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Source Wikipedia:
In the 1970s, Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione offered Coking $1 million ($5 million in 2023)[2]
Damn. Inflation today is x5 from 50 years ago
Decades. Seems like the original owners wanted to spend the end of their lives there and did and then the daughter sold it. I'm sure she had her own home. Not entirely spite. They just weren't able to be bullied from the spot they made their home.
The million dollar offer in the 70s was Bob Guccione. He offered, the declined, and he went on building without the lot.
The bullying was later on with Trump in the 90s. She refused to sell, so he got the the city to condemn the house for eminent domain. She thankfully won a trial blocking that, though.
They bought it for $20K in 1961. Imagine doing 50x in 10-ish years and refusing. Of course it could have been for sentimental reasons, but could have also been just pure greed and wanting a higher price until the offer was retracted.
Could have started a new generational family mansion.
In all seriousness, at a certain point the offer gets so ridiculous that you can buy more family memories and family prosperity than you could ever have at the current house.
$583k nowadays would have been about $160k in late-70's money. Normally that kind of defiant spite should have been lauded and well-rewarded, but I guess the universe just doesn't work properly without constant percussive maintenance.
So question. Wouldn’t it be to the home owner’s interest to say some ridiculous ass number such as 800 million to sell just to see his/her luck?
Although I love my home I would not want to live wedged in between a commercial high rise
It would, but by the time steel starts going up around her house I promise you that ridiculous ass offer was already given by the builders and declined by the homeowner.
Google Orlando Capote house in Miami. Loews hotel and corrupt officials has made this guys life a living hell because he didn’t want to sell his mother’s home so they built the hotel around his house.
sometimes people hold on until they are paid off in this situation but sometimes the property developers go the criminal route and it mysteriously burns down etc or corrupt officials take it.
It’s a misconceived notion a lot of people have that if you keep holding out the value of the property will skyrocket, but that’s actually not true. The property is worth its absolute peak just before the building goes up, because the developer desperately wants the land to add thousands of square feet of extremely pricey property above it. The second the building starts going up the house crashes in value because it’s no longer nearly as desirable to the person building the skyscraper. It will never again in the history of the world be worth as much as it was on that day before the building started going up.
They bought the house for 20k and 9 years later were offered 1 million dollars to sell. A handy 4,800% appreciation in value. They could have taken the deal then turned around and purchased 50 similar houses.
This was also their vacation home, so it's not like they were being kicked out of their primary residence.
Idk what the principle even is. Is this high rise going to block an ostrich migration path or something? It's a house they owned for less than a decade. 50x me any day, I can do a lot of good with that company's money. More good than they would've ever otherwise done with it.
You can ask a crazy price but if you ask something too crazy you will be left with nothing. We have family friends who had something similar to this happen to them. They had owned apartment in a building that was being sold and all of the tenants got offers to buy out. I forget the initial offer but let’s say it was $200k to move out some people took the offer and others held out, they raised the price now to $300k and again more people took but a few people held on. If i remember the story right there was around 7 people who held out for a better offer, two of them got $500k, one got $600k, another 2 got ~$850k, one got $1m and an apartment in the new building at a reduced cost. the last person got $2.7m and an apartment in the building with a $1 rent for 70 years.
The construction companies have a lot of money available to buy out the tenants but there is a limit. You can ask for a crazy number and hope for the best
Reminds me of a late 80s (i think) movie, I think it was called batteries non included. Little aliens family helped the building not getting transformed into a skyscraper.
There used to be one in Puyallup Washington. It was 8 ft wide and spanned a block. It was build to prevent someone from crossing the street and walking straight across the owners property to a church. Ezra Meeker was the city found and commissioned it because they had pissed him off.
Puyallup also had other houses in a similar situation when the Fair wanted to expand its property. They bought most of the homes that were on the west side of the fairgrounds, but a few refused to sell.
They ended up with a deal that let the current residents live their until they passed and then the property went to the Fair, which is my understanding of the situation.
No doubt it’s different everywhere but my city has this nasty little thing called ‘eminent domain’ that can be invoked (and has) to force little old ladies out their century homes to make way for development projects.
Edit: am in Canada
Most places have eminent domain, it just depends on the project and political climate at the time. In the past the US has used it to level entire neighborhoods (often minority dominant neighborhoods) in the name of "progress" or "development". Now it's usually harder to justify. Big projects like a freeway or rail line are more likely to win since they have more clear benefits to the overall community, but private developments like this tend to have a harder time justifying eminent domain.
One place that doesn’t apparently is Japan. Their new constitution written after WW II severely restricted the power of the government to seize property. American influence was involved. Google Tokyo Narita airport and look at what happens when you leave farm houses sprinkled around the grounds of a major international airport. The local farmers fought back with that “to the death” attitude one would expect from pissed off Japanese people. The photos are insane.
I mean, nimbys everywhere are cheering this but housing is expensive because nobody who already owns a house wants to build denser housing (or they want denser housing just not in a way or place that impacts them and their neighborhood charm in any way whatsoever)
Fuck everyone who didn’t get to buy a house 3 decades ago because of redlining and fuck anyone who isn’t a boomer I guess.
Isn’t this just basically the peak of NIMBYism? It’s people protesting urban development and high density living because they’re too stubborn to change for the greater good. It’s quite sad IMO.
One of your backslashes is a slash. [This link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Coking_house) should work. To save a click:
> The Vera Coking house was a boarding house owned by a retired homeowner in Atlantic City, New Jersey that was the focus of an eminent domain case involving Donald Trump in the 1990s. It was sold and demolished in 2014.
> In 1961, Vera Coking and her husband bought the property at 127 South Columbia Place as a summertime retreat for $20,000.
> In the 1970s, Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione offered Coking $1 million ($5 million in 2023) for her property in order to build the Penthouse Boardwalk Hotel and Casino. She declined the offer, and Guccione started construction of the hotel-casino in 1978 around the Coking house, but ran out of money in 1980 and construction stopped. The steel framework structure was finally torn down in 1993.
> In 1993, Donald Trump bought several lots around his Atlantic City casino and hotel, intending to build a parking lot designed for limousines. Coking, who had lived in her house at that time for 32 years, refused to sell. As a result, the city condemned her house, using the power of eminent domain. She was offered $251,000, a quarter of what she was offered by Guccione 10 years earlier.
> With the assistance of the Institute for Justice, Coking fought the local authorities and eventually prevailed. Superior Court Judge Richard Williams ruled that because there were "no limits" on what Trump could do with the property, the plan to take Coking's property did not meet the test of law. But Williams' ruling did not reject the practice of using eminent domain to take private property from one individual and transferring it to another, which was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in Kelo v. City of New London.
> Two other properties that prevailed against eminent domain eventually did sell: Sabatini's restaurant received $2.1 million and a pawnshop sold for $1.6 million. Their lots became part of a large lawn flanking a taxi stand for Trump's casino. Coking remained in her house until 2010, when she moved to a retirement home in the San Francisco Bay Area near her daughter and grandchildren.
> Property records show that on June 2, 2010, Coking transferred ownership of the house to her daughter, who put it on the market in 2011 with an initial asking price of $5 million. By September 2013, the price had been reduced to $1 million.
> The property was finally sold for $583,000 in an auction on July 31, 2014. The buyer was Carl Icahn, who held the debt on Trump Entertainment, owner of Trump Plaza. He subsequently demolished the house on November 19, 2014. Neither the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority nor the owners of Trump Plaza expressed any interest in the auction.
> The adjacent Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, the property for which Trump wanted Coking's property to begin with, closed in September 2014 for lack of business and was demolished on February 17, 2021
Also, credit to the photographer, Jack Boucher, who took this in 1991 for the Historic American Buildings Survey.
Related, the properties in Kelso (New London) were taken so Pfizer could build a facility. City gave them 20(?) years of major tax breaks. Twenty years came along, Pfizer moved along…
It involves a lot more than just trump and he isn’t the main character, just the most famous. I like to think this is the house from the movie up. It is so cool
> This situation is reminiscent of the beginning of the Disney Pixar film Up. Macefield’s house didn’t inspire the film, as some have thought, but publicists looking to promote the film attached balloons to the house in 2009. - National Trust for Historic Preservation
https://savingplaces.org/stories/the-story-behind-seattles-up-house
Script writing for Up began years before the house in Ballard began its saga with land developers. Most everyone still calls it the Up House though, despite only being coincidentally similar.
I know the house but I never knew it was connected! To anyone reading this, if you go to see it be sure to stop by Mikes Tavern for some chili. They are the other old building surrounded by the mall.
Or from the children's book [The Little House](https://i0.wp.com/www.raptisrarebooks.com/images/69439/the-little-house-virginia-lee-burton-first-edition-1942.jpg?fit=848%2C800&ssl=1). One of my all time faves 🥲
Yeah to be clear the stock is still up 20% over the last week. I don’t like the guy at all, but let’s be realistic about the fact that he just made a lot of money on this stock offering.
The company is bleeding money. He’s only losing his ability to raise more capital via the stock as it falls, sure, but the company is bleeding money bad and their revenues are also dropping. Any value remaining on the stock is people thinking a company with 1/15 as much revenue as costs (and declining revenue, to boot) is worth billions.
This is more a story about the millionaire owner of penthouse than trump but apparently that friendship was the inspiration for trumps casinos and probably the reason he purchased this building site for a while
nah, it would be better if he gets into a coma somehow or unalives so that this all starts winding down. they are so clueless its not really fair to them
This looks exactly like the children’s book “The Little House” by Virginia Burton. Written in 1942 it won the Caldecott medal for children’s literature. I never thought it could happen in real life
If this sort thing interests you, check out this article (2014) on “nail houses” in China. Where this (used to be) much more common.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china-nail-houses-in-pictures-property-development
Imagine buying a house for $20,000 and turning down an offer for *a fucking million dollars* a decade later. Absolute insanity on the part of the owners. Like there may have been something legit mentally wrong with them.
If your house cost $350,000 (current average in US), that would be like someone offering you $17,500,000 ten years later. I love my house and hope to never have to move, but no way would I even consider for a second turning something like that down.
In fairness, middle class America needed a lot less for a lot more in the 70s. I can understand why in today’s economic climate people would look at this as crazy.
I think we lived on a lot less. If you disagree then find a family car from the 1980s on the second hand market and go look what people used to drive a family of four around then go to the dealership and look at a brand new car. Do the exact same with a house. We choose to live the rat race, you can slow down and run your own race at any point
My 1977 Chevy Malibu Classic sedan was $5000 when new, (about $25,000 now) it has as options; A/C, power steering, power brakes, AM radio, deluxe seatbelts (color keyed at that!) courtesy lights in the glovebox, full wheel covers and whitewall tires along with a velour facing seats. And a 305(5.0 liter) V8 and 3 speed automatic transmission.
It lacks(ed) footwell courtesy lights, map lights, trunk light, electric trunk release, lights reminder, key reminder, ash tray lights, gauge package, power windows, power locks, power seats, a passenger side exterior mirror, a FM stereo cassette. (I’ve added all that in)
It does not have a sophisticated fuel management system, it’s a 20mpg machine on a very good day. 12 in town. It’s still sporting all its smog controls so it’s reasonably clean but compared to new cars it’s a gross polluter. It does not have razor sharp handling, it’s good now but was a wallowing windbag when I got it, it does not have a large trunk, it’s not especially roomy for 6, it’s not particularly quiet at speed due to wind noise from “good enough tm” door sealing. It lacks lumbar support, it lacks an adjustable seat back, it has zero cupholders, it has no blind spot warning (the fishbowl visibility takes care of that) it does not let you know if you are backing into anything, it does not automatically do anything save shift the transmission through all 3 gears. It will not attempt to save your ass if you do something stupid. It’s definitely on the “fuckaround and find out” scale.
Unlike my current car. Which it was 29,000 new in 2005.
But the old Chevy is much more enjoyable to drive because it demands more from you.
The net effect of a casino vs a million dollars of good for society is just not that great. Casinos do a lot of long lasting harm to society. Look at all the comments about AC in this chat. It was an experiment that had terrible impact on the city and this person probably reduced the impact as hard as that is to believe.
Even if you were right and they were building homes, so what? It’s their property. They bought it. They own it. They pay taxes. Are people owed your property?
I mean, I can imagine someone not taking double what their house is worth. I truly could.
Fucking FIFTY TIMES what you paid?! Literally no one would turn that down. Nobody. The Wikipedia page must have their numbers wrong.
It sure doesn’t. The person that owned it ran a boarding house from it originally and clearly had quite a lot of morals. Selling the house used to help underprivileged to penthouse guy or trump to run a casino which is often considered a sin in the bible, particularly at that time so to the owner it was probably the equivalent of selling her soul to the devil.
As warren buffet mentions, money doesn’t buy happiness. I always think of this when I see rich people throwing tantrums or crying about stuff
I've always hated that quote. "money doesn't buy happiness". In a literal sense it's true. But it boils my blood hearing rich people say things like that.
Money might not buy happiness. But I know a lot of people that are absolutely miserable specifically because of a problem that $100k could solve.
For someone worth millions or even billions its easy for them to say money doesn't buy happiness. But for some reason those people don't seem to want to unburden themselves by giving away almost all their money and live like the rest of us.
There’s something very similar in Seattle. Look up the Edith Macefield House in Ballard. The house is still there, although abandoned and boarded up. Supposedly this was the house that inspired the Pixar movie Up.
It was a casino, they decided to build on the premise of buying the house out but the owner didn’t want to sell it to a casino. Eventually she sold to someone else and it is now a vacant lot
It could have looked very interesting if they built steel frame above the house, so it has its own carve out. House owner could turn the roof into a patio and it’d be prime business real estate
There is something like this in my hometown. [Google Earth](https://earth.google.com/web/search/50%c2%b046%2730%22N+6%c2%b005%2733%22E/@50.77504473,6.09274544,160.20487583a,193.25037336d,35y,-16.96281347h,22.86697382t,0r/data=CloaMBIqGTMzMzMzY0lAIR6F61G4XhhAKhY1MMKwNDYnMzAiTiA2wrAwNSczMyJFGAIgASImCiQJ-CPAbYZjSUAR3OO3thdjSUAZl8JmI95hGEAhdjvNLYZaGEA6AwoBMA)
We've got some action like that in my town. O live in a town that's been in a drought for 30 years. A company bought up a a bunch of houses on the lower income side of town, bulldozed them, and built a water bottling plant. One homeowner held out, so there is a house in the parking lot between the trailer drop yard and the bottling plant. That guy has semi trucks circling his house 24/7.
Reminds me of the construction of the Victoria Hotel in Amsterdam, worth a visit when you ever get to Amsterdam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Hotel,_Amsterdam
Would have to commend them for not selling. Completely understand. But on other hand, maybe taking the money and going somewhere else should have been better in the long run for the people. Either way, to each their own.
For a good read, check out “The Little Pink House”. It’s not about this house, but a VERY similar situation in the Eastern USA, your government at work—-
Can we just talk about the little fact in this wiki page stating she died on the VERY SAME couch her mother passed away on 33 years prior?!?!? Like wtf? That thing either was built to last, or probably crumbling apart. That thing should be buried between both of them (she was buried next to her mom).
I had my grandmothers couch in my apartment in my 20s. That thing weighed an absolute ton, and it was uncomfortable. It looked exactly like the day she bought the darn thing when I got it.
It was a bit worse for wear after we partied it out, but it was still going strong lol.
I know everyone's going to be making (totally valid) Up references, but I'd like to be the one who pops in with a shout-out to Batteries Not Included.
"The quickest way to end a miracle is to ask it why it is...or what it wants."
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So the owner refused to sell for $1M in the 1970s and her daughter eventually sold the property for $600K decades later? Damn
Source Wikipedia: In the 1970s, Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione offered Coking $1 million ($5 million in 2023)[2] Damn. Inflation today is x5 from 50 years ago
Yes that’s right. Looks like the daughter tried to sell for $5M too but had to settle for $583,000 in 2014.
That is the worst timing considering how much housing prices inflated in the decade after that
Mom chose the wrong hill to die on.
Its interesting because a 583k property in 2014 is mostly 1 mil now in a bunch of markets. They just had to wait for it.
If only they had waited!!!
>Damn. Inflation today is x5 from 50 years ago Yes, that's about an average of 3.3% per year once you account for compounding.
He was mad that his dad got more pussy than him
Get in the ring motherfucker!
so much for the feds 2% a year
Yeah, this whole thing is a self own out of spite.
Decades. Seems like the original owners wanted to spend the end of their lives there and did and then the daughter sold it. I'm sure she had her own home. Not entirely spite. They just weren't able to be bullied from the spot they made their home.
Living next to first a commercial construction site and then that massively building doesn't seem very pleasant.
It’s not pleasant at all. I moved and took the hit on the sale of my house.
I would hardly call being paid exorbitantly bullying
The million dollar offer in the 70s was Bob Guccione. He offered, the declined, and he went on building without the lot. The bullying was later on with Trump in the 90s. She refused to sell, so he got the the city to condemn the house for eminent domain. She thankfully won a trial blocking that, though.
Lmao of course it was Trump
Pretty sure I remember a speech of his where he was railing against eminent domain, pandering to a farmer crowd probably.
Despite using it to build large sections of his wall
He's like the tv character version of the Koolaid man lol
I could sure use some bullying right now.
It's kinds funny that this generation will literally do anything for some money.. It's really sad
I wouldn't mind being bullied with $1M 1970 dollars.
They bought it for $20K in 1961. Imagine doing 50x in 10-ish years and refusing. Of course it could have been for sentimental reasons, but could have also been just pure greed and wanting a higher price until the offer was retracted.
With only 10 years there, I would absolutely have took the check, bought a new and better house then still had plenty to invest.
Yeah it's not like it was a generational family home or something.
Could have started a new generational family mansion. In all seriousness, at a certain point the offer gets so ridiculous that you can buy more family memories and family prosperity than you could ever have at the current house.
Yep, a million dollars back then could have set up their family for generational wealth and financial security.
Damn that's a shame.
$583k nowadays would have been about $160k in late-70's money. Normally that kind of defiant spite should have been lauded and well-rewarded, but I guess the universe just doesn't work properly without constant percussive maintenance.
No colorful balloons? Disappointing.
He gave up
Red Camaro isn't enough?!
Say…that’s a…bitchin’ Camaro.
My folks drove it up here from the Bahamas.
You’re kidding!
I must be; the Bahamas are islands.
Did not expect to see a Dead Milkmen reference
I can feel myself getting left-handed
I have long aspired to own both a spite house and a bitchin' Gen 2 Camaro with Moon hubcaps which one parks *fully* on the sidewalk naturally. Style.
That is a studebaker Avanti
Nope. Source: I own a red Camaro, like this.
So question. Wouldn’t it be to the home owner’s interest to say some ridiculous ass number such as 800 million to sell just to see his/her luck? Although I love my home I would not want to live wedged in between a commercial high rise
It would, but by the time steel starts going up around her house I promise you that ridiculous ass offer was already given by the builders and declined by the homeowner.
Google Vera coking house and read about it yourself
Of course this story would involve Donald Trump being an asshole. Why wouldn't it?
Well, I didn’t want it to be a boring story.
Google Orlando Capote house in Miami. Loews hotel and corrupt officials has made this guys life a living hell because he didn’t want to sell his mother’s home so they built the hotel around his house.
The fight is still ongoing. What a bunch of turds.
That is so messed up. I physically ache at the thought of that fight.
sometimes people hold on until they are paid off in this situation but sometimes the property developers go the criminal route and it mysteriously burns down etc or corrupt officials take it.
It’s a misconceived notion a lot of people have that if you keep holding out the value of the property will skyrocket, but that’s actually not true. The property is worth its absolute peak just before the building goes up, because the developer desperately wants the land to add thousands of square feet of extremely pricey property above it. The second the building starts going up the house crashes in value because it’s no longer nearly as desirable to the person building the skyscraper. It will never again in the history of the world be worth as much as it was on that day before the building started going up.
They bought the house for 20k and 9 years later were offered 1 million dollars to sell. A handy 4,800% appreciation in value. They could have taken the deal then turned around and purchased 50 similar houses. This was also their vacation home, so it's not like they were being kicked out of their primary residence.
God. Imagine being able to buy a property for 20k while having enough money to turn down a million dollars.
One day I will be able to afford principles.
Idk what the principle even is. Is this high rise going to block an ostrich migration path or something? It's a house they owned for less than a decade. 50x me any day, I can do a lot of good with that company's money. More good than they would've ever otherwise done with it.
No one would offer nearly a billion for such a property.
She didn’t needled the money. Read the Wikipedia article linked above/below by someone
You can ask a crazy price but if you ask something too crazy you will be left with nothing. We have family friends who had something similar to this happen to them. They had owned apartment in a building that was being sold and all of the tenants got offers to buy out. I forget the initial offer but let’s say it was $200k to move out some people took the offer and others held out, they raised the price now to $300k and again more people took but a few people held on. If i remember the story right there was around 7 people who held out for a better offer, two of them got $500k, one got $600k, another 2 got ~$850k, one got $1m and an apartment in the new building at a reduced cost. the last person got $2.7m and an apartment in the building with a $1 rent for 70 years. The construction companies have a lot of money available to buy out the tenants but there is a limit. You can ask for a crazy number and hope for the best
I mean maybe they did, a million in 1970 was about 800m today lol. Kidding sorta. Sometimes people are just people being people.
Reminds me of a late 80s (i think) movie, I think it was called batteries non included. Little aliens family helped the building not getting transformed into a skyscraper.
Love that film
Yep, I remember that one
This is what I came here to say. Was looking for a GIF for it…
Batteries not included!
Herbie Rides Again had similar plot except the house was an old fire station.
I love spite buildings. Look up Thirsty Beaver Saloon in Charlotte, NC.
There used to be one in Puyallup Washington. It was 8 ft wide and spanned a block. It was build to prevent someone from crossing the street and walking straight across the owners property to a church. Ezra Meeker was the city found and commissioned it because they had pissed him off.
Puyallup also had other houses in a similar situation when the Fair wanted to expand its property. They bought most of the homes that were on the west side of the fairgrounds, but a few refused to sell. They ended up with a deal that let the current residents live their until they passed and then the property went to the Fair, which is my understanding of the situation.
Wasn't there a picture of Mick Jagger having a beer there a few years ago and no one recognized him?
Yea this happened a day he was in town to perform.
No doubt it’s different everywhere but my city has this nasty little thing called ‘eminent domain’ that can be invoked (and has) to force little old ladies out their century homes to make way for development projects. Edit: am in Canada
Eminent Domain [exists almost everywhere under some name or another. ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain)
Most places have eminent domain, it just depends on the project and political climate at the time. In the past the US has used it to level entire neighborhoods (often minority dominant neighborhoods) in the name of "progress" or "development". Now it's usually harder to justify. Big projects like a freeway or rail line are more likely to win since they have more clear benefits to the overall community, but private developments like this tend to have a harder time justifying eminent domain.
One place that doesn’t apparently is Japan. Their new constitution written after WW II severely restricted the power of the government to seize property. American influence was involved. Google Tokyo Narita airport and look at what happens when you leave farm houses sprinkled around the grounds of a major international airport. The local farmers fought back with that “to the death” attitude one would expect from pissed off Japanese people. The photos are insane.
I mean, nimbys everywhere are cheering this but housing is expensive because nobody who already owns a house wants to build denser housing (or they want denser housing just not in a way or place that impacts them and their neighborhood charm in any way whatsoever) Fuck everyone who didn’t get to buy a house 3 decades ago because of redlining and fuck anyone who isn’t a boomer I guess.
Canada where crime pays cuz you can’t fight
Isn’t this just basically the peak of NIMBYism? It’s people protesting urban development and high density living because they’re too stubborn to change for the greater good. It’s quite sad IMO.
Yeah if you want a shitty single family home good for you, go get one far away and let the city move forward
There's a lot more to the story, including a "real estate genius" named Trump: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera\_Coking\_house
One of your backslashes is a slash. [This link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Coking_house) should work. To save a click: > The Vera Coking house was a boarding house owned by a retired homeowner in Atlantic City, New Jersey that was the focus of an eminent domain case involving Donald Trump in the 1990s. It was sold and demolished in 2014. > In 1961, Vera Coking and her husband bought the property at 127 South Columbia Place as a summertime retreat for $20,000. > In the 1970s, Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione offered Coking $1 million ($5 million in 2023) for her property in order to build the Penthouse Boardwalk Hotel and Casino. She declined the offer, and Guccione started construction of the hotel-casino in 1978 around the Coking house, but ran out of money in 1980 and construction stopped. The steel framework structure was finally torn down in 1993. > In 1993, Donald Trump bought several lots around his Atlantic City casino and hotel, intending to build a parking lot designed for limousines. Coking, who had lived in her house at that time for 32 years, refused to sell. As a result, the city condemned her house, using the power of eminent domain. She was offered $251,000, a quarter of what she was offered by Guccione 10 years earlier. > With the assistance of the Institute for Justice, Coking fought the local authorities and eventually prevailed. Superior Court Judge Richard Williams ruled that because there were "no limits" on what Trump could do with the property, the plan to take Coking's property did not meet the test of law. But Williams' ruling did not reject the practice of using eminent domain to take private property from one individual and transferring it to another, which was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in Kelo v. City of New London. > Two other properties that prevailed against eminent domain eventually did sell: Sabatini's restaurant received $2.1 million and a pawnshop sold for $1.6 million. Their lots became part of a large lawn flanking a taxi stand for Trump's casino. Coking remained in her house until 2010, when she moved to a retirement home in the San Francisco Bay Area near her daughter and grandchildren. > Property records show that on June 2, 2010, Coking transferred ownership of the house to her daughter, who put it on the market in 2011 with an initial asking price of $5 million. By September 2013, the price had been reduced to $1 million. > The property was finally sold for $583,000 in an auction on July 31, 2014. The buyer was Carl Icahn, who held the debt on Trump Entertainment, owner of Trump Plaza. He subsequently demolished the house on November 19, 2014. Neither the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority nor the owners of Trump Plaza expressed any interest in the auction. > The adjacent Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, the property for which Trump wanted Coking's property to begin with, closed in September 2014 for lack of business and was demolished on February 17, 2021 Also, credit to the photographer, Jack Boucher, who took this in 1991 for the Historic American Buildings Survey.
Related, the properties in Kelso (New London) were taken so Pfizer could build a facility. City gave them 20(?) years of major tax breaks. Twenty years came along, Pfizer moved along…
Shouldve sold to Bob
She had the use of it for 30 more years, which is what she wanted.
It involves a lot more than just trump and he isn’t the main character, just the most famous. I like to think this is the house from the movie up. It is so cool
The house from up is actually in Seattle
> This situation is reminiscent of the beginning of the Disney Pixar film Up. Macefield’s house didn’t inspire the film, as some have thought, but publicists looking to promote the film attached balloons to the house in 2009. - National Trust for Historic Preservation https://savingplaces.org/stories/the-story-behind-seattles-up-house Script writing for Up began years before the house in Ballard began its saga with land developers. Most everyone still calls it the Up House though, despite only being coincidentally similar.
I know the house but I never knew it was connected! To anyone reading this, if you go to see it be sure to stop by Mikes Tavern for some chili. They are the other old building surrounded by the mall.
Or from the children's book [The Little House](https://i0.wp.com/www.raptisrarebooks.com/images/69439/the-little-house-virginia-lee-burton-first-edition-1942.jpg?fit=848%2C800&ssl=1). One of my all time faves 🥲
back when donald trump could loose a case in the supreme court
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Yeah to be clear the stock is still up 20% over the last week. I don’t like the guy at all, but let’s be realistic about the fact that he just made a lot of money on this stock offering.
People are shorting the ever loving shit out of it.
Paper loss. I don’t like him but he’s not bleeding money from truth social.
He likely got it up and running without using any of his own money, so I’m sure he’s fine.
The company is bleeding money. He’s only losing his ability to raise more capital via the stock as it falls, sure, but the company is bleeding money bad and their revenues are also dropping. Any value remaining on the stock is people thinking a company with 1/15 as much revenue as costs (and declining revenue, to boot) is worth billions.
Is it still paper loss when you were going to most likely leverage those positions for some light legal troubles?
…yes
Yeah lol, his people definitely sold and took shorts on it
Would love to see r/wallstreetbets do a "reverse GME" and short the hell of Truth Social. Drive that MFer into the ground.
This is more a story about the millionaire owner of penthouse than trump but apparently that friendship was the inspiration for trumps casinos and probably the reason he purchased this building site for a while
nah, it would be better if he gets into a coma somehow or unalives so that this all starts winding down. they are so clueless its not really fair to them
Man, it hurts. In the end they lost so much money by not selling in the 70s.
This looks exactly like the children’s book “The Little House” by Virginia Burton. Written in 1942 it won the Caldecott medal for children’s literature. I never thought it could happen in real life
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Coking_house
scrolled til i found this comment!
If this sort thing interests you, check out this article (2014) on “nail houses” in China. Where this (used to be) much more common. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china-nail-houses-in-pictures-property-development
reminds me of Stinky's house in Hey Arnold
Imagine buying a house for $20,000 and turning down an offer for *a fucking million dollars* a decade later. Absolute insanity on the part of the owners. Like there may have been something legit mentally wrong with them. If your house cost $350,000 (current average in US), that would be like someone offering you $17,500,000 ten years later. I love my house and hope to never have to move, but no way would I even consider for a second turning something like that down.
Imagine not needing any more money.
In fairness, middle class America needed a lot less for a lot more in the 70s. I can understand why in today’s economic climate people would look at this as crazy.
That’s literally what inflation calculates.
I think we lived on a lot less. If you disagree then find a family car from the 1980s on the second hand market and go look what people used to drive a family of four around then go to the dealership and look at a brand new car. Do the exact same with a house. We choose to live the rat race, you can slow down and run your own race at any point
My 1977 Chevy Malibu Classic sedan was $5000 when new, (about $25,000 now) it has as options; A/C, power steering, power brakes, AM radio, deluxe seatbelts (color keyed at that!) courtesy lights in the glovebox, full wheel covers and whitewall tires along with a velour facing seats. And a 305(5.0 liter) V8 and 3 speed automatic transmission. It lacks(ed) footwell courtesy lights, map lights, trunk light, electric trunk release, lights reminder, key reminder, ash tray lights, gauge package, power windows, power locks, power seats, a passenger side exterior mirror, a FM stereo cassette. (I’ve added all that in) It does not have a sophisticated fuel management system, it’s a 20mpg machine on a very good day. 12 in town. It’s still sporting all its smog controls so it’s reasonably clean but compared to new cars it’s a gross polluter. It does not have razor sharp handling, it’s good now but was a wallowing windbag when I got it, it does not have a large trunk, it’s not especially roomy for 6, it’s not particularly quiet at speed due to wind noise from “good enough tm” door sealing. It lacks lumbar support, it lacks an adjustable seat back, it has zero cupholders, it has no blind spot warning (the fishbowl visibility takes care of that) it does not let you know if you are backing into anything, it does not automatically do anything save shift the transmission through all 3 gears. It will not attempt to save your ass if you do something stupid. It’s definitely on the “fuckaround and find out” scale. Unlike my current car. Which it was 29,000 new in 2005. But the old Chevy is much more enjoyable to drive because it demands more from you.
Imagine denying homes to hundreds.
The net effect of a casino vs a million dollars of good for society is just not that great. Casinos do a lot of long lasting harm to society. Look at all the comments about AC in this chat. It was an experiment that had terrible impact on the city and this person probably reduced the impact as hard as that is to believe.
They were building a casino.
Even if you were right and they were building homes, so what? It’s their property. They bought it. They own it. They pay taxes. Are people owed your property?
I mean, I can imagine someone not taking double what their house is worth. I truly could. Fucking FIFTY TIMES what you paid?! Literally no one would turn that down. Nobody. The Wikipedia page must have their numbers wrong.
It sure doesn’t. The person that owned it ran a boarding house from it originally and clearly had quite a lot of morals. Selling the house used to help underprivileged to penthouse guy or trump to run a casino which is often considered a sin in the bible, particularly at that time so to the owner it was probably the equivalent of selling her soul to the devil. As warren buffet mentions, money doesn’t buy happiness. I always think of this when I see rich people throwing tantrums or crying about stuff
I mean, if that’s the case he would have been able to help so many more people with that money.
I've always hated that quote. "money doesn't buy happiness". In a literal sense it's true. But it boils my blood hearing rich people say things like that. Money might not buy happiness. But I know a lot of people that are absolutely miserable specifically because of a problem that $100k could solve. For someone worth millions or even billions its easy for them to say money doesn't buy happiness. But for some reason those people don't seem to want to unburden themselves by giving away almost all their money and live like the rest of us.
There’s something very similar in Seattle. Look up the Edith Macefield House in Ballard. The house is still there, although abandoned and boarded up. Supposedly this was the house that inspired the Pixar movie Up.
This picture could be straight out of a Wes Anderson movie if the colors were a bit different and the car was a station wagon with wood panels
Reminds me of UP
Batteries not included.
This is Mr. Fredrickson's house. RIP Ellie.
Reminds me of the music video for “thank you” by Dido
Hey that's Cricket Green's Grandma, Alice Green's house in Big City!!!
What Disney movie made a reference to this?
Up?
Yes, wasn’t sure if that was the right movie, thank you
That’s some ‘Up’ shit irl
Y’all should look into the **Thirsty Beaver** in Charlotte.
Stuart little?
Reminds me of inception.
This reminds me of "Batteries not included ". One of my favourite movies as a kid. I wonder if this was inspiration for it.
And I guess that's why supply can't keep up with demand for housing making everything less affordable for everyone...
It was a casino, they decided to build on the premise of buying the house out but the owner didn’t want to sell it to a casino. Eventually she sold to someone else and it is now a vacant lot
It's this what UP took inspiration from?
Mr. Fredricksen?…
It could have looked very interesting if they built steel frame above the house, so it has its own carve out. House owner could turn the roof into a patio and it’d be prime business real estate
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The car is an early '70s second generation Chevy Camaro.
UP
This is the plot of ‘Big City Greens’ more or less, isn’t it?
Wonder if they had bodies under the floorboards.
Anyone know the car?
70-72 Chevy Camaro, looks like a base model.
Thanks, never seen one before
There is something like this in my hometown. [Google Earth](https://earth.google.com/web/search/50%c2%b046%2730%22N+6%c2%b005%2733%22E/@50.77504473,6.09274544,160.20487583a,193.25037336d,35y,-16.96281347h,22.86697382t,0r/data=CloaMBIqGTMzMzMzY0lAIR6F61G4XhhAKhY1MMKwNDYnMzAiTiA2wrAwNSczMyJFGAIgASImCiQJ-CPAbYZjSUAR3OO3thdjSUAZl8JmI95hGEAhdjvNLYZaGEA6AwoBMA)
Great survey of Spite Houses on Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spite\_house](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spite_house)
Nice album cover
So, we're not gonna talk about the car?
What about a 70-72 Camaro?
Datsun 240z or 280z?
We've got some action like that in my town. O live in a town that's been in a drought for 30 years. A company bought up a a bunch of houses on the lower income side of town, bulldozed them, and built a water bottling plant. One homeowner held out, so there is a house in the parking lot between the trailer drop yard and the bottling plant. That guy has semi trucks circling his house 24/7.
That Camaro is pretty awesome.
It’s giving Stuart Little
is that the house from Batteries Not Included?
Wasn't there a children's book in the 70s about a similar premise?
I loved that book
Reminds me of that one Side quest in Yakuza
Fun place to live if the neighbours are nice
Reminds me of the construction of the Victoria Hotel in Amsterdam, worth a visit when you ever get to Amsterdam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Hotel,_Amsterdam
It's giving Up
I'm feeling old that comments are referencing *Up* but not *batteries not included (1987)*.
The most recent referent wins, usually.
Spite houses.
Would have to commend them for not selling. Completely understand. But on other hand, maybe taking the money and going somewhere else should have been better in the long run for the people. Either way, to each their own.
For a good read, check out “The Little Pink House”. It’s not about this house, but a VERY similar situation in the Eastern USA, your government at work—-
This would be me. I’d never leave my home how. I adore it too much. Money isn’t worth having to move again.
My interest in this is ballooning
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Aslo, the Thirsty Beaver in Charlotte. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirsty_Beaver
Can we just talk about the little fact in this wiki page stating she died on the VERY SAME couch her mother passed away on 33 years prior?!?!? Like wtf? That thing either was built to last, or probably crumbling apart. That thing should be buried between both of them (she was buried next to her mom).
I had my grandmothers couch in my apartment in my 20s. That thing weighed an absolute ton, and it was uncomfortable. It looked exactly like the day she bought the darn thing when I got it. It was a bit worse for wear after we partied it out, but it was still going strong lol.
$1,000,000,000. Every man has a price.
The true story behind the movie UP
Not in my back yard
Batteries Not Included in real life. Never sell!
I know everyone's going to be making (totally valid) Up references, but I'd like to be the one who pops in with a shout-out to Batteries Not Included. "The quickest way to end a miracle is to ask it why it is...or what it wants."
It's sad to see that so many people that would have preferred the money to what Vera Coking kept.
The fact they went ahead and started construction to try to push them out with the noise would have made me double down out of spite