Eminent Domain Revival Pitched

Be a good neighbor and not a nuisance, or the city’s Redevelopment Agency might look for a developer to take your property — at fair market value — and tell you to kick rocks.

Or at least that’s what its chairman would like to do.

Brian McGrath, chairman of the city’s Redevelopment Agency, said it’s time to stop allowing property owners who just sit and sit on property throughout the city, allowing it to become blighted and remain undeveloped for years, even decades, to continue to linger. He said these deadbeat landlords need to either develop their properties, or get out of the way so someone else who can.

McGrath is looking to bring back the use of eminent domain, the agency’s tool of choice during the 1950s and 1960s to take people’s ​“blighted” or allegedly under-developed property in order to rebuild the city under ​“urban renewal.”

“You have all these different city laws and rules zoning and all, none of it has ever really worked against really stubborn and bad property owners,” McGrath said in an interview at the Chapel West Services District headquarters on Chapel Street. ​“You see it in every single neighborhood people complaining about the same properties over and over and over and over again. It never changes because those little minor police powers of fining you for trash, and fining you for housing code violations and fining you for building code violations — those are all temporary and next week he does it again and it goes on forever.”

McGrath said the only solution to the never-ending battle with a landlord whose property is dragging down your neighborhood is to find a new owner.

That’s what McGrath, who is the chairman of the city’s Redevelopment Agency, wants to use the power of that agency to do. He said it worked in the redevelopment of the Ninth Square and it could now development in parts of Chapel West, Dwight and Whalley Avenue, and possibly other parts of the city, that have long been weighed down by property that just sits and deteriorates.

“These aren’t grand plans,” said Redevelopment Agency member and former city developer Joel Schiavone, who seconded the approach. ​“This is creating an environment so we can make plans.” Schiavone pitched the eminent domain idea last fall to members of the Dwight Community Management Team, who although sharing his disdain for slumlords, feared the misuse of government power.

The way McGrath and Schiavone envision it, the city would establish a redevelopment plan area for these three neighborhoods. While it wouldn’t target specific properties, it would set boundaries for the plan area that would be good for the next decade. During that time if neighbors identify nuisance properties that are a drain on the neighborhood in there current condition, but could be ripe for development, they could organize and find a developer who would be willing to purchase the property at fair market value, and agree to develop it.

If the owner doesn’t want to sell, the redevelopment agency would use its powers to acquire the property. McGrath said that power essentially requires the property owner to step up, or get out.

“Our plan is simple,” he said. ​“Inside this area you need to behave yourself. Live up to the community standards. Do not annoy the neighborhood organizations. Do not leave your building boarded up for 15 years. Do not be a filthy slob.

“Let’s not have 70 police complaints a year about your property,” he added. ​“Do not be an annoying nuisance. But if you do become a nuisance and the neighborhood does not want you to be there anymore the neighbors can approach the redevelopment agency and say, ​‘There is somebody that wants to behave themselves that will pay for that property.”

McGrath said establishing the redevelopment plan area is a public process that ultimately would have hearings before the Redevelopment Commission, the City Plan Commission and the Board of Alders. He thinks it is something that could be used in other neighborhoods like Fair Haven and Westville Village. He said the idea is to start with Chapel, Dwight and Whalley because there are three elected bodies in those neighborhoods that represent people: the Chapel West Special Services District (of which he is the business manager), the Greater Dwight Development Corp. and the Whalley Avenue Special Services District.

“All three of those organizations are in favor of controlling their area,” he said. ​“And they all want to develop any empty sites, or any boarded up buildings. They don’t want any blight to be there, or to develop there in the future.”

He said once a redevelopment area plan is in place, and boundaries enacted, it would provide the agency legal authority to have a project and to work with developers to pursue federal and state money.