WRECKING BALL EQUALS URBAN RENEWAL

Subject: Did you hear that, Bertha Lewis? (of Acorn/Wrecking Families Party)
Date: 6/29/2005 4:13:50 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: kitchen@hellskitchen.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)


WRECKING BALL EQUALS URBAN RENEWAL
http://www.nypress.com/18/26/pagetwo/newshole2.cfm

It's not every day that we find ourselves muttering "amen" as we read a Supreme Court opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas. In fact, last Friday was the first time it's ever happened.

Last week's historic ruling opens the door to the widespread use of eminent domain on behalf of big, private real estate developers. In Kelo v. New London, the Court deemed that local governments have the right to seize property from one private owner and hand it over to another as long as the new owner plans to use the seized property to foster "economic development." In other words, if you're looking to build a big box retail center, basketball arena, casino or some other mega-project and you can argue that it will create jobs and expand the local tax base, you can pretty much go ahead and seize whatever property you need to make it happen. This land is your land, indeed. �

Most immediately, the 5-4 decision starts the wrecking ball swinging in Fort Trumbull, a shabby residential section of New London, Connecticut, and next-door neighbor to a gleaming $350 million global research center recently built by the Pfizer Corporation. In 1998 the town promised to clear 90 acres and build a hotel, office space and "river walk" alongside the new Viagra mill. They argued that the project was necessary for nothing less than New London's "economic survival."

One hitch: The owners of 15 Fort Trumbull houses refused to leave. Sure, the Fifth Amendment says that the government can seize private property for "public use" as long as "just compensation" is provided. But since when does an erectile dysfunction laboratory count as "public use?" And how do you determine "just compensation" for Wilhelmina Dery, the 87-year-old woman who lives, at least for a few weeks more, in the house where she was born and that her family has owned for more than 100 years?

For New Yorkers who live and work within the "footprint" of Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project, these questions are not academic. Last week's Supreme Court ruling makes it all the more likely those who have not yet succumbed to the intense pressure to sell out will eventually be forced out. They will be required to make way for a 19,000-seat luxury pleasure dome and 19 high-rise towers that will all be owned and operated by one very big, wealthy and well-connected real estate development company. Could this possibly be the sort of "public use" the Founders had in mind when they wrote the constitutional language that enables eminent domain?

Justice Thomas certainly doesn't think so. "I cannot agree," he writes in his dissent, that "a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a public use." Change "Pfizer" to "Forest City Ratner" and Clarence Thomas is talking about Brooklyn.

Poor and minority communities, Thomas notes, have traditionally been hurt most by eminent domain. "The consequences of today's decision are not difficult to predict, and promise to be harmful," Thomas writes. The majority opinion "encourages those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms to victimize the weak." Urban renewal, he bluntly reminds us, was once referred to as "Negro Removal."

Did you hear that, Bertha Lewis?

Volume 18, Issue 26