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August 15, 2008
Yards ‘domain’ case has some eminence
The Brooklyn Paper
by Mike McLaughlin
Legal experts agree on one thing about the latest lawsuit to block the Atlantic Yards project — the plaintiffs have put together a crafty argument to combat the project.
Law professors are intrigued by the argument, filed on Aug. 1 in state court by soon-to-be-displaced residents, that the state’s use of its eminent domain power to clear land for Bruce Ratner’s mega-project violates a little-known and never-tested provision of the state Constitution that prohibits public subsidies from underwriting any urban renewal project whose occupancy is not restricted “to persons of low income.”
Ratner’s development is slated to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in direct public subsidies and tax breaks despite the fact that it includes thousands of units of market-rate housing.
The plaintiffs claim that the luxury housing would violate Article 18, Section 6 of the state Constitution.
“It’s a very good, well-written complaint. They’ve got a hook,” said James Gardner, a law professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Posted by eric at August 15, 2008 9:34 AM