All Articles Tagged "eminent domain"
Digging for African-American Roots in Central Park
(New York Times) — For more than a decade, anthropologists and historians pieced together the history of a short-lived African-American community that was snuffed out in the 1850s by the creation of Central Park. They combed vital records and tax documents, scanned parkland using radar and studied soil borings. But because the vestiges of the community were buried beneath the park, the leaders of the Institute for the Exploration of Seneca Village History — a consortium of three professors from City College, Barnard College and New York University — were kept from doing the one thing that would open a window onto the daily existence of the some 260 residents: digging. That all changed eight weeks ago, after they won permission from the city to excavate in an area of the park near 85th Street and Central Park West.
Atlantic Yards Arena Takes Shape, but Protests Carry On
(New York Times) — Steel beams arc high into the Brooklyn sky, flanked by five cranes that rise from a deep, divisive hole in the ground. Sections of prefabricated concrete seat platforms and concourses — the guts of every sports arena since Roman times — are now in place. Trucks rumble through the hot, dusty corner of the 22-acre site known as Atlantic Yards. There, shoehorned into one of the busiest intersections in Brooklyn, the arena for the New Jersey Nets is finally taking shape. After eight years of delays — involving eminent domain lawsuits, neighborhood protests, financial setbacks, the removal of its world-renowned architect to cut costs and the enlisting of a Russian oligarch to cover them — the arena, the site’s first building out of 17, is on track to open in September 2012.
City Plans to Raze Portion of Plagued Southeast Shopping Center
(Washington Examiner) — The District expects to demolish at least a portion of a blighted shopping center in Southeast as early as the fall as it nears the end of its decades-long mission to seize the property by eminent domain. A city jury awarded a Skyland Shopping Center landowner $1.85 million for a roughly 7-acre portion of the 18.5-acre site at the intersection of Good Hope Road and Alabama Avenue. The land is undeveloped and sits at the edges of the strip mall’s massive parking lot. Property owners Mary Greene and the Ealing Corp. had asked for $9.8 million from the city. The award, while still appealable, will at least for now give the city enough land to begin the revitalization effort it first announced during Marion Barry’s administration.
Curtain to Fall on Last Atlantic Yards Holdouts
(Crain’s) — By May 17, all the people that live in or run businesses in the Atlantic Yards’ footprint will be evicted, if the Empire State Development Corp. has its way.
On Wednesday, the ESDC will ask Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Abraham Gerges to sign an order that will remove all occupants in the area where Forest City Ratner is slated to build a massive commercial, residential and retail project anchored by an 18,000-seat arena for the Nets on a 22-acre site. There are currently 32 residential occupants and 3 businesses remaining on the property acquired by the ESDC. Freddie’s Bar on Dean Street, which hosted countless protests against the project over the last several years, will finally close its doors on April 30.
