Downtown Yonkers landlord and New York City businessman Nick Sprayregen has been dealt a blow in his legal battle to protect his family”™s Tuck-It-Away Self-Storage properties in West Harlem from condemnation to clear the way for Columbia University”™s estimated $6.3 billion campus expansion project.
The state Court of Appeals recently reversed a lower court”™s ruling that favored Sprayregen and a gas station owner who have held out against Columbia”™s efforts to acquire all of the commercial and residential properties needed for the 17-acre expansion. The decision by the state”™s highest court could affect the fate of an eminent domain law proposed for Westchester County that would bar the county from using eminent domain to support private development projects.
A lower court had ruled that it was unconstitutional for the state”™s Urban Development Corp., which publicly operates as the Empire State Development Corp., to use its power of eminent domain to benefit what an appellate division judge called “a private elite education institution.” The lower court also found that ESDC”™s finding of blight in the West Harlem project area, where Sprayregen”™s company owns four buildings, was “bereft of facts.”
The Court of Appeals, though, cited its 2009 decision that upheld Empire State Development”™s condemnation of residential property in Brooklyn for the Atlantic Yards mixed-use redevelopment project by Forest City Ratner Cos. As it did in that case, the court “deferred” to ESDC”™s finding of blight in West Harlem, saying that determination was a legislative rather than a judicial matter. It backed the state agency”™s claims that condemnation would serve both a land-use improvement project and a civic project with a public purpose.
Sprayregen did not return calls for comment on the court”™s reversal. He previously has said he was prepared to take his fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sprayregen two years ago said he had spent nearly $1 million in legal fees over four years and expected to spend another $1 million to $2 million in a fight led by constitutional lawyer Norman Siegel, the former New York Civil Liberties Union director. “I shouldn”™t be forced to hand over my property to another private entity merely because they”™re bigger and stronger than me,” Sprayregen said then.
In Yonkers, Sprayregen”™s Rising Development L.L.C. since 2006 has acquired an assemblage of downtown commercial properties for future redevelopment. The assemblage is near Larkin Plaza, where the city is moving forward this year on uncovering the Saw Mill River, a project that Sprayregen has said was needed to jump-start redevelopment efforts.
Michael Rikon, a leading eminent domain attorney and partner at Goldstein, Rikon & Rikon P.C. in Manhattan, who represents about 10 Yonkers real estate owners and business tenants near Getty Square who stand to have their properties condemned for the River Park Center redevelopment, called the recent Court of Appeals ruling “a disappointing decision but not unexpected. What it presents is a situation in the state of New York where courts just will not look behind those determinations” that public agencies such as ESDC make to justify the use of eminent domain in neighborhoods deemed blighted.
Rikon said the ruling does not prevent the Westchester County Board of Legislators from adopting a county law that limits the uses of eminent domain. “If they enact that legislation, that legislation will be effective,” he said.
County Legislator John Nonna, chairman of the board”™s legislation committee, said the eminent domain law is being revised to conform to existing state law. It might lack the votes needed for passage and could die in committee, he said. The law if adopted by legislators will be subject to a voter referendum.
Westchester County Attorney Robert F. Meehan recently advised the committee that state law preempts the county from defining “public use” and “private use” in its proposed law, a key element of the bipartisan proposal to prevent private developers from benefiting from the government”™s use of eminent domain.
At committee meetings, said Nonna, “We”™ve had a pretty spirited debate from lawyers who practice on both sides of these issues.”
