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June 23, 2008
High Court Won’t Hear Appeal on Atlantic Yards
City Room [The New York Times]
by Sewell Chan
The United States Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by 11 New York City property owners and tenants whose homes and businesses are scheduled to be taken over by the government and demolished to make way for the $4 billion Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn.
Without comment, the justices refused to hear the plaintiffs’ argument that the seizure of their property would violate the United States Constitution. In February, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a trial judge’s dismissal of the landowners’ and tenants’ suit.
However, the plaintiffs, including Daniel Goldstein, the leader of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, which opposes the Atlantic Yards project, vowed to continue their legal fight by turning, once again, to the state courts.
...The Supreme Court’s decision today was a victory for the developer Bruce C. Ratner and for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who supports the project. At the center of the $4 billion development plan, which 16 high-rise office and apartment towers, is a basketball arena intended to house the New Jersey Nets. Brooklyn has not had a professional major league sports team since the Dodgers left for Los Angeles in 1957.
Lawyers for the mayor and other governmental defendants in the case argued that the project “serves multiple undisputed purposes,” including the transformation of blighted neighborhoods in Brooklyn. But in fact the area has already been rapidly gentrifying. Moreover, the faltering economy could slow down the construction of the project, doing what opponents of the project have so far failed to achieve in court.
Posted by eric at June 23, 2008 12:00 PM