Posted on 04/03/2007 6:29:03 PM PDT by LdSentinal
Funny thing is my wife worked for Forest City Ratner during the development of the Times building project. Oops! Small world.
No problem — sorry if it’s too much. Small world indeed — if your wife has any inside insight that she cares to share, I’d love to hear it!
Best regards —
She is not a fan of eminent domain, however, Forest City Ratner did develop lots of blighted neighborhoods in NYC and had helped improve those areas for the benefit of all (especially true of the Metrotech building in downtown Brooklyn). While the city benefited by the increase in taxes, building owners in the vicinity also benefited by large jumps in property value created by the new development.
About a third of the area in the vicinity of the proposed Times building was indeed severely blighted by rundown buildings and sex shops. However, other buildings nearby were fine, and some even contained newly renovated student housing that was condemned to make way for the Times building.
So while some property owners who were forced to sell suffered, others saw their property values skyrocket.
The Brooklyn example I cited was particularly stark. These were buildings so run down, and the area so blighted and dangerous with gangs and crime, that the development was a wonderful thing for the minority owned businesses in the immediate area and the adjacent neighborhoods.
So in the Brooklyn example, eminent domain was a boom to the local neighborhood economy and helped lots of minority businesses.
I think a world class city like New York City deserved a renovated Times Square. So I guess in the case of Times Square redevelopment, eminent domain was also a good thing, in my humble opinion.
The high profile eminent domain cases where one property owner is forced to sell so that one developer and the city benefits by improved tax base, is particularly egregious.
But, what about the New York example? Entire neighborhoods of private citizens benefited by increased property values, economic activity and improved city services due to increases to the city treasury.
Thanks for the inside information! Good stuff.
You absolutely make a fair point about blight affecting property values (although sometimes blight is in the eye of the beholder). In my view, the flip side of that is that businesses (especially small businesses) are less likely to invest in a community that has a proven record of disrespect for property rights, because why put time, money and hard work into something that the state can just snatch away on a whim? Long-term, I think that’s fatal to even a large city.
I admittedly take a pretty absolutist stance on stuff like this for fear of the slippery slope. Our mayors here in Pittsburgh have a long, sad history of seizing vital, long-term small businesses and tearing down historic architecture. They end up building a shiny new building and wooing a big retailer, only to see that retailer close shop and abandon the community several years later. The site of a gorgeous old building called the Jenkins Arcade is now a parking lot because one of our past mayors lost the big retailer deal before the shiny new building was even built. Sigh. And those small businesses never come back — they relocate somewhere safer.
On the other hand, we currently have a notorious drug bar in our otherwise beautiful and historic market square, and a strip club right in the middle of a district that the city is trying to revitalize. I find myself very torn in cases like that. :)
It’s the abuses of that tool that make many worry that government has become too big and concerned only with the bottom line. It certainly didn’t help that the supreme court ruled as they did in Kelo. I understand your uneasiness with the issue.
However, eminent domain doesn’t arouse the passions of conservatives nearly as much as abortion does. And on that point, Mr. Giuliani may have just made a fatal mistake when he said recently that the Constitution protects the right of poor women to receive taxpayer funded abortions. Oops. Big mistake.
Best regards to you.
And to you — thanks to you and your wife for a great conversation!
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