The Times on Columbia
Posted on December 14th, 2009 in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
Sunday’s NYT editorialized against the court decision that denied the state of New York the right to use eminent domain in support of Columbia’s Manhattanville expansion.
The decision is completely out of step with eminent domain law, including a recent 6-to-1 decision from the New York State Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. That court ruled that Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards, a commercial development, can use eminent domain to secure land to build new housing and a basketball arena for the Nets. That was the right decision, and the case for Columbia is even stronger.
The civic purpose in the Columbia expansion is clear, given the contributions it would make to education, the job market and community life. The Empire State Development Corporation also made a thoroughly defensible decision that eminent domain was appropriate given the blighted condition of the land at issue, between 125th and 133rd Streets near the Hudson River.
Funnily enough, given my sympathies towards Columbia’s expansion, I find myself unimpressed by the Times’ op-ed, which doesn’t really engage with the issues at stake, issues debated here on this blog. Though this ruling is inconsistent with the Atlantic Yards decision, that ruling was pretty controversial. And the question of blight—or at least, how the conclusion that the area is blighted was arrived at—is murkier than the Times makes it out to be.
(I think the area is blighted, but suspect that the way the state and Columbia went about establishing this was rigged.)
Incidentally, there was a protest against the Manhattanville Project on Saturday. The Columbia Spectator reported that the rally drew 50 people. I happened to drive by it a couple times (more of the DMV odyssey) and would guess more like 25. None of those protestors (that I saw) was African-American—which is not to say that locals support Manhattanville (or not), but rather to say that you can round up a coupla dozen Columbia students to protest anything if you tell them it’ll hurt Columbia.
4 Responses
12/14/2009 4:24 pm
Given the Times’s use of eminent domain to partner with Ratner to build their headquarters in Times Square, what would you expect them to say?
12/14/2009 4:58 pm
I’d forgotten that. Good point.
12/14/2009 5:48 pm
This is not the first time the Times has written one of these editorials and it probably won’t be the last. The fact that they don’t disclose their obvious conflict of interest on the subject of eminent domain is disgraceful.
12/15/2009 1:47 pm
Puh-lease, so you were expecting better from the Times??? The integrity of the newspaper has sunk so low that before long it will be something that will rightfully take its place in a supermarket checkout aisle with the other “newspapers”.
The paper has become so politicized over the last 5-10 years that it is hard to know what portion of the content to really take seriously. Have you noticed how few dead bodies have appeared on A-1 since Obama became president?