Company wants to buy property for halfway house

From Bertrand M. Gutierrez in today's WSJ:

A neon beer sign hangs in the window of Eastside Grocery Store, and men sometimes mill around the doorway. In this area of Winston-Salem's Liberty Street, there isn't much more to do.

It's why the Winston-Salem City Council approved last December spending $500,000 - and using eminent domain, if necessary - to buy 14 parcels of land and pave the way for developers to bring shops back to an umbilical thoroughfare linking Smith Reynolds Airport to downtown.

But the owners of 1525 Liberty St. - a building with as much curb appeal as real estate in New Orleans' Ninth Ward - haven't signed on to the city's redevelopment plan.