Eminent domain threatens American dream

Muneer Choudhury fled political persecution of Bangladesh in 1996, and now he feels as if he is being persecuted again in the nation’s capital, only this time it is about money and the 16.5-acre Skyland Shopping Center in Southeast.

Mr. Choudhury, the 52-year-old proprietor of Skyland’s Blimpie franchise, has discovered that his restaurant has been deemed a blight on the city, as determined by Mayor Anthony A. Williams and the D.C. Council.

This came as news to him, considering the designation is at odds with the sparkling nature of the restaurant.

You almost could eat off the floor.

If this building is a blight, in the advanced stages of decay, it is a glistening, freshly scrubbed kind of blight.

Mr. Choudhury figures he has pumped $450,000 into the business since opening 14 months ago. He figures he will be in desperate financial trouble if the city presses ahead with its absurd deployment of eminent domain.

“I have nowhere to go,” Mr. Choudhury said. “There is no way the city can put up the capital that will be necessary for me to open another restaurant, and I do not have the money because it is all in this business.”

Mr. Choudhury is not really supposed to be sitting in this restaurant on this sunny afternoon in the city, not as eminent domain is traditionally defined.

This building is supposed to be unoccupied, perhaps on the verge of collapse, with boarded-up windows. There is not supposed to be a line of customers looking to order a sub, a soda, a pizza, whatever.

Mr. Choudhury signed a 10-year lease with the building’s owner, and now he is stuck, owed nothing, really, except moving expenses, and that is only if he can afford to move to another location, which he can’t.

If the city shuts down his restaurant, he will be broke, done, finished, the victim of a cold civics lesson that has stunned him.

You see, Mr. Choudhury knows how government’s unchecked power works in so many places all across the globe. He has had to reinvent himself because of it.

He seemingly had it all at one time: social standing, connections, vast wealth and businesses. He once was an adviser to former Bangladeshi President H.M. Ershad and was posted to his nation’s embassy here in 1984.

Mr. Choudhury never could accept the authoritative politics of Bangladesh, and his resistance eventually led to his jailing in 1996 and subsequent escape through India after his release.

He lost everything: his dream home, all his businesses and a piece of who he was.

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