It was a mighty two-year battle, but Nick Sprayregen, owner of Tuck-It-Away Self-Storage, has ultimately been defeated by a Supreme Court ruling on Monday that forces him to give up his land for the expansion of Columbia University.
The country’s highest court refused to even hear the case, in effect, deciding not to reconsider the legality of eminent domain, part of an appeal made by Sprayregen and gas station owners Gurnam Singh and Paraminder Kaur who also joined the law suit.
Sprayregen and the others whose businesses are in Manhattenville, hoped the high court would reverse the decision by a lower court that made it easy for Columbia University to take over their land. The New York Court of Appeals in Albany ruled in June on the side of the university. The Albany ruling reversed a lower court’s decision from Dec. 2009 stopping the state from any seizure of land.
The high court’s decision now empowers the state to use eminent domain to take the land and expand Columbia’s 17-acre campus expansion in West Harlem, from 125th to 134th streets.
“It’s a horrendous feeling,” Sprayregen said Monday morning. “I’m sure it’s going to get worse as it physically starts happening.”
University officials fought hard for these properties that make up only 9 percent of the expansion zone, calling them essential to the campus’s new vision.
“We are extremely disappointed that the Supreme Court of the United States decided not to hear this important eminent domain case,” said Norman Siegel, Sprayregen’s attorney and the former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union in a Columbia Spectator article. “The denial … means that the abuse of eminent domain in New York stands.”
On Friday, the Supreme Court had agreed to hear the case, but changed its mind Monday.
Property owners who brought an eminent domain case before the Supreme Court in 2005, known as Kelo vs. City of New London, lost their case. In 2008 when the legal fight began, the state agency that invokes eminent domain deemed the neighborhood where the businesses are located as “blighted.” This allowed eminent domain proceedings to begin since it involves the “public good.”
After receiving that label, the three plaintiffs then sued the state and a year later the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division ruled eminent domain illegal in this case. The court noted that the project was to benefit an elite private university and did not constitute something for the public good.
The university’s reaction was to immediately appeal to the highest court in the state, the Court of Appeals. It overturned the ruling in favor of the businesses and argued in support of eminent domain for the school’s renovations. This turned out to be the June ruling that now remains the ultimate ruling, uncontested because the Supreme Court refused to hear the case on Monday.
Sources Used:
“U.S. Supreme Court Decides Not to Hear Eminent Domain Case Against Columbia University.” New York Post. Dec. 13, 2010.
“U.S. Supreme Court Will Not Hear N.Y. Self-Storage Eminent Domain Case.” Inside Self Storage. Dec.13, 2010.