Affordable-housing activists in Brooklyn, N.Y., are proposing eminent domain be used to seize a prime piece of New York real estate from Pfizer Inc.

Pfizer is the same company that inspired economic-development plans in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood of New London after the pharmaceutical giant started building its Global Research & Development headquarters there nearly a decade ago.

“Ah, irony,” says Scott Bullock, senior attorney with the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Justice, the group that defended Fort Trumbull resident Susette Kelo as the lead plaintiff in Kelo v. City of New London — the property-rights case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. The city won the case three years ago.

“It shows that once the power goes to government to take properties on behalf of private parties, the tables can easily be turned on you ... if you're out of favor with the powers that be,” Bullock said.

The powers that be in Brooklyn include New York Assemblyman Vito Lopez, who is about to introduce a bill calling for the Pfizer property, worth tens of millions of dollars, to be taken by eminent domain. Lopez, pointing out that the Pfizer plant has shed about 1,000 jobs in Brooklyn over the past two and a half years, wants the state to take over the property and use it for much-needed affordable housing in an area that has become increasingly gentrified. The plant will close by the end of the year.

Pfizer, however, wants to entertain development proposals for the 15-acre manufacturing plant in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn without committing itself to a specific plan for affordable-housing units. Still, it has promised at least some reasonably priced apartments as well as job-creation and minority-contracting opportunities.

“We find it extremely puzzling that a legislator would propose a government seizure of private property through eminent domain to ostensibly redevelop the properties with the same types of uses we are already considering,” Pfizer says in a statement.

“The company's definition of affordability in no way matches the annual income of working class New Yorkers,” a Brooklyn housing coalition that includes Lopez responds in a statement.

Some local people who fought eminent domain have greeted Lopez's bill and Pfizer's angst with unrestrained glee.

“Turnabout is fair play,” says neighborhood activist Kathleen Mitchell of New London. “I am pretty happy whenever I see something that causes big corporations problems. You don't see it that often.”

To pure property-rights advocates, however, the move only highlights the indiscriminate use of eminent domain that can affect corporations just as easily as individuals.

“Just because the shoe's on the other foot doesn't make it right,” says Matt Dery, an employee of The Day Publishing Co. whose family's property in the Fort Trumbull area was seized by eminent domain.

“The fact that Pfizer took advantage of the excessive interpretation of eminent domain in the past doesn't mean these laws should be used against them now,” adds Ilya Somin, an assistant professor of law at George Mason University in Arlington, Va., who has done pro bono work for the Institute for Justice.

John Markowicz, executive director of the New London-based SouthEastern Connecticut Enterprise Region, says Pfizer always tried to distance itself from the eminent domain controversy, despite the fact that its former senior vice president, George Milne Jr., sat on the board of the New London Development Corp., the quasi public body that spearheaded eminent domain efforts.

Pfizer points out that its R&D site in New London was almost finished when the city adopted a municipal-development plan for the area. The company took no position on the local eminent -domain controversy as it moved to the Supreme Court, and local and state courts consistently found no evidence that Pfizer intended to benefit from the Fort Trumbull project, according to the company.

“Eminent domain played no part in the development by Pfizer of its Global Research and Development Headquarters in New London,” Pfizer says in a statement.

But the local eminent-domain controversy, rightly or wrongly connected to Pfizer in the popular imagination, has played a large role on the national stage. Already, 42 states have changed their laws to make it harder to take land by eminent domain, though Connecticut has resisted changes. In about half these states, laws have effectively ended the practice of eminent-domain takings for private development, says Bullock, lead attorney in the Supreme Court case known as Kelo.

“It's been a remarkable backlash,” Bullock says. “It's a classic case of losing the battle but transforming the law for the better.”

One aspect of the backlash has been popular opinion, which consistently has backed property rights when land is being taken for private use, as occurred in the case of Fort Trumbull.

Another aspect of the backlash has played out in state courts, which have been increasingly emboldened to reject eminent domain for private development where once they would just rubber-stamp the process. In large part, this has been because of the Kelo decision that directed such cases be decided according to state law, Bullock says.

Someday, one of these cases likely will end up in the Supreme Court again. Could the case that reverses Kelo be called Pfizer v. State of New York?

Bullock points out that the court likely won't revisit its position on eminent domain so soon after a major decision. But if the case did come before the court, Bullock stands ready to argue in favor of Pfizer's property rights, though he suspects the world's leading pharmaceutical company has the resources to defend itself.

“We are confident the Supreme Court will reconsider Kelo and consign it to the ash heap of history,” Bullock says.

l.howard@theday.com

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