Queens Crap scored a copy of the letter Council members opposed to the Willets Point redevelopment plan sent to City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden yesterday afternoon. The missive says, in part:
We write to share with you our absolute opposition to the current Willets Point Development Plan. The project that comes before the Department Read More
The state’s main development agency, the Empire State Development Corporation, kicked off the public process for eminent domain for Columbia University’s 17-acre West Harlem expansion today, starting a final chapter in the approvals for the contentious $7 billion initiative.
In announcing the process, ESDC President Avi Schick unveiled two unexpected nuggets of news surrounding the Read More
Just when news started to slow for the summer on the development front, New York’s Empire State Development Corporation dropped this bombshell in the agenda for its monthly meeting [PDF]: Columbia University "Land Use Improvement Project and Civic Project Findings."
Translation: the state will unveil the blight study, the first step in the use Read More
Earlier this month, in the brief few-day period when only one governor was embroiled in a sex scandal, Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez introduced a bill to use eminent domain to take pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s approximately 15-acre manufacturing plant site in East Williamsburg and turn it into affordable housing (he’s talked about this previously). Read More
As Pfizer seeks to sell its 15-acre plant site in Williamsburg to a private developer, Assemblyman Vito Lopez, the chairman of the Assembly’s housing committee, is pressing the pharma giant on affordable housing.
Mr. Lopez, also the chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, has been circulating a draft bill to acquire the Read More
Opponents of Atlantic Yards knew from the beginning that getting their eminent domain case to the Supreme Court was going to take a lot of motions and counter-motions, appearances and appeals. This morning, they struggled to get even the first toehold for their case by arguing in federal appeals court that they should get Read More
Columbia University announced today that it will not seek to take over people’s homes through eminent domain, a huge step in addressing one of the most controversial aspects of its expansion into West Harlem.
“Columbia University will not ask the state to invoke eminent domain to evict tenants living in these 132 residential Read More
Finally! It seems that Columbia University, after talking about its Manhattanville expansion for almost five years now, has got its act together and is taking the plunge. The land-use review process is expected to begin as soon as Monday, which means that in seven months the City Council will vote it up or down--no ifs, Read More
