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Sunday, December 25, 2005

Law - Wall Street Journal features losing party in eminent domain suit - Kelo v. City of New London; earlier NY Times report on project status

This feature story, that I read in yesterday's print version of the Wall Street Journal, is available here online today on the Opinion Journal. The headline: "Home for Christmas - Susette Kelo's story: from humble abode to eminent domain." Some quotes:

I'm here to meet with New London's most famous resident since Nathan Hale, the schoolteacher-spy who was hanged by the British in 1776. Susette Kelo's life isn't in jeopardy, but her home is--and her fight to keep it has taken her all the way to the Supreme Court, making her a national celebrity along the way and igniting a nationwide movement to protect private property rights. If June's ruling in Kelo v. City of New London is carried out, this could be Ms. Kelo's last Christmas in the home she loves.

In Kelo, the Supremes interpreted the "takings" clause of the U.S. Constitution to say that local governments have more or less unlimited authority to take private property. For Ms. Kelo, that means that the state-financed New London Development Corp. may seize the house where she's lived for eight years, tear it down, and put up a private development that would include more expensive condominiums and townhouses that would return higher property-tax revenues for the city.

"For public use--for a bridge or a road or a school or a hospital--that's bad enough," says Ms. Kelo over tea at the kitchen table of her little house at 8 East Street in the Fort Trumbull section of the city. "But you add insult to injury if somebody else can live here. That's exactly what they plan on doing here. Making it so somebody else can live here." But "I live on East Street. I live on East Street. Why can't I live here?"

The Journal feature caused me to recall another Kelo story and I pulled it up - from the Nov. 21st NY Times (available here). The headline: "After Eminent Domain Victory, Disputed Project Goes Nowhere." Some quotes:
They have still not moved out. Not Susette Kelo. Not the Derys. Not Byron Athenian or Bill Von Winkle or the others.

Five months after the United States Supreme Court set off a national debate by ruling that the City of New London could seize their property through eminent domain to make way for new private development, no one has been forced to leave.

No bulldozers have arrived to level the last houses still standing, and none are expected soon.

Even though the holdouts lost their case, and the development that would displace them finally seems free to go forward, construction has not begun, and some elements of the project have been effectively paralyzed since the court ruling prompted a political outcry. * * *

[W]ary of public disapproval and challenges from groups like the Institute for Justice, the law firm that represented the holdouts in court, the state and the city have halted plans to evict the remaining residents. Investors are concerned about building on land that some people consider a symbol of property rights. At the same time, contract disputes and financial uncertainty have delayed construction even in areas that have been cleared.

With so many complications, some people are unsure whether the city's initial vision for the property -- a mix of housing, hotel and office space intended to transform part of its riverfront and bolster a declining tax base -- is even realistic anymore.

''Winning took so long,'' said Mayor Jane L. Glover, ''that the plan may not be as viable in 2005 or 2006 or 2007.'' * * *

Pressure to go forward is considerable, even if momentum is not. The state has already invested $73 million on environmental cleanup and sewer and road improvements. Elegant street lamps, intended to illuminate a gentrified new riverfront, instead shine over empty lots where buildings have been leveled but not replaced. * * *

If any construction begins soon, it will happen away from the area where the holdouts remain, said Marty Jones, president of Corcoran Jennison, which has been under contract on the project since 1999.

''We need to have some positive things happening so that every lender and investor I go to doesn't say, 'I want to be 100 miles away from here,' '' Ms. Jones said. ''Eminent domain in Fort Trumbull has been on the front page of every newspaper in the country, and it has not put New London in the most positive light.''

Despite losing in court, the holdouts have gained political leverage, largely through the public relations effort led by the Institute for Justice, Mr. Joplin said.

Scott G. Bullock, a lawyer for the Institute for Justice who argued for the resistant property owners before the Supreme Court, said, ''We might have lost the battle, but the overall war is really going in our favor.''

Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 25, 2005 08:55 AM
Posted to General Law Related