Nearly all the condemnees remaining in seven properties in the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park footprint have left or have agreed to leave, months after the state formally took title to their property.
But not quite all, and that made for some heated exchanges at a hearing last Thursday, 1/28/15, in front of Justice Wayne Saitta, the Kings County judge who oversees condemnation.
The judge gave one longtime homeowner another month to negotiate an exit, even as the state has suggested he consider "comparable" properties a good distance away, in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights.
But the absence of another former homeowner meant Saitta issued a "writ of assistance" requested by the state to evict condemnees by the end of February.
Barring a settlement or extension in that case, Saitta's decision sets up some unsavory optics: a sheriff could be used to remove a family with a new baby to help a private developer owned mainly by the Shanghai government build a market-rate tower, albeit with a school.
With eminent domain already approved, Saitta in September conveyed ownership the seven properties--which involved eleven separate owners/leaseholders--to Empire State Development (ESD). All are located east of Sixth Avenue, either along Atlantic Avenue or on the 100-foot strip from Dean Street to Pacific Street.
The only remaining properties in the project footprint not yet condemned are those at Site 5, bounded by Flatbush and Fourth avenues and Pacific Street, currently home to P.C. Richard and the very busy sportswear store Modell's, and slated someday to be the site of a 250-foot tower.
3 comments:
People, read this article and get some righteous outrage over this abrogation of property rights.
Campbell is the victim here, being railroaded by eminent domain and the greedy ESD who got their submarket rate appraisal price for city land cum zoning variance won't even get him the replacement house he asked for?
He's a first or second gen. immigrant and a lawyer, telling it like it is:
""I wish to cooperate. My objective remains the same: to be put in the same position,...And if you’re buying the land to build a skyscraper, then the value of my house today has nothing to do with what you ought to pay me.”
Hope he fights it all the way!
I would love to see how these negotiations progress on You Tube.
Yeah. Mamma, let's drive out all of these uppity "Ns" and make room for "White" yuppies. Brooklyn needs to get rid of its "black" eye image. Hmmmmmm.....white settlers drove the Indians off western lands. American (KKK?) history repeats itself led by real estate developers.
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