Tuesday, July 7, 2009
This is "blighted"?
From Newsday:
Two Elmont landlords are suing the Town of Hempstead over its decision to designate their properties as blighted in order to bring in a new supermarket, part of an effort to revitalize the area.
The blight designation paves the way for the town to condemn and acquire 29 small businesses including a discount store, a bar-restaurant and a mini mart.
Attorneys for two of the property owners, Tess Mittman and Jay Oberlander, claim the town-commissioned study that concluded the area was blighted was flawed.
"We think the blight study was biased and based on factual misstatements," A. Thomas Levin of Garden City said. Levin alleges in the petition, filed recently in State Supreme Court, that the consultant who performed the study had an interest in concluding the area was blighted because the same consultant was hired to draw up the subsequent urban renewal plan.
Town officials deny the suit's allegations and said that, after two years of public planning sessions, a majority of residents who attended favored a new supermarket on the site of the former Argo Theater.
Hempstead Supervisor Kate Murray held a press conference Tuesday to say the litigation puts in danger $2.5 million in state grants the town received in 2008 to revitalize the site. She said the lawsuit is "meritless" and will not deter the town from preparing requests for proposals to interested developers. She was joined at the site by six civic leaders who praised the town's efforts.
10 comments:
Abuse of eminent domain is, by now, widespread in this city. That New London decision by the Supreme Court was one of the worst in history.
Haven't you heard? The NWO needed to tweak the eminent domain laws in order to take over the world. This is just the beginning. Is your house next? Don't scoff because this can really happen.
Abuse of eminent domain is, by now, widespread in this city.
Which city? Blog overreach...
This City. Which has served as a model for other cities to do the same.
The entire state is full of pigs who think nothing of taking people's hard earned property from them.
This is why Kelo was up there with West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish and Wickard v. Filburn as the worst decisions ever made by the USSC. In fact, I'd call Wickard v. Filburn "the gutting of the 10th Amendment"
I think the Dred Scott decision or Plessy v. Ferguson were worse Supreme Court decisions, but point taken.
Elmont is in Nassau County, not New York City.
I think everyone knows where Elmont is, especially since it is mentioned in the first line of this post as "Town of Hempstead." But thanks for clarifying. It really doesn't matter whether it be a county in the City or outside, the state law is what allows any municipality in the state to condemn for ridiculous reasons such as this.
I can't comment on the legality of the plan, but this block is blighted.
How so? It looks like a block of thriving businesses housed in a former theater building - as found in every neighborhood in the city, if not the state.
"* Factors to be considered in determining if area is "blighted" and thus subject to urban renewal condemnation include such diverse matters as irregularity of the plots, inadequacy of the streets, diversity of land ownership making assemblage of property difficult, incompatibility of existing mixture of residential and industrial property, overcrowding, incidence of crime, lack of sanitation, drain areas makes on municipal services, fire hazards, traffic congestion and pollution."
What about this property fits the definition of "blight"?
it blighted cuz there's no where to buy a latte
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