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March 10, 2008
EMINENT DOMAINIA: The Big Apple Bites!
 | Eminent domain is a pain in the Big Apple: |
WILLETS POINT, QUEENS
Queens Ledger, Willets Point owners, tenants, workers unite in defiance
Note the most popular eminent-domain cliché, in bold:
The city's vision for the redevelopment of Willets Point faces a number of hurdles, but none more pressing than the buyout and relocation of the more than 250 businesses and at least 1,500 workers who occupy the site.
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The EDC maintains it is continuing to negotiate relocation options with those who own their land and will do everything within its legal rights to aid in the relocation of everyone at the site . But the agency also has declined to take eminent domain off the table as a last resort.
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Tom McKnight, vice president of the EDC, said the city will continue to negotiate with the businesses, but only for so long.
DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN
D'Real, 227 Duffield Street:Preserving Brooklyn’s Underground Railroad
Report and photos from the first fundraiser for an Underground Railroad Museum.
Duffield St. Underground, NY Times: Discussing an Underground Railroad museum
The New York Times continues its coverage of the Underground Railroad home on West 29th Street in Manhattan. They published "Retracing the Elusive Footsteps of a Secretive History" on 2/24, and today they published a Letter to the Editor.
PORT CHESTER, NY
Forbes.com, The Taking of Port Chester
In his essay, law professor Richard Epstein recounts a horrifying tale, from Port Chester, N.Y., of how condemnation law is used to reward well-connected developers at the expense of people who aren't connected.
NEW YORK, NY
Forbes.com, This Property Is a Steal
The Kelo decision provoked an angry backlash in most of the country. By the Institute for Justice's count, 42 states responded with laws limiting the use of eminent domain for private purposes. New York is not one of those states. If you want to get ahead in New York, what you need is lofty goals and left-wing politics. Totalitarians do well here.
Columbia University, decreeing that it can make worthier use of some acreage than its present owners, aims to force them out. The mayor plans to bulldoze some businesses in Queens to make room for something nicer; when he's done, the parcel will be transferred to a favored developer. Condemnation is how the New York Times and a developer partner got the land for the paper's stunning new office tower.
The author, William Baldwin, busts the prevailing myth about eminent domain:
Developers insist that they have the public interest at heart: Why, without condemnation power, some spoilsport sitting on a tiny plot could hold up a magnificent renewal project.
But didn't most of Manhattan's high-rises get built without any strong-arming? There's a way of dealing with holdouts: threaten to build around them, leaving them with nearly worthless slivers of land. One developer, Seymour Durst, went so far as to coauthor a book richly illustrating the sad fate of refuseniks who got too greedy: New York's Architectural Holdouts.
Posted by lumi at March 10, 2008 4:24 AM