On June 1, at the New York State Court of Appeals in Albany, the Empire State Development Corporation will appeal the surprise December court ruling that declared the use of eminent domain for Columbia’s Manhattanville expansion illegal, according to the Court of Appeals website.
In January, ESDC—the state body that approved, in December 2008, the use of eminent domain for the University’s Manhattanville project—formally appealed the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division decision of December 2009, which argued that the expansion of a private university does not constitute a “public use,” as required under eminent domain law.
Eminent domain is the process by which the state can seize private property for “public use” in exchange for market-rate compensation.
The two parties have exchanged legal briefs during the several months since ESDC filed its formal appeal. As the appellant, ESDC filed a brief on March 9, and the respondents will file their own brief on April 23. The respondents include Norman Siegel and David Smith, who represent Tuck-It-Away Self-Storage owner Nick Sprayregen and gas station owners Gurnam Singh and Parminder Kaur, the only remaining private property owners in the expansion area who have not struck land deals with the University. ESDC will have a final opportunity to respond to the brief on May 10, before oral arguments are heard in Albany on June 1.
“We’re looking forward to the argument before the Court of Appeals,” Siegel said. “We feel strongly that the Appellant Division’s decision should be affirmed. This is an important case challenging the Empire State Development Corporation.”
But the Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of eminent domain in the recent past, which some say could be indicative of its upcoming ruling on Manhattanville.
“ESDC believes that the decision of the Appellate Division with respect to the Columbia Project is inconsistent with established law, as most recently articulated by the Court of Appeals in Goldstein v. New York State Urban Dev. Corp., and we expect that it will be reversed,” Elizabeth Mitchell, public affairs officer for ESDC, said in an email, referring to the recent Court of Appeals ruling that upheld the use of eminent domain for the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn.
But Smith said that there is reason to remain optimistic, pointing to the extensive legal research he and Siegel have been doing in preparation for the case.
“Any time you have an appeal of this magnitude, you are endeavoring to do the best job that you can,” Smith said. “We have built a huge record that contains thousands of documents that show the collusion between Columbia and the people who did the blight studies, as well as Columbia and the ESDC.”
Sprayregen added that there are a host of crucial differences between the Manhattanville case and the Atlantic Yards case, differences which his party highlighted in its brief and will again articulate during the oral arguments.
“Only on the most general of levels, where one looks at the two cases as both being about eminent domain, can one refer to them as largely being the same,” Sprayregen said. “The fact remains that anyone who reads the briefs and the decision will clearly see that there are major differences between the two.”
University administrators have typically deferred comment to ESDC since Columbia is not a direct party in the case, though University President Lee Bollinger said in a recent interview about the upcoming case, “I feel very good about our chances in the Court of Appeals.”
kim.kirschenbaum@columbiaspectator.com
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