Not sure if that would count as “for ends of public utility”. Anyone experienced in this field? This would take a city size amount of farmland for the downtown and most of the city (I think any small towns caught up in the boundaries would be incorporated into it).
This would be kicked off with federal offices, but not necessarily political capitol. There are a ton of federal jobs that really don’t need to be located in a high cost of living area.
The term “eminent domain” was taken from the legal treatise De jure belli ac pacis (On the Law of War and Peace), written by the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius in 1625,[5] which used the term dominium eminens (Latin for “supreme ownership”) and described the power as follows:
The property of subjects is under the eminent domain of the state, so that the state or those who act for it may use and even alienate and destroy such property, not only in the case of extreme necessity, in which even private persons have a right over the property of others, but for ends of public utility, to which ends those who founded civil society must be supposed to have intended that private ends should give way. But, when this is done, the state is bound to make good the loss to those who lose their property.
The Federal Government could make the city with eminent domain. The issue is that the Federal Government is going to have to figure out how to run the city after it gets built.
The Federal Government can only override a state government in municipal issues on federally owned land. So, it becomes awkward when the capital becomes a city and you start getting a patchwork of public and private lands. There is a reason why DC is its own entity and its government serves the Federal Government.
So while the USA could create a new capital with existing powers, it will probably need a constitutional amendment to handle the creation of a new federal city independent of the states.