versions" were duped.

---

Perhaps you're just cherry picking the versions that give a better impression of Trump. I fully understand your reasoning in that regard. However, considering the fact that there are so many versions of this story floating around out there, it's a little difficult to ascertain the difference between fact, fiction, and half-truth, but none of that really matters where the big picture is concerned.

Here's really all that's important:

She lived there before the casino was every built and chose not to sell the property for the offered price. Her reluctance to sell is no excuse for attempting to take her property through eminent domain.