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June 1, 2010
Columbia eminent domain appeal today in Albany; Atlantic Yards decision invoked regularly; will Court of Appeals revise NY's role as national outlier?
Atlantic Yards Report
The eminent domain case involving the Columbia University expansion--a $6.28 billion, 17-acre project in West Harlem's Manhattanville--will be heard this afternoon at 2 pm (webcast) before the Court of Appeals in Albany.
It may seem like an uphill battle for the appellant Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), which--shockingly--lost a split decision (a two-judge plurality, a concurrence on other grounds, and a two-judge dissent) last December, before the Appellate Division, the intermediate court where all eminent domain cases begin.
But it's probably more of an uphill battle for the winners, property owners represented by attorney Norman Siegel, since Justice James Catterson, author of the plurality opinion, glaringly failed to grapple with the Court of Appeals' ruling just nine days earlier in the Atlantic Yards eminent domain case.
In the latter, the court 6-1 upheld the use of eminent domain, saying that when there were reasonable differences of opinion on blight judges had to defer to agencies like the ESDC.
So in legal papers the ESDC argues that the Columbia case is essentially like the Atlantic Yards case (Goldstein vs. New York State Urban Development Corporation, aka ESDC), and the Columbia plaintiffs (Tuck-It-Away, a company owned by Nick Sprayregen, and a gas station owned by Parminder Kaur and family members) say it's not, in part because the AY site includes part of a previously-designated urban renewal area as well as a railyard, considered to be de facto blight.
(Of course the plaintiffs in the AY case were all from outside those zones.)
Columbia Spectator, M'ville property owners prepare for eminent domain hearing
Posted by lumi at June 1, 2010 6:47 AM