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December 31, 2009
ESDC files, shares condemnation petition, but condemnees will resist; will January 29 be the day it's resolved?
Atlantic Yards Report
While it's difficult to challenge a condemnation petition--"It has to be limited to procedural defects, and that’s rare," attorney Michael Rikon told me--the Empire State Development Corporation's (ESDC) legal filing to take private (and public) property within the Atlantic Yards footprint won't be a walkover. (The petition is at bottom.)
"We will challenge the petition. It is defective in many respects," stated attorney Matthew Brinckerhoff, who is representing condo owner and Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn spokesman Daniel Goldstein (and perhaps others). "The details will be laid out in our opposition to the petition, which we are working on."
Brinckerhoff was the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the unsuccessful constitutional challenge to the ESDC's use of eminent domain; he has asked the Court of Appeals to reopen the case in light of seemingly contradictory decision by a lower court in the case challenging the ESDC's use of eminent domain for the Columbia University expansion.
Henry Weinstein, who owns more than an acre of property in the southeast segment of the AY footprint, a block slated to become an interim surface parking lot, told me he would "fight tooth and nail."
George Locker, who represents several rent-stabilized tenants, stated, "The New York Court of Appeals has held that the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, and not the New York State Supreme Court, has 'original and exclusive jurisdiction' over the eviction of Rent Stabilized tenants and the demolition of Rent Stabilized housing.... Given the clear and controlling law on this question, ESDC will be unable to remove my clients from their homes. Instead, Ratner, like all other landlords, will be compelled to make an application to NYS DHCR after the current leases expire, including one in 2011."
Posted by lumi at December 31, 2009 5:14 AM