TalB

The eminent domain game is rigged
The eminent domain game is rigged

BY NICK SPRAYREGEN

Thursday, September 18th 2008, 4:00 AM

Sadly for all New Yorkers, our state is the most egregious perpetrator of eminent domain abuse in our country. I should know since for the last four years I have battled the state and Columbia University - a private entity - in their threatened use of eminent domain. Columbia wants my land in West Harlem to assist the school in a planned 17-acre expansion in the Manhattanville neighborhood.

The university is in league with the state, and together they are threatening to wield this extraordinary power to take away a business my family has built over decades.

This is dead wrong.

Defenders of the system say eminent domain is necessary to allow for big economic development and housing projects to go forward. They liken today's use of eminent domain to yesterday's use, when property was condemned for the building of roads, fire houses and public libraries. Today, however, what the practice really amounts to is the state playing favorites, choosing one private interest over another - and abusing a government power that should only be wielded in the most limited of circumstances.

The game is rigged, in multiple ways.

Start with how New York paves the way for private property to be condemned using eminent domain. In order to take a house or a business or a piece of land (and, yes, pay "fair market" value to the owner in return), the state must first make a determination that the area in question is "blighted."

But what makes an area blighted? Nothing but the arbitrary determination of the state's Empire State Development Corp.

The ESDC does not have any written standards as to what constitutes blight - nor any written standards for how such alleged conditions should be evaluated. As a result, findings of blight allow for endless discretion. That results in discriminatory treatment. I believe that the blight statutes are therefore a violation of due process guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

In the case of West Harlem, the blight study is corrupted further because it conveniently ignores the role of Columbia. The university owns 80% of the land in Manhattanville. Columbia has had direct and indirect roles in creating, magnifying and ignoring poor conditions in their own buildings. This is not an allegation. It is completely documented. Columbia could therefore wind up being the sole beneficiary of eminent domain despite its own "dirty hands." This is wrong.

And here's the most frustrating part of all. After an area is designated as blighted and condemnation proceedings are announced, the person whose property is being condemned has no power - zero - to challenge the condemnation in a trial court. This makes eminent domain proceedings in New York different from those in every other state that I am aware of. Instead, property owners are required to file the lawsuit at an appellate court - where no witnesses are allowed, there is no cross-examination, there is no opportunity to raise new evidence and there is no right to discovery. Adding insult to injury, one's attorney is allowed, at most, 10 minutes to speak to the judge. This is inherently unfair.

Indeed, the entire eminent domain process works backward. Instead of a town or city first coming up with a comprehensive plan that involves community input and is shaped and formed through a deliberative and democratic process (with the developer only chosen by competitive bidding at the end), large, politically connected private entities typically go straight to the municipality with a plan that they themselves have hatched. As a result, these plans principally benefit a developer, not the people.

In the case of the threatened use of eminent domain in West Harlem, the entire plan, from start to finish, has been orchestrated by Columbia for its own benefit. It is at its core a private development. And that's particularly ethically wrong because in this case, there was a truly comprehensive plan on the table - one that had been carefully prepared and developed by the entire community and thus represented the true wishes of the people. That plan, written by Community Board 9, was ignored. And of course it involved no eminent domain.

New York's eminent domain process is fundamentally unfair. The state's abuse of these powers has run amok. The law must be changed if private property - the people's property - is to be respected.

Sprayregen is the president of Tuck-It-Away Self Storage in West Harlem.

__________________
I have respected your views, so I expect you to do the same for me.

TalB

We need eminent domain to keep New York City growing
We need eminent domain to keep New York City growing

BY KATHRYN WILDE

Thursday, September 18th 2008, 4:00 AM

New York is facing some tough economic times. Construction is slowing, financial services firms are shrinking and real estate markets are softening. Government is running on empty. As we ask where jobs and economic growth will come from in the next few years, there are not many easy answers.

One thing is for sure. State and city government will need to use every means at their disposal to attract private investment and encourage development. Eminent domain - the power to take ownership of private property and assemble sites for construction of projects that will serve a public purpose - is one of those powers. New York has a pipeline of important projects that can go forward with the help of eminent domain.

Eminent domain has been required for most of our large public projects - from Lincoln Center, Times Square and downtown Brooklyn to affordable housing throughout the five boroughs. Without eminent domain, New York and other older urban centers could not have kept pace with demands for upgraded infrastructure, modern office facilities and increased housing stock.

Unfortunately, eminent domain is under attack. Property rights advocates believe it is unconstitutional to condemn private property for almost any purpose. Anti-development groups claim that it allows big government to collude with rich developers to override the interests of the little guy. Bills have been proposed in the state Legislature and the City Council that would limit the use of eminent domain and slow down economic development in New York at the worst possible point in the economic cycle.

Opponents of Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn have gone all the way to the Supreme Court to stop the state from accommodating a project that will bring thousands of jobs, housing and a new Nets basketball arena. This summer, the opposition focus shifted to thwarting the city's effort to pave the way for cleaning up and turning contaminated land in Willets Point, Queens, into a major new residential and commercial center.

And in northern Manhattan, a handful of property owners are threatening court action to stop the state from helping to assemble a site for a $6 billion investment in new educational facilities by Columbia University. We cannot afford to let this happen.

It is not as though these property owners are being left empty-handed. Far from it. Those trying to redevelop the property are required by law to offer them "fair market" rates for their land - and often bend over backward to go further, seeking to negotiate the best possible deal above and beyond that obligation. But in some cases, the holdouts refuse nonetheless.

Although Columbia is a private, nonprofit institution, it serves a clear public purpose that justifies the use of eminent domain. Columbia employs some 14,000 people, delivering education, health care and research that contribute billions to the local economy. Its current campus is inadequate for a 21st-century, world-class institution. It must expand and modernize or face inevitable decline.

Columbia's new 17-acre campus will accommodate scientific research that can propel New York's future growth in industries like biotech and clean tech. It will include a variety of projects to benefit the immediate community - from a new secondary school for math, science and engineering to the creation of affordable housing.

Columbia will pay the costs of site assemblage, but needs state intervention because a few commercial property owners refuse to sell essential parcels of land at fair market rates. The project has completed five years of public planning, review and approvals. The last step is approval by the Empire State Development Corp., which must authorize the use of eminent domain.

The building of the Manhattanville campus can begin next spring, at a time when there is likely to be a desperate need for the jobs and economic activity that it will provide. The state should move quickly to approve the plan and allow this important project to move forward.

And we should applaud the fact that the government does not have to use precious tax dollars to bring this project to fruition, but simply the power the Constitution has created to ensure that individuals cannot defy the public interest.

Wylde is president of the Partnership for New York City, a network of business leaders dedicated to enhancing the economy of the five boroughs of New York City.

__________________
I have respected your views, so I expect you to do the same for me.

TalB

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/ny...l?ref=nyregion
2 Gas Stations, and a Family’s Resolve, Confront Columbia Expansion Plan

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: September 20, 2008


Rob Bennett for The New York Times

Gurnam Singh, Parminder Kaur and Amar Kaur, left to right, say their two gas stations represent their life’s work, and characterize Columbia’s offers to buy them out as being inadequate.

The two gas stations sit at the western end of 125th Street in Manhattan, anonymous amid rows of vacant factories and lines of cars edging toward the highway.

Even for service stations, they are modest: One has peeling green paint; the second, chipped red paint and an attached car wash. Each has only a few pumps.

But for Gurnam Singh, the businesses represent a quarter-century of hard work.

The state, however, is poised to seize the stations to make way for a Columbia University expansion using eminent domain — a concept that Mr. Singh, a 47-year-old Indian immigrant, was barely familiar with until a few years ago.

“This is everything I have,” Mr. Singh said, standing in front of one of the gas stations.

Columbia plans to build a new $6.3 billion campus in the industrial neighborhood of Manhattanville over 25 years, tearing down all but two of the existing buildings in a 17-acre area and replacing them with glass-walled high rises for the university’s cramped science, arts and business schools.

For the past several years, the university has bought land from dozens of property owners and helped them find alternate sites for their businesses. Mr. Singh and Nicholas Sprayregen — who owns four buildings in the area as part of his Tuck-It-Away moving and storage business — are the final holdouts. There have been intermittent negotiations between Columbia and the two property owners.

In July, the Empire State Development Corporation declared the area blighted, a step toward forcing property owners to sell their land as part of eminent domain proceedings. A ruling by the development corporation’s board could come as soon as December.

The land battle is one of many struggles playing out across Harlem, an area changing fast as new businesses move in and prices rise, threatening to push out some of the longtime residents.

While Mr. Sprayregen has been the public face of the opposition to Columbia — holding press conferences and pledging to take the case to the United States Supreme Court — Mr. Singh has not previously spoken publicly.

But Mr. Singh and his family agreed to an interview this month, saying they had become angered by the university’s tactics. They said Columbia had relentlessly pressured them to sell their property and that university representatives had threatened them.

Mr. Singh said the realization that he might lose his gas stations had prompted him to go to the hospital in January for exhaustion. In the end, he stayed for 18 days, the family said. And one morning a few months ago, Mr. Singh’s wife, Parminder Kaur, 38, who handles the couple’s business affairs, discovered blisters on her face and scalp. A doctor told her she had stress-related shingles.

Ms. Kaur said the service stations were as dear to her as loved ones. “I don’t want to sell them for any amount of money,” she said. “This business is like part of my family. Money is not everything. You don’t sell your children.”

While the university will not say how much money it has offered Mr. Singh to move, the family said that years of negotiations have left them frustrated and embittered.

They said that one of Columbia’s proposals was to pay them more than $1 million and to find them a site in Jamaica, Queens. The family says that the figure is far too low, however, and that the location is not busy enough.

“These properties are the bread and butter for our family,” said Amar Kaur, 16, Ms. Kaur’s daughter. “If we lose this, it would be equivalent to losing everything we have in our lives. My parents have put blood, sweat, tears and time for the past 25-plus years to be where we are at in society today.”

The family said that one Columbia official in particular, Philip Silverman, the university’s vice president for real estate, had been “disrespectful” toward them. They said Mr. Silverman told them the state would simply take their property if they refused to sell.

“He’s treating me like, ‘This is an Indian family — we don’t know anything,’ ” Mr. Singh said.

Columbia denied the allegation, and Mr. Silverman did not return a call seeking comment.

“We reject completely the characterizations of our negotiations, and to be even clearer, though we normally do not discuss our negotiations in any form, we have, in fact, offered a range of specific sites including a site in the immediate vicinity of the current gas stations,” La-Verna J. Fountain, the university’s associate vice president for construction, business services and communications, said in a statement.

That site, however, would only give Mr. Singh an option to lease the new property instead of buying it, because the land would eventually be used for the second phase of Columbia’s expansion.

Ms. Fountain said the university had dealt fairly with each of the businesses it had had discussions with in Manhattanville during the past several years.

“Columbia University has successfully negotiated the acquisition of over three dozen properties in five years within the old Manhattanville manufacturing area,” Ms. Fountain said. “Many of those who sold their properties to Columbia have testified at public hearings about Columbia’s fairness and ongoing commitment to resolutions supportive of sellers’ continuing business and employment interests in New York. Columbia has a longstanding policy of not commenting on negotiations, though it is worth noting that the remaining two business owners are being officially represented by legal counsel in their discussions with the university.”

Mr. Singh came to New York from Punjab in northwestern India in 1981, following his older brother, Puramjit Singh. He washed dishes in a Queens restaurant before the two pooled their money, buying a gas station in Queens and two others in Manhattanville. He worked days; his brother worked nights.

At the time, crime in the area was high, and many drivers took their chances with an empty tank rather than stop at the Singhs’ stations, which were robbed at gunpoint with regularity, Mr. Singh said.

“Everybody was scared to come here,” he said. “There were many, many holdups. What can I do? I risk my life all the time.”

In the early 1990s, his brother was fatally shot during an armed robbery at the Queens gas station.

Mr. Singh continued the business, and married Ms. Kaur, who was his brother’s wife. They sold the Queens service station.

As the Manhattanville neighborhood improved, Mr. Singh and Ms. Kaur managed to make a good living from the service stations, located in an old, industrial stretch near where drivers enter and exit the Henry Hudson Parkway. The family has bought a home in Astoria, Queens, and plans to send Amar, Mr. Singh’s stepdaughter, to medical school.

The family, however, said Columbia’s expansion plans had stalled plans to upgrade the stations, because banks are unwilling to offer loans to businesses that might be seized via eminent domain.

“They are a prime example of the American dream,” said Mr. Sprayregen, who owns a storage building that abuts one of the service stations. “It would be a terrible signal to other immigrants who look at America as a golden beacon if someone could lose everything they’ve worked for because someone more powerful covets their property.”

__________________
I have respected your views, so I expect you to do the same for me.

TalB

Queens pols see Mayor Bloomberg pressing for support on Willets Point
Queens pols see Mayor Bloomberg pressing for support on Willets Point

BY JOHN LAUINGER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Sunday, September 21st 2008, 6:55 PM

For seven years, Councilman Tony Avella (D-Bayside) requested a meeting with the city Economic Development Corp. president to discuss traffic congestion caused by the College Point Corporate Park.

And for seven years, the agency refused.

But the agency came calling last week - yet all its president, Seth Pinsky, wanted to talk about was whether Avella would support Mayor Bloomberg's controversial plan to develop Willets Point.

With the City Council set to take a make-or-break vote on the project in November, some members of Queens' Council delegation say the administration is starting a full-court press for support.

"The very fact that the president met with me is an indication they are really putting on pressure," said Avella, an opponent of the project.

A staffer for another Queens Council member said the agency has been calling every two weeks asking for sit-downs - even though two meetings have already taken place.

"They are really lobbying pretty hard," the staffer said, noting that meetings are now being offered with top administration officials. "They are essentially bringing out the big guns."

In a letter to the administration last month, 32 of 51 Council members - including nine of Queens' 13 representatives - said Bloomberg's plan has a "doomed fate" unless eminent domain is taken off the table.

Avella said Pinsky gave him no reassurances that eminent domain would not be used. Avella added that Pinsky said "five or six" Willets Point businesses would be relocated to the College Point Corporate Park and that others would be spread out throughout properties under the city's control.

Last week, the agency announced its fifth property acquisition - 44,500 square-feet owned by MA Realty. Still, the city controls only a fraction of the 62-acre industrial zone.

Agency officials would not comment on claims of hard-charging lobbying.

"The administration doesn't have to talk eminent domain," said Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing). "It's in the best interest of everybody for the administration to make progress to the point where eminent domain can be taken off the table."

jlauinger@nydailynews.com

__________________
I have respected your views, so I expect you to do the same for me.

TalB

Showdown coming over Willets Point
Showdown coming over Willets Point

BY JOHN LAUINGER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, September 25th 2008, 1:56 AM


Koester for News

Despite numerous protests over Willets Point plan, the project was approved by the Planning Commission and now goes to the City Council.

The controversial plan to turn Willets Point into a glitzy megadevelopment got the green light Wednesday from the City Planning Commission, setting the stage for a final showdown in the City Council.

The potential for the city to use eminent domain to acquire private land in the gritty industrial zone is expected to fuel fierce debate in the Council, which now has 60 days to cast a make-or-break vote on the project.

Last month, 32 of 51 Council members signed a letter to the Bloomberg administration stating the project has "a doomed fate" unless the mayor takes "eminent domain off the table."

Mayor Bloomberg hailed Wednesday's approval and was quick to put pressure on the Council to support the project. He said it would turn contaminated industrial land into an economic boon, with new housing, stores, a hotel and convention center and more than 5,000 permanent jobs.

"This plan must go forward," Bloomberg said, noting he is confident the Council will "act to create new economic opportunities for all Queens residents."

The commission voted 11-1 in favor of the plan, offering only minor modifications. The only opposing vote came from Commissioner Karen Phillips, appointed in 2002 by Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, herself a vocal critic of Bloomberg's Willets Point vision.

In other action Wednesday, the commission also approved the Hunters Point South project, a mixed-use community with 5,000 residential units planned for the East River waterfront. That plan also heads to the Council for a final vote.

Councilman Hiram Monserrate (D-Jackson Heights), who has led opposition to the Willets Point plan, called the Planning Commission's vote a "rubber stamp."

He faulted the commission - and the administration - for ignoring concerns of the Council majority, who want eminent domain off the table, more affordable housing and a relocation plan for the 260 businesses at the so-called Iron Triangle.

"The City Planning Commission's vote is further proof that the administration is more interested in steamrolling this process," said Monserrate, whose district includes Willets Point.

The vote comes a day after Bloomberg announced deep budget cuts for all city agencies, including $94.7 million from the NYPD and $185.4 million from the Education Department in the current fiscal year.

Given the troubling economic forecast, Jake Bono, whose family has operated a sawdust supply company at Willets Point for 75 years, said it is "ludicrous" for the city to spend money redeveloping a thriving industrial area.

"When they look to cut the budget, they don't even look to a pie-in-the-sky idea at Willets Point to cut the money," he said. "They go and try to take it from the teachers, the policemen, the firemen."

jlauinger@nydailynews.com

__________________
I have respected your views, so I expect you to do the same for me.