Homeowners’ World Is Not For Sale

Susette Kelo was divorced and working three jobs when she scraped together enough money to buy a house of her own. For $53,000, Kelo bought a waterfront home in Fort Trumbull, a vibrant neighborhood crammed with small wooden houses and hardworking people.

Eight years later, Kelo still treasures her view of the Thames River as it rushes to Long Island Sound. But nearly all of her neighbors are gone, and more than 100 homes that surrounded her have been reduced to rubble.

Kelo’s house now sits alone. Her 1 1/2 -acre neighborhood on the wrong side of the railroad tracks is a desolate moonscape, with barren stretches of dirt where houses once stood and families once thrived.

The bakery, deli and corner market have vanished. One of the few remaining neighbors, Byron Athenian, came home from work one day and found that work crews had filled his street with mounds of earth -- blocking his front door. Workers pulled down the street signs at Kelo’s corner of East and Trumbull streets. Newspaper and mail carriers make their rounds by habit. Officially, this part of Fort Trumbull no longer exists.

But Kelo, Athenian and five other property owners refuse to leave. When New London exercised eminent domain to condemn Fort Trumbull’s residential section, these landowners angrily challenged the plan to replace their homes with a multibillion-dollar commercial center that would produce higher tax revenue for the city. In December 2000, they filed a lawsuit that halted construction of the biotech center, luxury hotel and elegant town houses.

In February, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Kelo vs. New London, the high court’s most significant eminent domain case in more than 50 years. A decision is expected shortly.

Kelo said the homeowners’ defiance took the city by surprise.

“You think they thought seven nitwits from Fort Trumbull would go all the way to the Supreme Court?” she asked. She laughed as she added: “With what? Our looks?”

Richard Briffault, vice dean at Columbia University Law School and an expert on land use, said the Kelo case would be a landmark decision, whichever way it went. The Supreme Court ruling, Briffault said, would establish whether governments could continue to use a broad interpretation of eminent domain that allowed private land to be taken for private use -- or whether tighter limits would be imposed.

Traditionally, eminent domain was invoked for public projects, such as roads or bridges. But in its court filing, the Institute for Justice in Washington, a nonprofit libertarian public interest law firm that helped represent the Fort Trumbull homeowners, cited almost 4,000 examples between 1998 and 2002 where homes or small businesses were taken over and privately redeveloped for the sole purpose of generating higher taxes.

New London’s attorney Wesley Horton told Supreme Court justices that a city would be within its rights, for example, to condemn a Motel 6 if a Ritz-Carlton would boost tax revenues.

Past lawsuits have upheld the right of cities to condemn properties for private developments in blighted areas. But the Fort Trumbull residential area was never considered blighted.

“The city was in economic decline, not the neighborhood,” said Scott Bullock, an attorney for the Institute for Justice.

Kelo, 48, works two nursing jobs and teaches nursing. She painstakingly renovated her 1,400-square-foot home, built by a stonemason in 1893. Her five grown sons pitched in to help with carpentry, wiring and plumbing. She painted the inside a buttery yellow and the outside deep salmon. She sewed all her curtains and hand-hooked the rugs. When she remarried, she adapted the house for her disabled husband.

Recently, Kelo took advantage of the destruction by setting up a cafe table and chairs on the foundation of the demolished house next door. The lot is slightly higher than Kelo’s house, offering an even grander view.

With a coffee cup in hand, she watches the Block Island ferry chug past the original Fort Trumbull, an imposing stone fortress where Benedict Arnold turned traitor in the Revolutionary War. She listens to the chorus of a wind chime she made out of silverware and admires the blanket of alyssum she planted in her tiny garden.

When the neighbors were around, she said, “it was such a nice place to be. You didn’t have to lock your doors. There was a whole mix of ages: people with kids and a lot of older people who had spent their lives here. I loved it here.”

Kelo grew up just a few blocks away, and has lived in New London her entire life. This old whaling city (population 25,000) lies midway between Boston and New York City. New London enjoyed a proud past, but as Kelo noted, its recent history has been less distinguished. Her own house had sat empty for 10 years.

“There was a point where you couldn’t give property away in New London,” she said. “It was just down and out.”

New London measures just 6 square miles -- and half of the area is tax-exempt. Connecticut College sits on a hill, with the U.S. Coast Guard Academy nearby. Another small college and a group of churches and synagogues also keep property tax revenues down.

Downtown New London is a warren of narrow streets filled with empty storefronts and a motley array of tattoo parlors and secondhand stores. Large sections of the downtown area -- including many buildings from the 19th century -- were razed for urban renewal in the 1960s and ‘70s and replaced with inexpensive housing and city office buildings. Nearby, a small fleet of commercial fishermen remains in the once-flourishing harbor.

“They destroyed so much of the charm, thinking they were making it better,” said Neild Oldham, a writer who settled in New London almost 40 years ago. “Instead of preserving the old atmosphere, they ruined it.”

The plan to revitalize Fort Trumbull began in 1996, when the Navy closed a submarine research center on the lollipop-shaped peninsula. The prospect of developing that land became even more attractive after New London officials lured pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to an old industrial site adjacent to Fort Trumbull.

On landfill made of dredged materials, including dismantled torpedo boats, Pfizer built a $350-million research center, which employs 1,500. New London planning officials were certain that Pfizer would be a magnet for additional commercial development.

The peninsula offered 90 acres of waterfront property, including one office building from a previous attempt at commercial development. The residential area reflected only a fraction of the site.

Because the goal was economic improvement -- increased taxes and jobs -- the New London Development Corp. was able to work within state statutes that permit a municipality to take property by eminent domain.

All eminent domain power is limited by the 5th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which lets governments take land for public use, provided that property owners receive “just compensation.”

Ten Fort Trumbull homeowners jumped at the redevelopment agency’s first offers in 1999. Almost 100 other homeowners accepted buyouts in the coming months.

But the seven holdout property owners either thought the offers were too low or vowed to stay because they loved their homes. They organized and filed suit. In 2002, the Kelo group prevailed in a lower court. New London won its appeal to Connecticut’s highest court. The Kelo group then took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The Kelo group -- they are basically trying to stop condemnation for economic development,” said Horton, who represented New London before the Supreme Court. “This is a tiny town. There is nowhere else to go for economic development.”

Holdout Bill Von Winkle said he wasn’t trying to block progress. He simply had no incentive to sell his home and two rental properties. Von Winkle’s apartments house many of the 75 people still living in Fort Trumbull.

For Kelo, the struggle to keep her house has grown into a larger battle.

“Maybe when this started, this was about me and my house,” she said. “But in the long run, this is not about me. This is about everyone in the country who could lose their homes to eminent domain -- because anyone can generate more taxes than I do.”