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Photograph of Manhattanville by Mira (on the wall) on Flickr
Unsurprisingly, the state agency the oversees development declared a 17-acre area eyed by Columbia University was "blighted", opening the door for the state to use eminent domain to seize properties for Columbia's grand Manhattanville expansion plan.
The school owns most of the 17 acres, but there are still a few holdouts who are promising go to court over the matter. A lawyer for the other owners, Norman Siegel, said, "The battle lines have been drawn." And one resident and former community board member told the Columbia Spectator, “It’s never been blighted. It’s an industrial area … Any semblance of blight is strictly on the properties owned by Columbia University."
Columbia's controversial plan was approved by the City Planning Agency last fall.
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"Blight" has always had one and only one true definition: "A condition which effects neighborhoods where development potential is high, but is inhabited primarily by poor, often minority residents. This condition thereby necessitates government intervention to expel the poor for the purposes of granting the land to development interests so that said development interests can make a lot of fucking money."
Eminent domain = theft, pure and simple.
Eminent domain used wrongly MAY equal theft. In any case, it's a basic tenet of eminent domain that people are compensated for what's taken. Certainly, saying "eminent domain = theft" is an oversimplification.
you might want to learn something about eminent domain before equating it with theft.
Blight, one of Robert Moses' favourite words!
Eminent Domain : Manifest Destiny
How about "Land Grab"? Does that ring a bell with you Lawyer Boy?
"Blighted' was also used by Ratner to describe the Atlantic Yards area. The term is now lingua franca among developers to describe any area not full of yuppies, high rise condos and Starbucks.
www.forgotten-ny.com
(coming back soon)
Gotta love eminent domain abuse...or the government will take your home or business and give it to a private developer.
Eminent Domain = Globalization (Bloomy loves him some Globalization :))
Blighted? There are trees in that picture! How can an area be blighted if you can see beautiful trees?! Too bad the picture attached to this article isn't even of the area in question; otherwise we may have been able to judge for ourselves.
Charlie Rangel is the only blight in that area.
not a huge fan of ED here (no, not Erectile Dysfunction--well...) but i think most folks here are forgetting that those who own properties targeted for "domaining" are compensated for the cost of their property. is it ideal? is it more than market rate? no, but it's not like these folks walk away empy handed. not to say that there aren't hidden emotional and historical costs.
i also find it hard to believe that these cases will be successful in overturning Kelo v. New London, but maybe I'm wrong.
Some of you need to actually walk through this area to judge. It's almost entirely abandoned, boarded up buildings. I realize part of that is Columbia's fault, but it's their only choice given that unboarded windows will just give quarters to criminals and drug users and invite lawsuits. (I was doing heroin in your building, which invited me in because it wasn't boarded very well, so I broke in, and then I cut myself on some glass that I broke and now I'm suing you.) Very, very few people live there, and there's no real reason for the police to patrol that area right now. Eminent domain rubs me the wrong way, but this area is total crap. If it's not blighted, I don't know what is. I just hope I can move out (I live across the street) before the jackhammering starts.
As far as I understand Columbia owns all but 2 buildings necessary to move forward with their plans. What are these owners holding out for? The last owner that sold is getting a new building built for her in a better location, and they are even moving her old building's facade for her.
Columbia's plan will greatly improve the area.
They should've just bought the Grant and Manhattanville housing projects from the City.
Instead they'll be putting students and faculty right up next to them.
It's not just about the 17 acres, it's about all of the people in surrounding neighborhoods who will be priced out within a few years. Certainly in my building, which overlooks the future campus, few families who moved in more than a year or two ago will be able to afford it very soon.
Oh, and I walk through it regularly and see very little that would qualify as blight. Camarilla's portrait of Manhattanville as "almost entirely abandoned, boarded up buildings" is a fallacy.
I don't know what parts of the expansion area you're walking through, but 129th, 130th, and 131st are dreary, dirty, broken sidewalks, boarded, and mostly empty.
Hey! I can see my apartment in that picture! Too bad I do in fact have to move out at the end of August because landlords in the area are already starting to anticipate the Columbia expansion and are raising rents by insane amounts. That is, raising the rents for apartments in buildings that won't be destroyed.
I guess it's like they say, Camarilla, ignorance is bliss. Maybe we could take a walk around the neighborhood together. We'll have breakfast at Floridita, lunch at Dinosaur BBQ, and dinner at Covo.