By Althemese Barnes & Juliette Fisher. 
 
Many Tallahasseeans think the Smokey Hollow Community was swallowed up by an Urban Renewal effort to remove blighted houses from within sight of the Florida State Capitol. That perspective helped convince the public that Smokey Hollow was expendable, but the simple story is, the state simply wanted the land. Florida was growing at a rapid pace back then so there was a for more state office space. Smokey Hollow was nearby and the housing on that land was some of the least costly in town. To add to the mix, most residents were renters - not property owners - who had little say in the matter. It was the perfect bureaucratic storm of Eminent Domain power. With the stroke of a few pens and a sea of paper, the people of Smokey Hollow were forced to vacate their homes.