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April 15, 2010
Detailing Columbia University's Eminent Domain Abuse
Reason Hit & Run
by Damon Root
Armin Rosen, a Columbia University student journalist and senior editor at The Current, the university’s “journal of contemporary politics, cultural, & Jewish affairs,” has a long and highly detailed account of Columbia’s eminent domain abuse in its attempt to control the West Harlem neighborhood of Manhattanville, where the university wants to build a fancy new research campus.
...There’s plenty more ugliness to the story, including overwhelming evidence that the Empire State Development Corporation (the state agency which wields the power of eminent domain) actively colluded with Columbia in order to produce the very conditions that would then allow the state to seize property on the university’s behalf. Thankfully, New York’s courts have actually been paying attention. In a sharp ruling last December, the state’s Supreme Court Appellate Division condemned Columbia and the ESDC’s actions in no uncertain terms.
...The next step is the state’s highest court, which I'm sad to say recently gave the thumbs up to eminent domain abuse in the Atlantic Yards case. Perhaps this time they’ll get it right.
Posted by eric at April 15, 2010 11:20 PM