February 16, 2009
Susette Kelo’s story is one that could easily make a compelling movie — and it just might. It has action, intrigue and strong personalities, but not an entirely happy ending from Kelo’s perspective.
Kelo found herself, through the mid-1990s and into the 2000s, in the midst of the nation’s most high-profile eminent domain battle to date. The city of New London, Connecticut, attempted to force her from her home — which she bought in 1997, painted salmon pink and remodeled — to redevelop the property for a new industrial and residential project designed to revitalize the waterfront area. It was not until the mid-2000s, after years of litigation, activism and the U.S. Supreme Court’s eventual 5-4 ruling against her, that she reluctantly moved from her house.
Kelo was in East Lansing recently at the invitation of the Midland-based, free-market Mackinac Center for Public Policy to talk about her experiences.
“We think this is the kind of material that could and should be a movie,” explained Jeff Benedict, author of the newly published Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage, a book about Kelo’s experiences. Kelo and Benedict, who also spoke at the event, have secured a Los Angeles agent in the hopes the book will be developed into a film.
“There is more here than Erin Brockovich and Norma Rae as far as depth and the effects the issue has on people,” said Benedict. “This was a Supreme Court precedent-setting case with terrific ‘characters.’ The people on the opposite side of the issue still support the taking of Kelo’s and others’ houses just as strongly as we opposed it.”
Kelo and Benedict, an investigative reporter and English professor at Southern Virginia University, see the need for greater public education about the issue, despite the fact that after the Supreme Court ruling, more than 40 states have passed some level of protection for private property owners from public takings.
“Don’t think your home is safe,” warned Kelo. “It’s not. Neighborhoods are still being destroyed to make way for ‘progress.’”
“The Supreme Court essentially said: ‘Our land is our land until someone else can make better use of it and pay more taxes.’”
In Kelo’s case the “someone” was the City of New London, which offered a 24-acre vacant and remediated parcel to Pfizer Corporation in exchange for it locating a new research and development facility in the targeted waterfront area. Pfizer came on board with the stipulation that another 90 acres around the area also be redeveloped to be more attractive and suitable. A resort hotel, upscale housing and amenities for residents, as well as additional biomedical research space, were planned.
Soon afterward, Kelo and her neighbors who lived in the modest but well-maintained surrounding neighborhood were presented offers for their properties. Kelo refused the first and second offers for her home. After receiving “threatening” letters she became increasingly concerned and called then-mayor of New London, Lloyd Beachy, who validated her concerns, indicating her house could be condemned and taken under eminent domain.
In an early meeting with Kelo, Beachy, who became an ally of Kelo’s and one of the strong “characters” in the story, presaged that this would be the “fight from hell” and that she would become the poster child for eminent domain.
A rollercoaster fight ensued before the U.S. Supreme Court’s final ruling against her in 2005. And it was nearly a year after the case ended that she finally left her home, the only one still standing in the former neighborhood. As part of her negotiation to vacate, however, she got the city to agree to move, rather than destroy, the house so that it could serve as a “symbol of victory.”
Although she lost her home and spent countless hours fighting, Kelo is proud that she started a landslide eminent domain reform movement and counts that outcome as the victory.
Nancy Kurdziel (far left), president of Prime Housing Group, which owns a "blighted" apartment complex in East Lansing, talks with bus tour attendees inside the Farm House fraternity, another private property targeted for redevelopment by city officials.Michigan has one of the better laws to protect private owners from eminent domain takings said Russ Harding, director of the Mackinac Center’s Property Rights Network and a former director of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality under Governor John Engler. He warned that regulatory takings, however, are the more “insidious” problem in the state.
“Regulatory takings restrict private property owners’ use of their land and, generally, there is no compensation received for that restricted use,” he explained.
To bring the discussion yet closer to home, the Center hosted a bus tour of an area of East Lansing — 35 acres on the Red Cedar River bordered by Bogue Street, East Grand River Avenue and Hagadorn Road — that has been deemed blighted through “economic obsolescence” by the city and targeted for redevelopment.
The private owners in the area point to similarities between Kelo’s situation and theirs, primarily that the City of East Lansing has initiated a redevelopment project with a San Diego-based development firm with little input from current owners of the properties.
“It’s important to emphasize that we are not against redevelopment,” said Nancy Kurdziel, with Prime Housing Group, owner of an apartment complex in the targeted acreage. “We are against forced redevelopment.”
She says she and other owners are offended by the lack of recognition of the redevelopment and large scale investments they are making on their own.
No firm redevelopment plans for the area have been determined to date, yet it is clear the current owners see the “blighted” designation as a real threat to their private property rights in future years and look to Kelo as an inspiration.
Bookworm Jean B. Eggemeyer owns communications and marketing firm Carillon Communications LLC, serving the business and association communities.
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