Remember the Supreme Court decision Kelo vs. New London? When it ruled that, yes, a city can take private property under eminent domain to benefit private developers?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1575546One of those beneficiaries was going to be Pfizer who recently announced that it is abandoning its property there.
Here is ABC report:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=9092345Pfizer Move a New Blow to Conn. City in Land Fight
With Pfizer leaving, residents of Conn. city say fight over waterfront land was unnecessary
By ERIC TUCKER
The Associated Press
NEW LONDON, Conn.
After drug giant Pfizer Inc. announced that it was opening a new research center here, city officials aggressively moved to acquire surrounding land for an economic development project — triggering an epic fight over eminent domain that reached the U.S. Supreme Court and ended with residents being forced from their homes. But the land where the homes once stood has remained undeveloped, and the community took another hit last week when Pfizer, a major economic engine in the city and its largest taxpayer, announced plans to close the $350 million research center and relocate about 1,500 jobs to nearby Groton. Now some angry and befuddled current and former residents, including some who lost their homes, say the drug company's announcement reaffirms their conviction that the city never needed to pick the property rights fight in the first place. If they have lost, they say, then so apparently has the city.
(snip)
Pfizer's pharmaceutical research center, which opened in 2001, was a catalyst for a planned multimillion-dollar private development that was to include residential, hotel conference, research and development space and a new state park. City officials decided they needed 90 acres adjacent to the Pfizer center to complement the building. Many homeowners in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood sold to accommodate the wrecking crews, but seven fought the city all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 in 2005 that cities could use eminent domain to take property for private development. Efforts to develop the area have since faltered as one firm that planned to develop nearly the entire northern half of the Fort Trumbull peninsula failed to secure financing, while backers halted fundraising for a proposed $60 million Coast Guard museum.
Pfizer said in a statement that eminent domain played no part in the building's development since it was constructed on industrial brown field. The company said it worked with the state to clean up the polluted site, formerly an abandoned mill and scrap yard, and had no stake in the court case or in the land the city seized for private development. As for pulling out of New London, the company says it's consolidating following its recent merger with Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.
(snip)
John Brooks, executive director of the New London Development Corporation, acknowledged the Pfizer project was a catalyst for the broader economic development proposal but stressed that the projects were separate. He said he still believed the land would be put to use and blamed the recession for the delay. Though the promised residential housing, office space, hotel and other private development have stalled, Brooks said there have been public infrastructure improvements on the property as well as a new 16-acre state park. He said only one third of the 90 acres still remains to be developed.
(snip)
Dana Berliner, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice who represented the homeowners, said the episode underscores why local governments should not take "risky" and "inadvisable" business deals involving their own residents. The institute says more than 40 states have taken steps to better protect property owners from seizures by eminent domain.
(snip)
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