Frustrated by stubborn Coney Island landowners, the de Blasio administration plans to seize property under the city’s rarely used power of eminent domain in order to spur long-stalled economic development in the People’s Playground, The Post has learned.
The Parks Department plans to create new amusements and other amenities by grabbing up three vacant beachfront sites through condemnation proceedings — including a 60,000-square-foot tract that once housed the original Thunderbolt roller coaster immortalized in Woody Allen’s 1977 film “Annie Hall,” officials said.
It’s unclear what type of attractions the city wants to bring to these sites, which together total 75,000 square feet and also include smaller tracts off the Boardwalk on West 12th Street and on West 23rd Street.
City officials said they’re turning to eminent domain because they’ve been unable to cut “fair-market” deals with the property owners after exhaustive efforts.
But area business owners said they were stunned by the scheme, which includes using seized land to build new streets and parks that were outlined in a rezoning plan approved in 2009, under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
16 comments:
about time. that area looks like crap
City officials said they’re turning to eminent domain because they’ve been unable to cut “fair-market” deals with the property owners after exhaustive efforts.
And the city's libtard critics call it hyperbole when deBlasio is derided as a communist?
This is America. The owners
do
NOT
want
to
sell.
End of story!
Hope they fight it and countersue.
Boo Hoo. Place has looked like shit for over 40 years. Time for something new. Condemnation? Sounds fine to me.
Declare all of Queens blighted and rezone it for development. Oh wait...
I thought eminent domain was for city needs like railroads, roads, bridges etc.
Hard to see how kiddie rides qualifies as rising to the level of forcing people to leave their land.
Why don't our stupid Mayor build hotels/shelters over their for all our homeless, instead of building them in Jamaica Queens.
The Supreme Court ruled that the city of New London, Connecticut, could condemn fifteen residential properties in order to transfer them to a new private owner. Although the Fifth Amendment only permits the taking of private property for “public use,” the Court concluded that the transfer of condemned land to private parties for “economic development” is constitutional – even if the government cannot prove that the expected development will actually happen. The majority decided that virtually any potential public benefit counts as a public use.
Here it is ten years later, those people in Connecticut had their businesses and homes SEIZED BY THE EVIL FORCES OF AN OVERREACHING GOVERNMENT!
The Government gave them below market value, and with that money they could not buy an equivalent home. By now they are probably in the NYC homeless system.
And what did the government do with the STOLEN/SEIZED land?
NOTHING!!! It is still a vacant, useless mess.
All of you who love SCOTUS decisions - beware the sword has two edges...
Now:
"they’re turning to eminent domain because they’ve been unable to cut “fair-market” deals with the property owners after exhaustive efforts."
You may want to hold onto your real-estate investment until you feel it is the right time to sell, rent, lease or not.
BUT NO, the government has its own plans (actually the politicians & their donors).
So they will just take it.
What happened to Life, Liberty, and the freedom to keep and dispose of the fruits of your labor as you so choose??? Should government force each and every person to give up their property and possessions, regardless of price and value?
"Communist Manifesto 1848 by Karl Heinrich Marx
Rule # 1. Abolition of private property in land and application of all rents of land to public purpose.
Rule # 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels."
This is what you get from the comrade - our mayor, his donors, and a tyrannical bureaucracy and government.
You get the government you deserve!
Oh vey take me back to Russia I no longer know whats worse.
The owners keep those propertys filthy with garbage, litter weeds, dumped sinks and washing machines, tires, dogshit, patches of busted up fence. If you behave like a greedy slumlord you dont deserve to have property. Especially "slum lots" in public view. Those people in New London, Connecticut had nice homes and they were not Jewish so they lost. Yes they that was wrong but that's NOT the case here. Those lots look like sections of the S Bronx during the 1970s.
On the other hand the sick "come and get it" mayor WILL put welfare barracks in it's place. Having 1500 or so "shvartz inner city youth" with no money and nothing to do running around Coney Island and Stillwell station would not be a good idea. NO THANK YOU STUPID COMMUNIST MAYOR !!
BTW I saw the Thunderbolt in the movie "The Warriors" this weekend on TBS never hear of Annie Hall.
Eminent domain = Theft
Who's "you"?
We had 20 years of non-communist republican leadership. For entirety of that time, and along time before it, the owners of these purposefully blighted properties had opportunity to develop it (or do anything at all with it). They chose not to for the same reasons you still see abandoned buildings in Manhattan: "give me my way, or I'll let this lot/building/rat palace sit here in blight". Those Brooklyn developers like Joe Sitt are such emigrants and rebels. They are, really.
It's still funny to see communist chasers on a site that seems to be dedicated to stricter oversight of development. I wonder if anyone else sees the irony.
Keep teaching us, though, Milton Friedman. What was Communist manifesto rule #2: "Conveniently forget the communist stuff when it comes to your own neighborhood?"
bloomberg was not a republican
he ran on their ticket cause the dems didnt want him
"Checking blight" is a noble cause, but that is NOT what eminent domain is meant for!
Democrats own Bloomberg. I have only repeated this a million times here: Bloomberg became "independent" after the 2005 election. Since the city has more democrats than republicans, I say again: Democrats elected Bloomberg.
The Kelo decision is an example of federal crap.
After seizing and clearing the land and turning it over to a hand-picked private developer and the developer walked away. The final cost to New London and Connecticut for the purchase and bulldozing of the formerly privately held property was $78 million. The promised 3,169 new jobs and $1.2 million a year in tax revenues had not materialized. As of 2014 the area remains an empty lot.
If you consider the Coney Island site "blight", then negotiate a deal and buy it. But if the city can take that property by eminent domain and turn it over to a de Blasio crony, then nothing is safe, we might as well be living in Cuba or the Soviet Union.
NOT Cuba, it is wonderful there, best healthcare in the world
The President, Pope & Michael Moore said so...
AFTER KELO NOTHING IS SAFE!
since KELO, 42 states have passed new laws aimed at curbing the abuse of eminent domain for private use. some good, some not so good.
NEW YORK & New Jersey are 2 of the states that did NOTHING
Even though Connecticut is the state that gave us the Kelo case, the General Assembly was the 42nd state to pass eminent domain reform — and the legislation was not worth the wait.
In 2006 the legislature managed to pass a bill that merely creates a property rights ombudsman, and then failed to fill the position for a year.
At the end of the 2007 session, the General Assembly passed Senate Bill 167 with nearly unanimous support. The bill was easy to agree on because it does almost nothing to curb eminent domain abuse in Connecticut. The bill purports to stop condemnations “primarily” for increased tax revenue and requires municipalities to pass approval by a “super-majority.”
Unfortunately, SB 167 offers no substantive property rights protections because when cities are determined to see a project approved, they can easily assert an alternative “primary purpose” for a condemnation and are usually of one mind when it comes to voting. Without stronger eminent domain reform, Connecticut continues to have some of the most broad and easily abused eminent domain laws in the nation.
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