Business Blog

By Stephen McDill Eminent domain, the taking of land for development, has proven to be a heavily emotional and highly politicized talking point in Mississippi this year. Staff writer Ted Carter will take a hard look at both sides of the issue in Monday’s edition of the MBJ. In the meantime, we’ve collected video clips [...]

Mississippians cheered the arrival of big league economic development this decade with Nissan’s arrival in Canton and Toyota pending move into Blue Springs. But a property rights movement is working to blunt the enthusiasm for more economic bonanzas — at least if state incentives include offering the mega employers private property the state would seize [...]

Eminent domain — at least the government taking of private property on behalf of private enterprise — does not seem to offer much room for compromise. You are either OK with the government taking private property for private sector economic development or you are not. If middle ground exists, neither Leland Speed nor Ron Aldridge [...]

A ballot initiative to curb eminent domain in Mississippi to protect private property from private enterprise carries a cost land owners may not have considered, says Randy Kelley, executive director of Three Rivers Planning and Development District. New limits on the state’s eminent domain law through a constitutional change could end the paying of “replacement [...]

Mississippi’s courts must move quickly to resolve a key state constitutional issue —whether it’s legal to limit eminent domain through a voter referendum. Otherwise trouble is ahead for state elections officials who must meet deadlines for printing and distributing ballots on the property rights question. The clock begins to wind down at 9 a.m. July [...]

Leland Speed concedes he may be relying on a “technical violation” in a lawsuit to stop a statewide vote on banning the use of eminent domain to take private property. But he’s got to do whatever he can to keep a “dumb” result from occurring, said Speed, a longtime Jackson real estate investor and now [...]

Jackson’s Parkway Properties is about to nearly double in size and acquire a half dozen new office buildings in Philadelphia and throughout the South, company executives said Monday in announcing a definitive agreement with privately owned Eola Capital LLC. In the move, Chairman Leland Speed will cede the executive chairmanship to James “Jim” Heistand, Eola’s [...]