Pfizer Leaving New London, CT; Just Don't Mention 'Kelo' While Reporting It
Obwon
Pfizer Leaving New London, CT; Just Don't Mention 'Kelo'
While Reporting It
By Tom Blumer (Bio | Archive)
November 10, 2009 - 12:09 ET
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.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-108.ZS.html
Some "win." In what Ed Morrissey at Hot Air calls "a fitting
coda to a chapter of governmental abuse,"
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/11/09/pfizer-abandons-kelo-site/
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):
http://www.theday.com/article/20091110/NWS01/311109920/1017
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.
http://www.bizzyblog.com/2006/06/30/kelo-its-over/
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."
http://www.courant.com/business/hc-pfizer1110nov10,0,766810.story
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.
http://www.bizzyblog.com/2005/11/10/as-new-london-turns-kelo-update/
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.
http://www.bizzyblog.com/2006/05/24/kelo-crunch-time-looms-in-new-london-%E2%80%94-part-2/
http://www.bizzyblog.com/2005/11/10/as-new-london-turns-kelo-update/
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.
http://ij.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=922&Itemid=165
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:
http://www.ij.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=921&Itemid=165
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.
http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&um=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=pfizer+kelo
A search on "Pfizer eminent domain" (again not in quotes)
came back with 13,
http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&um=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=pfizer+eminent+domain
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 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 BizzyBlog.com.
�Tom Blumer is president of a training and development
company in Mason, Ohio, and is a contributing editor to
NewsBusters
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