Land Wrestled Away From Screwed Over Homeowners In New London Eminent Domain Fight To Remain Undeveloped As Corp. Giant Announces Plans To Bolt City

From an op-ed column in The Connecticut Post:

• In a country where private property is sacred, the government's right to seize land for its own devices will always be contentious. Done in the service of building a school or a hospital, it can be defensible. Taking people's homes for the nebulous "public good" of economic development is deplorable.

• In a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the residents of New London fought back against such folly. When the drug company Pfizer announced in 2001 it was opening a new research center in that city, officials began the process of acquiring nearby land for an accompanying development project. Homeowners who were to be forced out said "no." The residents lost that case, as the Supreme Court four years later ruled the government had the right to take their homes and turn the land over to a private developer,(1) all because the plan was supposed to, someday, bring jobs and tax dollars to the struggling community. It was a bad decision then and only looks worse in retrospect.

• The news now is that Pfizer is leaving New London, closing its facility and moving its work up the street to Groton. All the grand development plans, which weren't progressing in any event, have now been shelved for good. Where people's homes once stood, only weeds grow.

For more, see Lessons learned on eminent domain.

See also:

• The Associated Press: Pfizer move a new blow to Conn. city in land fight,
• The Boston Globe: Tax breaks: New London gets stiffed,
• The New York Times: Pfizer to Leave City That Won Land-Use Case: (From the edge of the Thames River in New London, Conn., Michael Cristofaro surveyed the empty acres where his parents’ neighborhood had stood, before it became the crux of an epic battle over eminent domain. “Look what they did,” Mr. Cristofaro said on Thursday. "They stole our home for economic development. It was all for Pfizer, and now they get up and walk away”).

(1) Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005).