AND JUST LIKE THAT, THE little pink house is back.

Actually, for Avner Gregory, who has spent the last nine months in a complicated project to relocate and rebuild the house made famous by the Supreme Court eminent domain case Kelo vs. New London, it might seem a little less simple than that.

But for anyone who unexpectedly comes upon Susette Kelo's distinctive little cottage, now tucked into the streetscape of New London's Franklin Street, its simple pink clapboard façade as bright and cheerful as ever, it might feel a little like magic.

”There are certain colors I like and pink is not one of them,” confesses Gregory, who has signed on, despite reservations about the color, to be the keeper of the flame for a permanent monument to the bloody eminent domain war here that drew the attention of the nation.

In addition to keeping the house pink, Gregory has agreed to two other stipulations with the Institute of Justice of Washington, D.C., which represented Kelo and some of her neighbors. The house must remain in place for 99 years and there must be a plaque out front explaining its history.

The institute paid an undisclosed amount of money toward the relocation costs. And Gregory, a city landlord, paid one crisp $1 bill for the pieces of the disassembled house. (It couldn't be moved intact because the Fort Trumbull neighborhood torn down by the New London Development Corp. is accessible only by low overpasses.)

Kelo, who has moved to Waterford, retained the right to move the house in the settlement that finally gave the land to the NLDC.

I caught up with Gregory this week in front of the pink house as he was holding a hose on some fresh plants. Through the open doors and windows you could hear the whine of screw guns from a crew putting up a sheetrock ceiling inside.

Gregory has been restoring and remodeling old city houses for more than 30 years, some of them prominent 19th century mansions. In fact, in the late 1980s he bought, fixed up and sold the pink house before Kelo bought it.“What comes goes around comes around, I guess,” he says, shrugging his shoulders.“It came back to me.”

Gregory, a former member of the New London Board of Education, is a bit of a political activist, a frequent writer of letters to the editor of The Day. He's also a beloved part of the neighborhood, where his inspiration from Gandhi - he spends six months a year in India - has won over a lot of hearts.

He shares with tenants tomatoes from the extensive gardens that wind around whimsical outbuildings and a soaring gazebo on his Franklin Street property, which includes a large house with apartments. He's been known to put his arm around the shoulders of drug dealers who turn up on the corner, asking them nicely to move on.

The house has been rebuilt on the remnants of an old foundation on a lot Gregory already owned. To fit that larger footprint there are two additions, but the outline of the original cottage remains distinct. Gregory, who lives nearby on Hempstead Street, plans to move in.

The new pink house will be officially feted at a party June 21.Gregory refers to it respectfully as the Kelo house. But I suspect it may also become known as Avner's house. Already, the little pink house is a home again. And an inspiration.

This is the opinion of David Collins

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