Veteran journalist David Collins is a columnist at the New London Day in Connecticut.

In a column supposedly published on Sunday but “updated” on Saturday (I’m not kidding), Collins assessed the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s odious Kelo v. New London decision in 2005 in reacting to a lengthy story by Charlotte Allen in the February 10 issue of the Weekly Standard. In the process, he betrayed two erroneous mindsets about the case which I believe are common among members of the establishment press. The first is that it was purely a matter of “conservatives” backing property rights against “liberal interventionism.” The second is his contention that the total lack of any development in the contested area in the nearly nine years since the Court’s decision “is not that compelling beyond New London.”

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The nation’s press has long since stopped paying any attention to what has actually happened in the wake of the outrageous Kelo vs. New London Supreme Court ruling in June 2005.

The court’s majority wrote that “The city has carefully formulated a development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including, but not limited to, new jobs and increased tax revenue.” The quite newsworthy but virtually ignored fact flying in the face of the Supremes’ certitude is that nothing has happened in the affected area for 8-1/2 years. The latest idea for removing the “stain” of Kelo proposed by New London, Connecticut Mayor Daryl Justin Finizio is to place a “green” parking garage and “micro lots” (with micro homes) in the affected Fort Trumbull neighborhood where perfectly acceptable century-old housing used to stand. Excerpts from a New London Day editorial reporting on that paper’s meeting with the mayor follow the jump.

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Almost eight years after the Supreme Court’s odious Kelo v. New London ruling and eight years of press failure to report the utter lack of subsequent development in the affected area in New London, Connecticut, construction might start taking place in a couple of months — emphasis on “may.”

What’s notable about how Kathleen Edgecomb at the New London Day wrote up her Sunday story is how hard she worked, as the Day has since the Court’s ruling, to make sure that the term “Kelo” did not appear. That’s “Kelo” as in Susette Kelo, the lead plaintiff who tried to keep her pink house where it was and save the properties of other plaintiffs from destruction as a result of eminent domain, and who was ultimately thwarted by a Supreme Court ruling which radically misinterpreted the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment to to allow goverments to take properties for “public purpose” (i.e., any conceivable reason) instead of limiting such seizures to “public use” (e.g., roads, bridges, and other public works). Excerpts from her Edgecomb’s report, including the relevant word-dodging, follow the jump (bolds are mine):

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Daryl Justin Finizio, the recently elected Democratic Party Mayor of New London, Connecticut has apologized to the families and homeowners who lost their homes as a result of the city’s decision to condemn properties in the Fort Trumbull area of that city. Those efforts began over a decade ago. A lawsuit by the victims which attempted to stop the city from taking their properties and destroying their homes ultimately led to the Supreme Court’s Kelo vs. New London decision in 2005. The Court ruled in favor of the City based on what it believed was “a carefully considered development plan.” A few remaining holdouts who tried to get the city to reverse course after the ruling, including Susette Kelo, lost their battle and settled with the city in 2006. To my knowledge, no ground has been broken on any kind of new development in the area originally occupied by the homes in the 5-1/2 years since.

Obviously, one could argue that the apology is way too late, given that the buildings have long since been leveled.

But considering that it relates to one of the most controversial Supreme Court decisions in the past few decades, how much opposition that decision has generated since it was handed down in 2005, and how so many other trivial apologies get so much more attention, it’s more than a little surprising that there has been virtually no coverage of it outside of the immediate local area, as seen in the results of the following Google News search on ["new london" kelo apology] (input exactly as indicated between brackets):

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It appears that it’s not news anywhere but at the Hartford Courant, where “Little Pink House” author Jeff Benedict reported the development on Saturday, and at Reason.com (HT to commenter dscott), which linked to the Courant story earlier today. I suspect it won’t get much coverage at other establishment press outlets.

The development is that one of the four Connecticut Supreme Court justices in the 4-3 majority which ruled against Susette Kelo and the New London, Connecticut eminent-domain holdouts, ultimately sending the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 against the plaintiffs in Kelo vs. New London, has apologized — quite emptily, as it turns out — to Ms. Kelo, face to face:

… I faced that situation at a dinner honoring the Connecticut Supreme Court at the New Haven Lawn Club on May 11, 2010. That night I had delivered the keynote address on the U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous 5-4 decision in Kelo v. New London. Susette Kelo was in the audience and I used the occasion to tell her personal story, as documented in my book “Little Pink House.”

Afterward, Susette and I were talking in a small circle of people when we were approached by Justice Richard N. Palmer. Tall and imposing, he is one of the four justices who voted with the 4-3 majority against Susette and her neighbors. Facing me, he said: “Had I known all of what you just told us, I would have voted differently.”

I was speechless. So was Susette. One more vote in her favor by the Connecticut Supreme Court would have changed history. The case probably would not have advanced to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Susette and her neighbors might still be in their homes.

Then Justice Palmer turned to Susette, took her hand and offered a heartfelt apology. Tears trickled down her red cheeks. It was the first time in the 12-year saga that anyone had uttered the words “I’m sorry.”

It was all she could do to whisper the words: “Thank you.”

Then Justice Palmer let go of her hand and walked off.

If you stopped reading there, you would walk away thinking that the judge made an unconditional apology. Nope, as Benedict learned when he began pre-publication follow-up with Judge Palmer, who responded as follows in a November 2010 “personal and confidential” (at the time) letter:

“Those comments,” he wrote, “were predicated on certain facts that we did not know (and could not have known) at the time of our decision and of which I was not fully aware until your talk — namely, that the city’s development plan had never materialized and, as a result, years later, the land at issue remains barren and wholly undeveloped.” He later added that he could not know of those facts “because they were not yet in existence.”

So the only reason he’s sorry is that the promised development emanating from what five foolish U.S. Supreme Court justices at the time of the ruling asserted was a “carefully formulated … economic development plan” didn’t come to pass.

Judge Palmer proved that he still doesn’t get it in a mid-August interview with Benedict in his chambers, and at the same time exposed the fatal flaw in so much of what passes for jurisprudence:

Q: Looking back at the Kelo decision (by the Connecticut Supreme Court), how do you see it now? In other words, has it led to good law?

A: I think that our court ultimately made the right decision insofar as it followed governing U.S. Supreme Court precedent. Whether the Kelo case has led to good statutory law is not a question for me or my court; so long as that law is constitutional, its merits are beyond the scope of our authority. Of course, judges are also citizens and, therefore, we may hold a view on the merits, but that view should not interfere with or affect our legal judgment concerning the law’s constitutionality.

I’m sorry, Judge Palmer, that doesn’t cut it. The primary question before your court was whether Connecticut’s statute went beyond the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment restriction of eminent domain to “public use” situations. It wasn’t, or shouldn’t have been, about what had been done in previous cases, while perhaps looking to the Constitution as an afterthought.

You blew the ruling, because even if New London somehow had concocted the most wonderful and “successful” plan on earth with gleaming new buildings all around, it still would not have involved a “public use,” and still should never, ever have been allowed. Judges should not care at all whether statist proponents of eminent-domain expansion have been able to rack up 100, 500, or 1,000 “precedent-setting” cases in front of pliant judges invoking “public purpose” instead of “public use” while allowing property to be taken from private citizens and conveyed to other private citizens. The starting point should always be what the Founders wrote, and determining what the Founders meant. Then, and only then, should case law matter. In Kelo vs. New London, case law shouldn’t have meant a darned thing. The Fifth Amendment’s “public use” limitation could hardly be more clear.

This exposes the fundamental flaw of the legal system’s overdependence on case law. Previous rulings which vary from what the Founders prescribed become the new de facto legal standards, while the importance of the Constitution’s original words and the Founders’ original intent continually diminish.

Judge Palmer isn’t “sorry” in any beneficial sense, and his apology to Susette Kelo, while perhaps a nice surface gesture, is as substantively hollow as the day is long. Now that Ms. Kelo understands the judge’s twisted “logic” as explained to Benedict in the Courant, the guess here is that she totally agrees.

That said, high-profile “apologies” often make news. So far this one hasn’t. I doubt that it will. The establishment prefers statism, and to portray judges, especially leftist judges (Palmer is a Democrat, and Benedict really should have identified his party affiliation), as our infallible betters.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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UPDATE, Sept. 20: A search on “Richard Palmer” at the New London Day indicates that hometown paper of the Kelo ruling has ignored Benedict’s column (search string not in quotes; no direct URL available).

UPDATE 2: At DDDb.net (“Assessing the Kelo Apology”) —

Benedict’s account of the apology, and his communication with Justice Palmer about publishing the account, reveals some very disturbing cognitive dissonance (and cowardice) not just in Palmer’s mind, but in the general judicial mind. Palmer’s “sorry” is followed by a sorry explanation of what he meant by “sorry.”

I totally agree.

This was going to be a quick post about the good news, as announced by the Castle Coalition in a Tuesday press release after being teased a few days earlier by “Little Pink House” author Jeff Benedict, that a Lifetime Channel movie is going to be made about the Kelo vs. New London eminent domain drama.

Then along came “culture blogger” Alyssa Rosenberg over at the hard-left ThinkProgress.

In a narrow sense, this Connecticut standoff culminated in a disgraceful 2005 Supreme Court ruling that governments can use their powers of eminent domain to take property from citizens for a “public purpose,” which includes conveying it to someone else for private redevelopment, instead of for a “public use” (roads, bridges, government buildings, etc.), which is the clear meaning of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.

In a much broader sense, of course, the case has never really ended, because the “carefully formulated … economic development plan” the Court’s majority thought it recognized never materialized, and because the land upon which perfectly good homes once stood remains a vacant, media-ignored eyesore more than six years after the decision. As I noted earlier this month, New London’s Fort Trumbull area was recently used as a collection point for storm debris from Hurricane Irene-related winds and rain.

Ms. Rosenberg at ThinkProgress couldn’t resist taking a shot at the celebrity who is taking on the project not only as its lead actress but also, apparently unbeknownst to her (or at least unsaid in her post), as its executive producer, and at the channel on which the movie will appear. In the process, she also displayed complete ignorance of what the Kelo case was all about while predictably posing as a know-it-all (internal link is in original; bolds are mine throughout):

Brooke Shields Goes Anti-Eminent Domain For Lifetime

I’d had the vague sense that Brooke Shields’ career wasn’t in the best place (as Entourage tells me, if she’s involved in a project with Johnny Drama, that’s not a good sign), but I’m sort of depressed, both because of what it means for her talent and what it means for her politics, that she’s starring in an anti-eminent domain movie on Lifetime about the Kelo case. Speaking out about postpartum depression and the idea that seeking treatment for it isn’t shameful is really useful and important. Sparking fears that the government’s going to take your property is a lot less useful.

Is it even worth pointing out to Ms. Rosenberg that those of us who believe the Constitution’s original intent should be followed are not “anti-eminent domain,” but that we are instead against the use of eminent domain to force people to give up their property when a true “public use” is not involved? Oh well, I guess I just did.

Over at Forbes, E.D. Kain hit back (italics are in original):

Now, Lifetime movies are probably not a good sign for any actor’s career, but I think it’s great that a movie is being made about Kelo. Remember, this case was not just about the government taking property to expand much-needed infrastructure, or confiscating condemned, dilapidated property in order to fix it up or turn it into a library. This was about government allowing one private developer to confiscate land from another private party. The government wasn’t taking property for public use (a power granted in the Constitution) but for private development, in what some called a reverse Robin Hood move – robbing from the poor to give to the rich.

Progressives should be deeply bothered by a case like this, and should celebrate the fact that at least a television movie is being made about Kelo. Government should not be in the business of cronyism and theft, and liberals should be up in arms when government enriches private corporations at the expense of ordinary citizens.

With all due respect to Mr. Kain, I don’t believe he fully grasps the strictly opportunistic, utilitarian viewpoint of so-called “progressives,” or their frequent ignorance of what’s really at issue in eminent domain disputes. In separate updates, Ms. Rosenberg demonstrated that viewpoint, as well as her ignorance:

Update: Apparently, this post has given people the impression that I think the Kelo ruling was good. I don’t think it’s good that corporations can manipulate eminent domain for their own benefit. But I don’t think a Lifetime movie is going to differentiate between Kelo and eminent domain as it ought to function. Instead, I think it is likely to take a conservative, totally anti-eminent domain tack that will not further the conversation. I should have made the connection between those two points stronger.

Update: So, looks like this post has become a thing! Look, the original, which appears below, was not well-written or well thought-out, and I regret writing it. That said, I don’t think it’s exceptionally controversial to say that a company with a record of making deeply cheesy and unsubtle movies is perhaps not well-positioned to make a movie about an issue where the issue isn’t keep or ban but reform.

Kelo wasn’t about “corporations” manipulating eminent domain; it’s about governments manipulating eminent domain. It isn’t about “ban or reform”; it’s about banning the practice only when a “public use” under the Fifth Amendment is not involved. As to “how it ought to function,” that’s simple: If the government wants the property for something that doesn’t qualify as a “public use,” it should not be able to compel the property owner to sell — at any price. Attempting to pierce Ms. Rosenberg’s cliched incoherence, it appears that what she wants is really smart people with “the public interest” at heart to be able to use eminent domain when it involves causes she likes, and to prohibit the practice when it doesn’t. For her, the Constitution doesn’t even seem to be in the picture. Under such a purely political arrangement, fears that “the government’s going to take your property” aren’t paranoid. They’re legitimate; there’s nothing to stop them if your property happens to be in the way of (often urban, often Democrat-dominated) governments’ urban-renewal pipe dreams.

As to Ms. Rosenberg’s (and unfortunately, even Mr. Kain’s) cheap shots, let’s start with where the movie will appear. Lifetime’s ranking as the #16 cable network in 2010 isn’t stellar. But to consider Ms. Shields’s involvement as some kind of indication that she is in the twilight of her career verges on the ridiculous. Her latest career move — starring as Morticia in the Broadway musical “The Addams Family” – has received strong reviews, and has her booked until the end of the year. “Her talent” appears to be just fine, Ms. Rosenberg.

The fact that Ms. Shields is taking on the executive producer’s role in addition to starring as Susette Kelo would seem to indicate that this is a project she believes in, i.e., a movie she feels needs to be made regardless of the size of the dollar signs involved. Alyssa Rosenberg clearly has a problem with what Ms. Shields is doing because of what it says about “her politics.” I’ll bet that she never once criticized actresses like Reese Witherspoon or Meryl Streep when they starred in the anti-Bush “Rendition,” even though it failed to break even on production costs alone (i.e., marketing and distribution sent it deep into the red) and nobody ever thought it would make money. I’ll also bet that we never heard a peep from her when Brian DePalma dumped an estimated $5 million into “Redacted,” which grossed less than $800,000 worldwide. (I searched for evidence of either and found none. Ms. Rosenberg is free to let me know if I’m wrong.)

In the eyes of “progressives,” when Streep, Witherspoon, DePalma, and others dove into doomed-from-the-start antiwar, anti-Bush projects, they were dedicated idealists (I’ll leave the discussions about where their respective careers are going to others). But when Brooke Shields wants to make a film about how an authoritarian government which clearly didn’t know what it was doing was able to eject people from their homes, and about how those who are supposed to make sure our Constitution is followed utterly failed to carry out their constitutional duty to protect citizens against unlawful state encroachment, well, she’s an over-the-hill actress who’s engaging in an activity that’s “a lot less useful.” The double standard could hardly be more obvious.

I look forward to seeing the product of the efforts of Ms. Shields and others involved, and hope that it serves to get around the near-total establishment press blackout on post-Kelo developments during the past six years.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

In June 2005, in its Kelo vs. New London decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the City of New London, Connecticut could condemn and take over private property, including that on which Susette Kelo’s pink house sat, for a “public purpose” (a redevelopment plan worked up by the city’s New London Development Corporation), instead of limiting the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment application to “public use,” as the Founders intended.

The Supreme Court justices who supported the ruling largely justified it on the basis that “The City has carefully formulated an economic development plan that it (the city) believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including–but by no means limited to–new jobs and increased tax revenue.” Carefully formulated or not, nothing even remotely positive happened after the ruling until very recently, and nothing even remotely resembling decent national media coverage of post-ruling events has ever occurred.

Until August, in the five years after the final post-ruling showdown, during which Connecticut’s governor essentially had to intervene to keep the city from calling in the bulldozers while the final holdouts were still on their properties in June 2006, nothing has happened. Developers have withdrawn, and Fort Trumbull anchor company Pfizer has left town (a smaller company moved into the facility in a special deal involving — of course — city incentives).

Finally, the city appears to have gotten a developer interested in building condos. Well, sort of, as readers will see. I noted in April, the city was again prepared to offer tax abatements.

On Monday, August 15, as Kathleen Edgecomb at the New London Day reported, the abatement deal was approved, out of which the developers received quite generous tax breaks, even though the city hasn’t seen the details of what the developers wants to do (bolds are mine throughout):

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In its infamous June 2005 Kelo vs. New London ruling, a Supreme Court majority allowed the city of New London to seize the properties of holdout homeowners in that city’s Fort Trumbull area for the “public purpose” of economic development, not a “public use” as the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment requires.

It has been eleven years since the litigation began, six years since the court’s ruling, and almost five years since the final settlement between the City and final holdouts the Cristofaro family and Susette Kelo, whose former home (pictured at the right) now stands elsewhere as a de facto monument to the perils of overbearing government. The land involved is still vacant, and nothing of substance has since happened. In late 2009, Pfizer, the economic linchpin which supposedly drove the city’s need to remake the area, announced that it was pulling out of New London.

After several false starts, the city is working with a new developer. As of February of last year, this developer wanted to put rental townhouses in an area where century-old, largely owner-occupied homes once stood.

Early Friday, the New London Day’s Kathleen Edgecomb reported a new twist. Wait until you see the what the developer wants before going forward.

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Last Friday, New London, Connecticut’s newspaper The Day carried the first bit of news in years that might be construed as positive about the city’s Fort Trumbull area, part of which became the subject of the infamous Kelo v. New London Supreme Court decision in June 2005. Twenty-four hours later, further detail also carried at the Day showed that the “good news” is really a cruel joke on homeowners who fought for the right to keep their properties.

The Kelo decision turned the clear language in the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment on its head by affirming the right of the city to take private property from individual homeowners for a “public purpose” (not a specific “public use” as the Amendment requires).

The city convinced the Supreme Court that it had “a carefully considered development plan.” The trouble was when that plan met the real world during the three-plus years after the July 2006 final settlement between the city, the State of Connecticut, and final eminent-domain holdouts Susette Kelo and Mike Cristofaro, no developer wanted to get involved. Kelo’s house (pictured above via the New York Times) was moved to a separate site and serves as a monument to her and others’ heroic efforts.

Despite the hard feelings all around, one can see how Thursday’s news covered in Friday’s Day indicating a bit of movement in a moribund situation might have been cause for limited cheer:

NLDC votes to negotiate with potential developer for Fort Trumbull

New London – The New London Development Corp. executive board voted unanimously today to begin negotiations with Westport developers Irwin and Robert Stillman to build 80 townhouses in Fort Trumbull.

The townhouses would be located on 6.5 acres that was once part of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center adjcent to Fort Trumbull State Park and the Coast Guard station.

The Stillmans were the only developer to respond for a “request for qualifications” issued in December by the NLDC.

“(The Stillmans) seem well qualified and seem responsive to the interests of the community,” NLDC executive director John Brooks said.

The Stillman organization has built hotels, condominiums, single family homes, offices, shopping centers in the New York metropolitan area.

The bitter irony, of course, is that the developer would be building townhouses in an area (but, to be clear, not on the same site) where a neighborhood full of perfectly good though aged homes had been.

It is clear from initial reports that everyone believed that what would was involved would be owner-occupied properties. TV station WTNH even sought out Cristofaro for comment:

“They killed a neighborhood, that’s what they did, just to create a new neighborhood that meets their standards. That’s a shame,” he said.

As part of Cristofaro’s agreement with the city, he gets first dibs on any new housing.

“That is what we wanted. We wanted to remain in Fort Trumbull,” he said.

But a day later, the Day reported that what might have been “only” a bitter irony was really an insult to everyone’s intelligence (bolds are mine):

Westport firm envisions ‘charming’ townhouses

New London – A proposed residential development at Fort Trumbull would take its inspiration and style cues from the Greek revival architecture on Starr Street.

Following a unanimous vote Friday by its executive board, the New London Development Corp. will start negotiating with a Westport developer that has proposed “a village of historic and charming character.”

Father and son developers Irwin and Robert Stillman want to build 80 rental townhouses in the Fort Trumbull peninsula.

The city took properties and demolished houses and other buildings to make way for a development of homes and a conference center/hotel. But no new construction has taken place at Fort Trumbull in the 10 years since.

Contributing to the delay were an eminent domain case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, other court cases, environmental challenges and the downturn in the economy.

You read that right — the developer has proposed building rental properties.

Either the developer or the city, whoever retains title to the properties, will be the ones who will profit from operating the proposed rental-property complex, and will benefit from any upturn in area real estate values that might occur after the properties are built. Perhaps the city or the developer will cash out by “going condo” several years down the road.

I don’t think Mike Cristofaro would have spoken with WTNH he had known that the proposed development only involves rentals. His “first dibs” on new housing more than likely doesn’t include an ownership stake in the development, and I suspect he would have no interest in it in any event. Given the time that has already elapsed and the time it will take to get the units built, it may be that the City, its New London Development Corporation, and the developer intend to build no owner-occupied units until the nine-year term of Cristofaro’s “first dibs” option expires. In other words, they may be working on cutting Cristofaro out by sticking with rentals only until after 2015. Given other vindictive events in this sordid saga (examples here and here), I don’t see how anyone can rule out that possibility.

My second bold in the Day excerpt demonstrates that the paper continues to strain mightily to avoid using what seems to be the worst of all four-letter words in New London: Kelo.

One would think that this outrageous twist in one of the most important property-rights cases in American history might get noticed nationally. So far, it hasn’t been. Because it makes a government and five Supreme Court justices who refuse to honor the clear language of the Constitution look bad, I wouldn’t count on seeing any.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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BizzyBlog-only Footnote: In November of last year (as noted at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, whose arrival in New London a decade earlier was largely based on the city’s promise to develop the land the city ultimately took as a result of its Supreme Court “win,” announced that it would be leaving the city at a loss of 1,400 jobs.

It’s a development that I wouldn’t wish on anybody, but one that the City of New London, Connecticut largely brought upon itself by pursuing and winning the Kelo v. New London case at the Supreme Court in June 2005.

Some “win.” In what Ed Morrissey at Hot Air calls “a fitting coda to a chapter of governmental abuse,” pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer is leaving the global research and development headquarters it built in New London just eight years ago.

The significance of the move should resonate nationally, because, as the Washington Examiner explains, Pfizer’s original decision to locate in New London was driven by the City’s promises to eliminate a nearby neighborhood — promises which led to the Kelo litigation once residents, including Susette Kelo (pictured above), pushed back:

To lure those jobs to New London a decade ago, the local government promised to demolish the older residential neighborhood adjacent to the land Pfizer was buying for next-to-nothing. Suzette Kelo fought the taking to the Supreme Court, and lost. Five justices found this redevelopment met the constitutional hurdle of “public use.”

The New London Day elaborates, while petulantly managing to avoid any mention of what has clearly become the local four-letter word — “Kelo” (bold is mine):

The Pfizer Research and Development complex in New London will be closed by the pharmaceutical giant and its jobs consolidated in Groton. Sale or lease of the property, which encompasses more than three-quarters of a million square feet, could be a lengthy process. Though it comes as a blow to New London, the closure will not result in any major loss of jobs as a result of the Groton consolidation.

Pfizer earlier this year said nearly 20,000 jobs would be cut as a result of its merger with the New Jersey-based Wyeth. The company said Monday that about 15 percent of its overall R&D work force would be cut as part of that downsizing.

The announced closing of the New London site came as a blow to a city that had counted on Pfizer to help revive its fortunes. Instead, Pfizer’s name became attached to a dispute over eminent domain that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in a case that New London won on legal grounds even as it lost in the court of public opinion.

The loss of Pfizer as a keystone business in New London could put in further jeopardy the Fort Trumbull development that started in conjunction with Pfizer’s move into the city but has left little but flattened buildings and eminent-domain angst in its wake.

Michael Joplin, president of the New London Development Corp., said Pfizer’s withdrawal from the city will likely be a setback for a proposed hotel at Fort Trumbull. While the hotel would have attracted the general public as well as those visiting the proposed U.S. Coast Guard Museum at Fort Trumbull, Joplin said Pfizer had planned to make use of it as well.

“What we’ve lost here is an occupied property,” Joplin said. “But it would have been worse yet if Pfizer had picked up its whole operation.”

“All in all, I think we’re lucky,” said Tony Sheridan, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut. “The facility in New London was built with the best of intentions. If the industry can’t support facilities in (both) New London and Groton … hard decisions have to be made.”

The Day’s insistence on avoiding any mention of the word “Kelo” is a deplorable tradition that began almost immediately after final holdouts Susette Kelo and the Cristofaros settled with the City in mid-2006. The paper’s persistence looks especially petty and childish today.

The reality-denying statements of Joplin and Sheridan above are self-evident embarrassments.

The Hartford Courant, which appears to have been the first to report the story yesterday at 12:55 p.m., also didn’t mention “the dirty word.”

The strain to avoid saying “Kelo” borders on the hysterical in the three-minute Fox 61 video embedded at the Courant link. Reporter Laurie Perez first made this reference to the case (blown chances to mention Kelo are in bold):

(0:25) “It wasn’t that long ago that New London was wooing Pfizer to Fort Trumbull, and in a bitter and infamous eminent-domain battle, taking away private homes to make way for a business and technology park. Tonight, along with taking a look and the business and economic impact of Pfizer leaving there is as you might imagine, strong reaction from residents, wondering what exactly they lost their homes for.

After this build-up, Perez interviewed only one “resident,” Mike Cristofaro, who is of course now a former Fort Trumbull resident:

(2:10) Perez: Former Fort Trumull homeowner Michael Cristofaro bears no ill will towards the drug company, but he says the eminent domain battle with the city and developers combined with today’s news, is a bitter pill to swallow.

Cristofaro: There’s nothing here. It’s clear-cut. It’s a dust bowl. I mean, that’s what’s sad. That was a 10-year battle, and here it is, 12 years later, and we could still be here. And we would still be paying the taxes on it. What does the City have now? They have nothing.

The local press’s consistent refusal to utter Susette Kelo’s last name is journalistic malpractice.

As to the press outside of the Nutmeg State, as I have noted in several previous NewsBusters and BizzyBlog posts, the national media have been proactively disinterested in developments — or, more correctly stated, non-developments — in the Fort Trumbull area.

After the ruling itself, the establishment media largely ignored the bitter struggle that ensued:

• Almost no one knows that a new party, One New London, whose express purpose was to prevent the New London Development Corporation from carrying out its Supreme Court-sanctioned actions, came out of nowhere and won two seats on the seven-seat City Council, losing out on a third seat by 19 votes.
• Almost no one knows that City Council, with the One New London Party members strongly dissenting, voted in May 2006, formalized in June, to evict the remaining holdouts, while demanding “past-due real estate taxes, claims for use and occupancy and claims to collect rent from third parties” to the tune of (I’m not kidding) $946,000 and change.
• Almost no one knows that infuriated city residents mounted what from all appearances was a successful petition drive to put the question of the city property takeover of the Kelo and Cristofaro properties on the ballot in just three weeks. Absent the petition and looming referendum overhang, it seems likely that City Council would have brought on the bulldozers. Instead, it began negotiations with Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell. Rell ultimately brokered a deal that, while constitutionally unacceptable, was probably the best anyone could have hoped for in the situation.

Going further back to the sordid history of the case itself, almost no one knows that the high-powered, politically-connected Italian Dramatic Club was allowed to remain in Fort Trumbull, while each and every home around it was leveled:

A notable exception to the NLDC’s plan to clear-cut the neighborhood is the Italian Dramatic Club, a politically connected “social club” of Connecticut’s political establishment, which is located in the very same neighborhood as all the homes targeted for destruction. Among the Italian Dramatic Club’s patrons was former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, who helped direct much of the State funding for the NLDC’s work in New London and who resigned in June 2004 amid an ethics scandal. The club was informed in September 2000 that it could remain in the neighborhood. The un-elected NLDC decision to preserve the politically powerful Italian Dramatic Club while demanding that New Londoners move out led Fort Trumbull homeowner Matt Dery to quip that the NLDC’s actions in his neighborhood have been both shameful and shameless.

As far as I can tell, establishment media coverage of Pfizer’s latest move and its real-world relevance to the Kelo ruling has thus far been non-existent. A Google News search on “Pfizer Kelo” (not in quotes) at 11:00 a.m. came back with a dozen items, none from major establishment media outlets. A search on “Pfizer eminent domain” (again not in quotes) came back with 13, adding only the Hartford Courant report noted above. The Associated Press’s coverage of the Pfizer-Wyeth facilities consolidations only says that “Groton, Conn. …. will add 1,500 workers from a nearby New London facility being closed.”

The idea that news consumers outside of Connecticut don’t have an interest in learning what has really happened at the site involved in the Supreme Court’s odious Kelo ruling is patently absurd. Perhaps this four-year near blackout has occurred because our journalistic gatekeepers would prefer that we not see a concrete demonstration of what can happen when a government gives in to its authoritarian impulses, and the courts fail in their duty to rein it in.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Pigs aren’t flying, but don’t be surprised if you see a few of them sprouting wings.

The Associated Press, which along with the rest of the establishment media has almost totally ignored the aftermath of the awful Kelo v. New London ruling over fours ago, actually carried a mostly fair and balanced piece about where things stand by writer Katie Nelson. Though I’ve followed the story reasonably closely since the fall of 2005, I learned a few things I didn’t know about the City of New London’s original lofty promises.

I do have a couple of quibbles, the biggest one being the current headline (“Conn. land vacant 4 years after court OK’d seizure”). It seems to me that the word “Kelo,” as in Susette Kelo (pictured at top right), belongs in it. My other problem is that it’s a weekend story and will thus be lightly read.

But let me highlight the better paragraphs in Nelson’s report:

Weeds, glass, bricks, pieces of pipe and shingle splinters have replaced the knot of aging homes at the site of the nation’s most notorious eminent domain project.

There are a few signs of life: Feral cats glare at visitors from a miniature jungle of Queen Anne’s lace, thistle and goldenrod. Gulls swoop between the lot’s towering trees and the adjacent sewage treatment plant.

But what of the promised building boom that was supposed to come wrapped and ribboned with up to 3,169 new jobs and $1.2 million a year in tax revenues? They are noticeably missing.

Proponents of the ambitious plan blame the sour economy. Opponents call it a “poetic justice.”

“They are getting what they deserve. They are going to get nothing,” said Susette Kelo, the lead plaintiff in the landmark property rights case. “I don’t think this is what the United States Supreme Court justices had in mind when they made this decision.”

…. New London officials decided they needed Kelo’s land and the surrounding 90 acres for a multimillion-dollar private development that included residential, hotel conference, research and development space and a new state park that would complement a new $350 million Pfizer pharmaceutical research facility.

Kelo and six other homeowners fought for years, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2005, justices voted 5-4 against them, giving cities across the country the right to use eminent domain to take property for private development.

The decision was sharply criticized and created grassroots backlash. Forty states quickly passed new, protective rules and regulations, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

…. In New London the city’s prized economic development plan has fallen apart as the economy crumbled.

…. In July, backers halted fundraising for the project’s crown jewel, a proposed $60 million, 60,000-square-foot Coast Guard museum.

Read the rest of Nelson’s story for other quotes from Kelo, Kelos’s Institute for Justice lawyer Scott Bullock, and current New London Development Corporation excuse-maker John Brooks, who blames the Kelo litigation itself for the development failure.

Nelson did miss one thing that continues to annoy: the fact the high-powered Italian Dramatic Club, in an act of blatant political favoritism, was spared the wrecking ball and allowed to stay where it is, while homes right next to it were demolished. This June 2006 BizzyBlog post, which includes a view of the neighborhood and identification of the holdouts’ home locations, shows how absurd the IDC’s permission to survive really was. The media’s failure to tell its consumers about the IDC’s survival while homes around it were destroyed kept public sympathy for the Kelo holdouts lower than it should have been, and made the Supreme Court’s risible decision in the case easier than it should have been.

Image found at ArkJournal.com.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Four years ago, on June 23, 2005, a 6-3 Supreme Court majority ruled in Kelo v. New London that the New London, Connecticut government could condemn houses in that city’s Fort Trumbull area in the name of redevelopment. A bit over a year later, the city settled with the area’s final two holdouts, the Cristofaro family and Susette Kelo.

Since then the city has without success tried to engage a developer to build a hotel on part of the now-leveled area, and to put apartments or condos on the rest. Yes, you read that right; they’re building residences where residences used to be.

The idea behind the hotel was that it would serve as lodging for visitors to the anticipated U.S. Coast Guard Museum.

Now, as reported in last Friday’s New London Day, it seems that even the Museum’s ultimate presence in Fort Trumbull is in serious doubt:

Coast Guard museum plan on hold
Shelving of project disappoints city officials still looking for Fort Trumbull springboard

Plans for a Coast Guard museum, which city officials have long hoped would be the impetus for economic development at Fort Trumbull, have been put on hold.

Citing lackluster fundraising figures and a stagnant economy, the National Coast Guard Museum Association and the Coast Guard Foundation voted unanimously Thursday to postpone the $65 million project.

Jerry Ostermiller will step down as president of the Museum Association, a job he has held since January.

”This doesn’t mean we’ve given up on the project, it means we’ll put it on the shelf until the economic climate improves,” said Anne Brengle, foundation president.

Most of the rest of the article consists of city officials and politicians absurdly pretending that the news is no big deal. But a Day editorial punctured that nonsense:

New game plan

It would be hard to come up with more deflating news for the prospects of economic development in Fort Trumbull than the announcement Thursday that the Coast Guard Foundation is suspending its effort to raise funds for the construction of the National Coast Guard Museum.

…. Whether the revival of the museum project is possible when the economy improves is questionable at best. Association leaders say it will be at least a year before they are in a position to try. Many people donated generously to get this far. They will not jump back in easily.

The New London Development Corp. was counting on the museum and construction of an adjacent hotel as the linchpin for Fort Trumbull redevelopment. This newspaper has previously expressed concerns that the NLDC’s plans were too dependent on this one project. NLDC mentions the museum a dozen times in its development plan, to the exclusion of almost anything else.

The city must be open to other development possibilities on the 90-acre tract. Commiserating about the museum serves no purpose. The Fort Trumbull peninsula is prime waterfront land with significant potential when the economy improves.

The “New Game Plan” title of the Day’s editorial is an admission that there is currently “no game plan.”

This situation is especially infuriating because a primary underpinning of the Supreme Court’s decision twisting the 5th Amendment’s “public use” clause and allowing the city’s condemnation and takeover of the area was the judicial majority’s confidence that city elders knew what they were doing, as noted in this paragraph from the ruling itself (bolds are mine):

The city’s determination that the area at issue was sufficiently distressed to justify a program of economic rejuvenation is entitled to deference. The city has carefully formulated a development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including, but not limited to, new jobs and increased tax revenue. As with other exercises in urban planning and development, the city is trying to coordinate a variety of commercial, residential, and recreational land uses, with the hope that they will form a whole greater than the sum of its parts. To effectuate this plan, the city has invoked a state statute that specifically authorizes the use of eminent domain to promote economic development. Given the plan’s comprehensive character, the thorough deliberation that preceded its adoption, and the limited scope of this Court’s review in such cases, it is appropriate here …. to resolve the challenges of the individual owners, not on a piecemeal basis, but rather in light of the entire plan. Because that plan unquestionably serves a public purpose, the takings challenged here satisfy the Fifth Amendment.

With nothing but barren land and no prospects for improvement four years later, how much more foolish can the Court majority possibly look?

One should also not forget that the high-powered, politically-connected Italian Dramatic Club was outrageously spared from the wrecking ball in a blatant act of city favoritism. As was ruefully stated as this sad process unfolded, “The Italian Dramatic Club can stay, but the Italians have to go.”

Despite all of the attention the original case commanded, the decision’s inactive aftermath has been virtually ignored by the establishment press. The news of the Coast Guard Museum’s suspension is no different. A Google News Search on ["New London" Coast Guard Museum] (typed as indicated between brackets) has four listings, all from Nutmeg State media outlets.

Why is this continued monument to judicial malfeasance and government ineptitude not getting more attention? I would suggest that the known biases present in the establishment media cause that question to answer itself.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

The battle between New London, Connecticut and the residents of its Fort Trumbull neighborhood began in 1998 when the City decided that it would redevelop the area for ultimate ownership by others and, if necessary, take the residents’ properties for that “public purpose” — not for “public use” (i.e., roads, bridges, schools, etc.), as the Fifth Amendment clearly intended.

Susette Kelo and other Fort Trumbull residents pushed back and sued to try to stop the city’s plans. Ultimately, the Supreme Court rendered its 6-3 decision in Kelo v. New London in June 2005, erroneously (as the Founders would almost certainly have seen it) siding with the City.

In July 2006, after intervention by Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell prevented the City from carrying out its declared intent to forcibly remove final holdouts Kelo and the Cristofaros if necessary, the city and the holdouts settled.

Over 2-1/2 years after the settlement, over 3-1/2 years after the Supremes’ decision, and 11 years after the city’s initial plans, oh boy — a new tenant has finally moved into the Fort Trumbull Neighborhood. It’s a government tenant (link at New London Day will be available for about a week), and the move is into an existing building:

Three Coast Guard units moved into a renovated office building in Fort Trumbull Friday, becoming the first tenants since the peninsula was cleared for economic development.

The move is “going to bring some life” to the peninsula and hopefully attract other tenants, said John Brooks, executive director of the New London Development Corp.

”There already has been some interest by other entities that would like to be at Fort Trumbull or be close to the Research & Development Center,” he said.

….. The development plan for the Fort Trumbull area, drafted in 1998, calls for a mixed-use village that would include a hotel and housing. But the original master developer, Corcoran Jennison, couldn’t obtain financing and the NLDC is now looking for another developer.

It’s pretty bad when a public official tries to treat as spin a non-taxpaying entity’s move into an existing office building in an otherwise abandoned area that used to contain perfectly functional taxpayers’ homes as a significant, positive development.

Here is roughly how the area looks today, as you can see here from a Google Earth image:

The Coast Guard has moved into the building at the top (1 Chelsea Street).

The building that is just southwest of 1 Chelsea Street is that of the high-powered, politically-connected Italian Dramatic Club, which was disgracefully spared from the wrecking ball while whole city blocks of homes were obliterated.

As usual, the Day’s coverage avoids mentioning what has apparently become a four-letter word in New London: Kelo.

As usual, the national press continues to ignore the ongoing non-developments in the wake of what some have called the worst Supreme Court decision since Roe v. Wade.

One of the commenters at the story had this to say in reaction:

The public should never forget what was permitted to happen there and any reference now to a positive outcome is a foolish mistake. New London will never be the same since officials allowed the push forward of such outrageous destruction of peoples homes and businesses. Furthermore, the glaring fact that our high court did not hold to the already existing determination that eminent domain was to only be used for the benefit of the public regarding large public projects (i.e. new major rail or road expansions, building of public schools, etc.) was horrible.

I don’t think the commenter has to worry about a “positive outcome” for some time, except perhaps in one sense: The longer Fort Trumbull goes undeveloped, the more obvious the foolishness of the city’s government and its officials becomes, and the more likely it is that someone in the national press will notice the travesty representing the real-world result of the Supreme Court’s odious decision.

Author and investigative reporter Jeff Benedict has written a book, Little Pink House (HT Selfish Reasons), about the Kelo saga. The portion of his web site related to the book is here. Don’t miss the must-see video promoting the book (also at YouTube) in the left frame. Part of the video includes a drive-through of what’s left of the neighborhood. Warning: It might make you ill.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

A link to a story in the New London (CT) Day (story will be available for only a few days) arrived in my e-mail yesterday thanks to a Google alert:

Deed Gives NL Building A New Address
Italian Dramatic Club outlived street it used to be on in fort area

The story stands as a bitter reminder of the blatant favoritism that took place during the sad saga of Susette Kelo and her neighbors in the Ft. Trumbull area of that Connecticut town.

Ms. Kelo and her neighbors had their homes condemned, and ultimately lost in appeals that went all the way to the Supreme Court, where in June 2005 that court’s majority ruled that when our Founders wrote “public use” in the Constitution’s 5th Amendment (i.e., building a bridge, or a road, or a school), they really meant “public purpose” (doing anything the government deems to be a worthy cause, including taking someone’s property and conveying it to another for a worthy “development” cause).

As you can see from the following Google Earth map image that is probably about two years old, the Italian Dramatic Club (IDC) sits virtually alone at 79 Chelsea Street:

The remaining houses seen near the bottom on Wabash Street were vacant, and have probably been demolished. If I recall correctly, Susette Kelo’s pink house was at the corner of East Street and Wabash. The home of other final holdouts, the Cristofaros, was next door to the IDC.

The IDC is a private social club for well-connected political elites in the surrounding area. Key paragraphs from the Day’s story explain why it’s still there:

It’s been nearly 10 years since the New London Development Corp. decided to spare a private social club in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood while razing nearly all other houses, stores, churches and office buildings.

….. When the Fort Trumbull Municipal Development plan was approved in 1999, the club, which was built in 1922 by Italians from the region of Fano, Italy, was supposed to be torn down along with the rest of the neighborhood. But the club, which offers monthly dinners to its members and guests, was spared demolition. Aldo Valentini, the late trustee of the club, said in 2000 that the 108 members were ready to fight to keep the wrecking ball away but were soon told by the NLDC that they could stay.

Jay Levin, a New London attorney who is a friend of several members of the club, worked with the NLDC to spare the club.

”We were hearing the place was going to be torn down. But I never believed that would be the case,” he said at the time. “I think the NLDC recognized that as the city changes, aspects of the city’s heritage have to remain sacrosanct.”

….. years later, after litigation that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, property owners lost their fight. Today, every building on the 90-acre site is gone, except for a relatively new office building at 1 Chelsea St. and the IDC.

Notice how careful the Day is to avoid mentioning what seems to have become its own version of a four-letter word: Kelo.

The national media almost never mentioned the IDC’s free pass, which I consider an epic fail given the gravity of the case. A Google News Archive search on ["Italian Dramatic Club" New London] for 1998 through 2006 (typed as indicated within brackets) has only 14 results. Only two true news items are from 2001, when the IDC received its exemption, and they are local. There are excellent Jewish World Review columns by John Fund in 2001 and and Doug Bandow in 2002. There is an odious February 2005 Washington Post editorial that, while noting the blatant double standard, nonetheless says that “federal courts shouldn’t be second-guessing the city’s determination of how best to accomplish that very public goal (of development).” Otherwise, the coverage of this important element of the Kelo situation is almost as barren as the Ft. Trumbull area involved is today.

Oh, did I forget to note that a New York Times search on “Italian Dramatic Club” indicates that the paper never mentioned its exemption during the entire term of the case?

If the IDC’s exemption from the wrecking ball had been known to the public during the Kelo saga, I daresay that the attitudes of many who followed the case might have been more sympathetic to the litigants.

Meanwhile in the affected area, 2008 ended as 2007 and 2006 did, with nothing substantive done. But we’re still supposed to believe that government knows best, while it hands out perks to the favored and literally bulldozes over those who get in its way.

Also, don’t miss a couple of the choice comments left at the Day’s story.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

It has been nearly three years since the Kelo v. New London ruling by the US Supreme Court, and just short of two years since the city of New London, CT settled with the final two Fort Trumbull holdouts, Susette Kelo and the Cristofaro family.

The Supreme Court’s majority, in their June 2005 Kelo ruling, declared that “public use” as stated in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution really means “public purpose” — that is, instead of the government being able to take land through eminent domain only for the purpose of building a public structure or creating a public service (road, bridge, school, park, etc.), the government can take land for any reason it believes a worthy one. In the case of New London, the city believed that demolishing occupied, functioning houses that had stood for over 100 years and developing “something else” that would garner the city more tax revenues was a worthy public purpose.

What has been done with the property since then?

As a development-related deadline loomed in mid-May, a Hartford TV station filed this report, and gave us the answer:

Plans Stall In Fort Trumbull
Land Remains Barren After Homes Torn Down

Next month marks the third anniversary of the controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed the city of New London to use the power of eminent domain. But, not much progress has been made in Fort Trumbull, leaving some wondering whether the homeowners were forced out for nothing.

….. Channel 3 Eyewitness News reporter Kevin Hogan reported that where homes once stood, the land is now barren.

He reported that Corcoran and Jennison is having problems securing the $18 million that’s needed to build the townhouses.

The city said the clock on its extension to find the funding is running out.

Two weeks later, Corcoran Jennison failed to secure the financing required for the project (New London Day links in this post will last only a few days; a paid subscription is required after that):

‘It’s Over’ For Corcoran Jennison, NLDC

The Corcoran Jennison company has lost its exclusive right to develop nearly the entire northern half of the Fort Trumbull peninsula, officials from the New London Development Corp. said in an interview Friday with the editorial board of The Day.

”We signed a development agreement with CJ, and now we’re without one,” said an unequivocal NLDC President Michael Joplin. “There is no preferred developer at the fort.”

”It’s over,” corporation Vice President Karl-Erik Sternlof said of the company’s agreement with the NLDC to be the sole developer of a hotel, a 7-acre office parcel and more than 100 housing units.

That agreement, which has been extended four times since 2001, expired at 5 p.m. Thursday when Corcoran Jennison failed to meet a critical deadline to secure financing for its $18.7 million rental complex of 66 apartments and 14 townhouses.

….. Corcoran Jennison officials have said a slowed housing market and stingy lending climate had widened the housing plan’s “financing gap” to more than $3 million. That gap assumed a nearly $12 million loan and a 20 percent – or $4 million – investment from the Boston company.

….. Sternlof said the NLDC’s own consultant believes that it may be two to three years before any developer could realize a profit by bringing housing to Fort Trumbull.

A New London Day editorial tried to put lots of lipstick on a very ugly pig:

It’s time for a fresh look at Fort Trumbull. Yes, the economy is anemic and credit is tight, but there may be a developer out there with a viable plan.

That’s the potential silver lining in the Corcoran Jennison cloud. The city now has the chance to at least find out if there is someone else out there who has the wherewithal to breathe new life into Fort Trumbull.

The Municipal Development Plan for the 90-acre peninsula was developed a decade ago and based on a comprehensive environmental evaluation of the property. The major components include the housing, hotel, office space and a museum. Mr. Joplin said there is wide latitude within the plan to tweak the various components.

….. The state has a big stake in what happens at Fort Trumbull. It has invested about $180 million in the neighborhood – including about $80 million on the Fort Trumbull Municipal Development Plan, $25 million for Fort Trumbull State Park; and sizeable outlays for acquisition and remediation of a former scrap metal yard, waste water facility upgrades and incentives for Pfizer Inc., which located its global headquarters adjacent to the old Fort Trumbull neighborhood.

Apparently, “Kelo” is the word that shall not be uttered at the New London Day. It appears in neither of the two Day articles I reviewed.

Dozens of destroyed homes and surely more than $200 million later, including costs and lost property taxes to the city, there’s nothing. And, based on current plans, if the project ever comes to pass, the NLDC will have replaced a bunch of homes with ….. a bunch of homes.

Even though the property involved was the subject of the case that, in the absence of overriding legislation, fundamentally changed the nature of the government-property owner relationship, various news searches indicate that the project’s starting-over status is apparently not “newsworthy” enough for national exposure.

It’s as if news organizations believe that no one is interested in how things have really worked out on the ground. I doubt that very much. I’ve seen plenty of “years later, nothing’s been done” stories covered over the several decades I have followed the news. Why not this one?

Perhaps it’s because a lot of people would react as one commenter did to the Day’s editorial:

People were forced from their homes in order to please the greedy, gouging local government’s quest for more tax money. The complete disrespect by the NLDC, The NL Day, the City of New London and the US Supreme Court towards the sovereign right to own property must never be forgiven.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

___________________________________________

Selected Previous Posts:
- March 23 — Kelo Calamity: What Has Happened in New London after the Kelo Decision Shows Why the Supremes’ Ruling Was Wrong
- Dec. 14, 2007 — Kelo-New London Update: Media Ignores Yet Another Six-Month Delay
- Nov. 30, 2007 — Kelo Update: Old Media Ignores Latest New London Development Setback
- May 19, 2007 — Kelo-New London Aftermath: The Fort Trumbull Crumble Gets No Old Media Attention
- Mar. 25, 2007 — Kelo-New London Update: When Will the National Press Cover the Project’s Lack of Progress?
- Jan. 11, 2007 — Moving at the Speed of Government in New London, CT
- June 30, 2006 — Kelo New London: It’s Over