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October 13, 2009
It came from the Blogosphere... (eminent domain appeal edition)
Noticing New York, Not Accepting Pretexts To Lose Sight of What Justice Requires (AYR’s Post About the Court of Appeals Wednesday Hearing on Eminent Domain Case)
One of the hypertechnical pretextual confusions the government agencies and Forest City Ratner are purposely fomenting involves whether Atlantic Yards is to be considered as an economic development project or alternately a blight removal project. In truth, it is absolutely neither, but the government would have it pretextually be whatever they can get away with.
If the mega-project is an economic development project (which government officials are probably most instinctively prone to promote it as- and often do in the press), it makes no sense that no cost-benefit analysis has been done to demonstrate its justification. If it is instead a blight removal project then it hardly makes sense for the public to be spending billions to remove “weeds” from a gentrifying neighborhood, virtually the same weeds you can find anywhere, including the borough’s best neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope. If the pretextual goal is to remove blight that still implies that there should be a “weighing” in a sort of cost-benefit fashion that more blight will be removed than created. Not so! There has been no such weighing and instead it is the reverse. Ratner’s plan creates “more” blight (actual real blight) than the ostensible blight it pretextually removes.
Brownstoner, Atlantic Yards Court Case Begins Wednesday
The WSJ certainly chooses a side in the matter, saying that private beneficiaries like Costco, Ikea, Stop and Shop, The New York Times, and the New York Stock Exchange have all benefited from the condemnation of "small businesses, homes, and church property." The article adds: "In eminent domain cases, the political class typically uses its power to help the strongest private interests against the weakest ... Other states, like New Jersey, have seen stricter standards for eminent domain actions implemented through the courts. But New York is a draconian holdout. The Brooklyn case offers the courts a chance to tell the political class and its developer friends that they can't trample over private property rights."
21 Elephants, Eminent Domain & Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn
Forest City Ratner's huge (now half stalled) Atlantic Yards project has been controversial, particularly with regard to the use (some would say abuse) of eminent domain.
...a rare political/legal/philosophical opinion from 21 elephants: Eminent domain was a tool intended to be applied with care. The bar must be set relatively high, as one of the foundations of our system was based on freedom from capricious infringements of personal and property rights. This principle has also given the US a strong foundation for commerce (along with respect for the sanctity of contracts).
Law Of The Land, Atlantic Yards Eminent Domain Case Heads to New York High Court Tomorrow
Posted by eric at October 13, 2009 2:55 PM