eminent domain

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Dr. James J. O'Donnell" <provost () georgetown edu>
Date: June 24, 2005 2:41:32 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: eminent domain



Dave, Thinking about this case it may help to look at some context.   
As it
happens, I worked on the site of that case 35 years ago, a summer at the
Underwater Systems Center the Navy had there -- the "sound lab" where  
they
figured out how to make our subs quiet and to hear theirs.  Have a look:

Go to maps.google.com and input "walbach street, new london, ct", select
the highest zoom, and then switch to the satellite image.  What you  
see is
the 90 acre promontory, cut off from mainland New London by the Amtrak
tracks (dark diag from upper right to lower left).  At the tip of the
promontory is Fort Trumbull, the historic site surrounded by park; the
bulldozed ground is the site of the former sound lab; and the several  
more
square blocks are a mix of waterfront-style industry and old  
residential.
I think one of the remaining houses is a small mom-and-pop grocery  
where I
used to get my very good hot roast beef sandwich at noon -- pop made it,
mom or junior served it.  In a city of 6 square miles, 25,000 people,  
and
limited economic base, it's an obvious place for development.  My  
reading
is that to preserve the block of houses (on Walbach between Smith and  
East
and around onto East) while doing major development would be  
expensive and
cumbersome (assuring their utilities connections, e.g.).  The local
government's real estate database provides this information about a
randomly chosen house on those streets:

http://data.visionappraisal.com/NewLondonCT/findpid.asp? 
iTable=pid&pid=3218

You can click on the photo to enlarge.  My memory says it's a good
representative of one of the bigger houses on the block.  Note overhead
wires suggesting age of utility infrastructure.

The situation seems a near perfectly designed collision of good  
intentions
and aspirations.  I can understand the dismay of the neighbors and  
have a
whisper of direct sympathy from walking those streets long ago, and I
understand the desire of the city fathers in a pretty depressed location
to take advantage of an opportunity.  It's too bad that it had to get to
the Supreme Court:  such quarrels ought to be resolvable locally.  As I
look at the prices on the assessor's database that the properties were
condemned at, I have to wonder if they couldn't have avoided this all by
increasing the amounts offered by an amount less than the legal fees  
that
all by now have incurred in getting to this point.

Jim O'Donnell
Georgetown U.

(Tech-relevant observation:  between Google maps and the public records
online, the newspaper reader far away can now inform him or herself  
about
a story like this in a lot more detail than the news outlets provide.  I
started noodling in this information because I was just curious  
enough to
know what was going on, and none of the news stories, including those in
the New London Day online, got down to specifics.)




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