YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

The state of Arizona acquired Gabrielli's land through a venerated legal precept known as eminent domain. This process allows government to acquire private land to make public improvements. Though the law requires that the state pay the disenfranchised landowner just compensation" in exchange for the property, disputes often arise from the process.

There is a legitimate question about how much the Gabrielli property was worth before the Hohokam Expressway was built. It seemed especially well-suited for a recycling business, and probably ill-suited for almost any other use. Situated near Tempe and only a few miles east of Phoenix's central business district, it was conveniently located. The farther you have to haul your garbage, the more it costs, and Gabrielli was close to a lot of garbage. There was a railroad spur on the property that made it easy to load processed waste products onto cars and ship them out. He had plenty of land on which to stack the raw material, and no neighbors to complain about the eyesore. And though the buildings that stood on the land were dilapidated and probably worthless to almost anybody else, they were adequate for Gabrielli's purposesÏthey kept the rain off his equipment and paper.

Even before the Hohokam was built, the area was beginning to shift away from the heavy industrial use for which it was zoned to lighter, brighter and presumably more profitable uses. The meat-packing plants and feedlots that once surrounded the former Gabrielli property began to disappear about a decade ago, until now only the Stockyards Restaurant and Tovrea Castle remain as reminders of the cattle trade. Now to the east, across 48th Street, cars jerk through the parking lot of a PACE store, a new consumer clubhouse. It's not hard to imagine a small office building or warehouse on the site.

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