Democratic State Senator Bill Perkins, in a recent speech at a Harlem church, called eminent domain "a corruption of democracy" and a "gun to the community's head".The event featured an eminent domain panel that included attorney Norman Siegel, Daniel Goldstein of DDDB and Amy Lavine of Albany Law School.
They were preaching to the choir: the people who came out are fighting Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, the Willets Point redevelopment in Queens and the Columbia takeover of Manhattanville.
Perkins went into action a couple of weeks ago after the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court delivered a win to Manhattanville property owners who held out against the Empire State Development Corporation, which had condemned their land for a new Columbia campus.
Perkins has called for a moratorium on eminent domain on behalf of private developers pending the appointment of a commission to review eminent domain law, calling eminent domain reform a "very, very important movement".
Perkins's website features a tongue-in-cheek petition seeking to have Michael Bloomberg's Upper East Side mansion declared "blighted". The community, the petition says, has conducted its own study and found Mayor Michael Bloomberg's mansion "blighted, underutilized, of limited public purpose and very, very old". It seeks to have the New York State Empire State Development Corporation take the mansion to provide 500 units of affordable housing.
Perkins, coming off of a successful effort to impose stricter oversight of public authorities, has scheduled a hearing on eminent domain in Harlem on January 5 and plans other hearings around the state.
Governor David Paterson said he thought that the EDC and Columbia had done Manhattanville the right way.
The article from the New York Observer.
More from the New York Post.
Perkins's website features a tongue-in-cheek petition seeking to have Michael Bloomberg's Upper East Side mansion declared "blighted". The community, the petition says, has conducted its own study and found Mayor Michael Bloomberg's mansion "blighted, underutilized, of limited public purpose and very, very old". It seeks to have the New York State Empire State Development Corporation take the mansion to provide 500 units of affordable housing.
Perkins, coming off of a successful effort to impose stricter oversight of public authorities, has scheduled a hearing on eminent domain in Harlem on January 5 and plans other hearings around the state.
Governor David Paterson said he thought that the EDC and Columbia had done Manhattanville the right way.
The article from the New York Observer.
More from the New York Post.
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