One Step Closer to Eviction

Michael Cristofaro said he woke up Tuesday morning feeling that, along with his property rights, he had just been stripped of his citizenship. Hours earlier, officials in New London, Conn., had voted to evict the Cristofaros and Susette Kelo from their homes in a waterfront area of a struggling community.

It was Kelo who lent her name to the 2005 Supreme Court case that unsuccessfully challenged the right of governments to use eminent domain to seize non-blighted private property for commercial development.

Kelo and Cristofaro’s 80-year-old father, Pasquale, were among seven original plaintiffs in Kelo vs. City of New London. The 5-4 ruling in favor of the city set off a flurry of legislation around the country to limit the practice of eminent domain. Developers in turn pounced on the opportunity to propose new projects on privately held sites.

“I don’t feel like an American citizen today at all,” Cristofaro said Tuesday. “I feel like my rights have been totally violated.”

The New London City Council voted 5-2 late Monday to “proceed with the process to obtain possession” of the holdout properties on a peninsula known as Fort Trumbull. The city attorney must still seek court approval to remove Kelo and the Cristofaros, a process that could take months.

The largely residential, 90-plus-acre parcel to be redeveloped was selected almost a decade ago to house offices, condominiums, a hotel, shops and restaurants that the city said would generate increased tax revenue. Much of the property was razed and now sits vacant.

Authorities in New London also vowed to collect back taxes and other fees from the displaced property owners. The city’s action defied a recommendation by Gov. M. Jodi Rell to relocate the Fort Trumbull residents who had turned down financial settlements because they wanted to remain in a once-bustling neighborhood where many buildings dated from the mid-19th century.

“I remain sympathetic to the efforts of the few remaining owners,” Rell wrote in a letter to New London Mayor Elizabeth Sabilia. The Republican governor proposed setting aside a small piece of land within the redevelopment area for those residents.

Five of the original plaintiffs have settled with the city since the Supreme Court decision and have moved or agreed to move.

Sabilia said Tuesday that she respected the plaintiffs’ right to pursue their case all the way to the Supreme Court. But she said her small city desperately needed an economic infusion.

“We’ve got a city of a little over 25,000 people,” she said. “We are a distressed community, under any objective measure. The city of New London is 6 square miles, 50% of which is tax-exempt. This is a small whaling city, hard up by the sea. We don’t have spare land to access in order to increase our tax base.”

The Fort Trumbull project, Sabilia said, is envisioned as “an economic driver not just for New London, but for the region. We need to turn an economic opportunity into an economic reality.”

New London Councilman Robert Pero said Tuesday that he voted for the eviction because “certainly, at some point in time, the city does have to move forward.” Pero said the city had made numerous attempts to accommodate the Fort Trumbull property holders.

Pero said it was time to move forward. “This municipal development plan has been scrutinized more than any development plan ever has,” he said.

Scott Bullock, an attorney for the Kelo plaintiffs, berated the council vote as “a raw exercise in power.” Bullock works for the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm in Washington.

“I have been to many disgusting City Council meetings, but this has to have been ranked at the apex,” Bullock said. “This City Council has done something that defies logic, common sense and morality.

“The council could have treated these people with respect,” he added. “They had a totally acceptable package on the table that was supported by the governor and the property owners -- and that would have ended it. And they refused to do it.”

Kelo did not respond Tuesday to telephone messages. Bullock said she was “pretty shaken up, and very scared” by the latest turn in an eight-year odyssey.

One of her co-plaintiffs, William Von Winkle, said he decided to accept an undisclosed settlement from the city late Monday, mostly because he was tired of what he called “harassment, threats and intimidation” by redevelopment authorities.

“I’ll tell you what, I sold out,” Von Winkle said Tuesday, sounding exhausted. He said the pressure to settle became too much for him, especially after his 25-year-old son was killed a week ago in an apparent robbery in nearby Groton.

“Finally, I’d had enough,” he said. “In the beginning, they took possession of the property -- kicked the doors in and kicked my tenants out. They put barricades in the street, and they did everything possible to harass me, to make me sell.”

Von Winkle said he felt empty, contemplating the prospect of trying to reassemble a real estate package that included his home and two rental properties.

“I worked 23 years to put this together. I paid cash. I had no mortgages,” he said. “No American should be forced out of their home like this.”

The Supreme Court ruled otherwise in June. In Kelo vs. City of New London, the court for the first time explicitly permitted governments to take any home or small business for private use if the new construction that replaced it would benefit the community with new jobs and increased tax revenue.

Since that ruling, lawmakers in nearly every state have introduced measures -- more than 325 in all -- to protect private property.