New London Gives $6.5 Million in Tax Breaks to Developer Planning to Build Housing on Land Condemned in the Kelo Case
Last year, I wrote about how there might finally be some development on the site of the property condemned as a result of the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling in Kelo v. City of New London, the controversial 5-4 decision in which the justices ruled that the condemnation of homes for private “economic development” is permissible under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which only allows takings for a “public use.” In January 2023, Renaissance City Development Association (the private nonprofit development firm formerly known as the New London Development Corporation, which took ownership of the property after it was seized by eminent domain) sold the condemned land to a developer, which was planning to build new housing on it. Up to that point, the only regular users of the condemned land since the last homeowners were forced out were a colony of feral cats. The supposedly carefully planned development project that justified the condemnations fell through, as also did a number of later proposed uses for the land.
The New London Day, recently reported that the development project is going ahead, but the city has given the developer a hefty $6.5 million tax break to facilitate it:
The City Council late Monday [Sept. 16] approved nearly $6.5 million in tax breaks over 20 years to a developer planning to construct 500 new apartments on two sections of the Fort Trumbull peninsula that have sat vacant for more than two decades.
The fixed tax agreement with RJ Development + Advisors, LLC, approved by a 5-2 vote, would offset about half the $13 million in estimated pre-construction costs needed to meet flood plain requirements and address remaining remediation and other sub-surface issues at the two sites.
In exchange, the city would receive approximately $18 million in tax revenue over the 20-year period of the agreement on parcels that Mayor Michael Passero noted have sat fallow and not producing taxes for a generation.
The vote was preceded by testy exchanges between council members and emotional rhetoric that referenced the peninsula’s dark past as a national symbol for eminent domain.
A large swath of the Fort Trumbull area was left undeveloped after a controversial demolition and development push by the former New London Development Corp. That led to the landmark 2005 U.S. Supreme Court eminent domain decision, Kelo v. New London.
Passero, who called that decision a debacle that left the land an “open sore,” said the housing project would serve as a salve to “help heal the wound.”
Councilors Jefferey Hart and John Satti, who both voted against the tax agreements, echoed concerns raised by several citizens earlier in the meeting, including the prospect of giving a sweetheart deal to a developer who stood to make millions from a project being subsid
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