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January 2, 2010
Syndicated columnist George Will calls for Court of Appeals to reconsider Atlantic Yards eminent domain case
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder gives a critique of George Will's column on the use of "blight" to allow eminent domain abuse and also supplies some background on Will's position on this issue.
Syndicated columnist George Will, a conservative who played a key role in bringing the controversial Kelo v. New London eminent domain case to national attention, has weighed in on Atlantic Yards, but his timing is different: he wrote about Kelo in September 2004, before the U.S. Supreme Court had even decided to take the case.
By contrast, the challenge to eminent domain for Atlantic Yards has been dismissed in both federal court and state court, except for a longshot effort to reopen the latter case in light of a seemingly contradictory lower court ruling on eminent domain regarding the Columbia University expansion.
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Will writes:
To seize the acres for Ratner's use, government must claim that the area -- which is desirable because it is vibrant -- is "blighted." The cognitive dissonance would embarrass Ratner and his collaborating politicians, had their cupidity not extinguished their sense of the absurd.
The condo of Daniel Goldstein, his wife and year-old daughter, which cost Goldstein $590,000 in 2003, is on part of the land where Ratner's $4.9 billion project would be built -- with the assistance of more than $1 billion in corporate welfare from the state and city governments, which are drowning in red ink. The Goldsteins' building would not seem blighted to anyone not paid to see blight for the convenience of the payers. Which is of constitutional significance.
Indeed, the area is desirable--Forest City Enterprises CEO Chuck Ratner famously called it a "great piece of real estate." However, the Goldsteins' building was not deemed blighted; rather, judges are reluctant to interfere with the decision by condemnors to include non-blighted properties.
More importantly, the renovated building (Block 1127, Lot 27) is counter-evidence to the charge that the adjacent railyard, part of the blighted Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Area (ATURA), had a blighting effect on adjacent blocks, as Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn's response (article, PDF) to the Empire State Development Corporation's Blight Study pointed out.
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Will points to the need for blight to be found so the state could deliver the properties Bruce Ratner sought. And while the decision was upheld by the Court of Appeals, an intermediate court found "mere sophistry" in the Columbia case, with a Blight Study written by the same firm used in Brooklyn.
Will concludes:
The Atlantic Yards nonsense was compounded when Ratner, to bolster his balance sheet after the real estate collapse, sold the Nets to a Russian billionaire, who stands to benefit from Ratner's government-subsidized seizure of other people's property. Those people can only hope that New York's highest court will grant their appeal for reconsideration on the grounds that Ratner's argument is about as good as the Nets are. Through Friday, their record was 3-29.
That's a longshot, but the issues are important. Can "underutilization" really be used as a "blight characteristic," given that applies to enormous sections of the city?
Perhaps the Court of Appeals will take a closer look. And we'll see what comes out of public hearings and new legislation promised by state Senator Bill Perkins.
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Will's September 2004 column, headlined Despotism in New London, began:
The question is: Does the Constitution empower governments to seize a person's most precious property -- a home, a business -- and give it to more wealthy interests so that the government can reap, in taxes, ancillary benefits of that wealth? Connecticut's court says yes, which turns the Fifth Amendment from a protection of the individual against overbearing government into a license for government to coerce indi- viduals on behalf of society's strongest interests. Henceforth, what home or business will be safe from grasping governments pursuing their own convenience?
Will acknowledged that the Supreme Court had expanded the notion of "public use" to mean "public purpose," notably in a case clearing slum conditions in Washington, DC. He wrote:
But the Fort Trumbull neighborhood -- what remains of it; many residents have been bullied into moving -- is middle class. That is the "problem": Residents are not rich enough to pay the sort of taxes that can be extracted from the wealthy interests to which New London's government wants to give other people's property.
Posted by steve at January 2, 2010 9:20 AM