Click here to sign up. To subscribe, call 904.829.6586 Order Home Delivery Online Order or renew daily and Sunday home delivery of the Record for one year. But they fear the expanding Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, which has purchased three homes on those streets, with contracts to buy three more, and which wants to absorb an entire block of 12 homes. School officials said the house Register mentioned, which is at 11 Genoply St., has two rental apartments built behind it. Register said the real estate agent hired by the school to negotiate with homeowners hinted to him that if Register didn't sell, the school would get the house anyway at a lower price, through eminent domain.
Eminent domain is the right of the government to take private property for public use.
I'm sitting tight. According to Terri Wiseman, the school's business services manager, the school does intend to purchase all the houses along Genoply Street and all the houses on the north side of Alfred Street. The school needs to expand. School officials say it's grown 20 percent over the last five years, to 700 students now. Administrators want to improve safety by preventing their blind and deaf students from having to cross busy public streets.