From Brian Lockhart, CT Post:
Despite an outpouring of calls from residents and activists to block any future development at Remington Woods, the Planning & Zoning Commission this week adopted new regulations allowing the private owner to instead pursue an office park while saving open space.
“I think it’s the best compromise,” commission member Robert Filotei said following an online discussion with his colleagues and municipal staff Monday of the options for the 420 acres off of Boston and Broadbridge avenues on the Stratford border.
… Zoning commissioners asked her, Deputy Economic Development Director Bill Coleman and Russell Liskov, a municipal attorney, to explain why Bridgeport could not pursue the third option of preventing any construction in the woods.
“Our (U.S.) Constitution is very clear,” Liskov said. “You cannot take people’s property without due process and paying fair compensation for it.”
If the commission zoned the property a park or open space, “you strip the owner of the right to utilize their property and you’re going to buy yourself a lawsuit for inverse condemnation,” Liskov said.
Full story here.
As soon as Remington Woods became private property, Bridgeport lost its best chance to keep 420 acres of woodland undisturbed. The terms of this deal are anti-environment and pro-development.
In case you’re wondering, it would be unwise to borrow money to buy a property that’s not producing income.
Can we talk facts, for a moment or two, and perhaps the science of land remediation relative to standards admitting use by people in the future. Where is site today in terms of potential use? What are uses that can be built? Can we assume that this determination, like the P&Z has made this week, guarantees a certain value to the owners? Where are they relative to the current plan to remediate to what extent and by what date? Who tracks this? In the meantime is the asset value of the land stable, decreasing or increasing every time P&Z makes a decision? Time will tell.
Eminent domain is initiated by the government. By contrast, inverse condemnation is initiated by the property owner when the government exacts a taking without following the eminent domain procedures. These are often land-use disputes in which a property owner challenges development restrictions.