Wednesday night, the council voted to approve a redevelopment study for the now-19 block area near the Burlington Coat Factory, where a subsidiary of the Rockefeller Group has been buying land. The area now under review by the Planning Board was expanded westward to the Palisade cliffs, including the land occupied by the Academy Bus Company.

If a city declares an area a redevelopment zone, the city can change the zoning, seek developers with plans that conform to the new guidelines, take over certain property by eminent domain if necessary, and possibly offer a tax abatement agreement.

Mason said, “If [Hoboken] stops building, it will die. It will die. You have to continue to grow to some extent. You cannot stop.”

Residents of a neighborhood slated to be razed for an oceanfront redevelopment project in Long Branch get a chance to convince a judge their homes are not blighted under a ruling issued this morning by a state Appellate panel.

The appeals court upheld a number of actions of the city, including its right to delegate its eminent domain authority to the developer, but said Long Branch failed to show the homes condemned for an oceanfront redevelopment project in the city were considered blighted.

Tell Gov. Corzine to Stop Eminent Domain Abuse in NJ!

State laws that allow governments to take land for private redevelopment are being misused and need to be reformed to protect private property owners, the public advocate said in a report released Tuesday.

Public Advocate Ronald L. Chen urged the Legislature in his report to stem the abuses that violate private property owners' rights by amending the state's overly broad redevelopment laws.

"New Jersey's laws governing the use of eminent domain for private redevelopment are written in a way that leads to abuse," Chen said in the report. "When the government misuses this important redevelopment tool, people can lose their homes without real evidence that their neighborhood is blighted, without adequate notice or hearings, and without fair compensation."

ATLANTIC CITY — Usually when Public Advocate Ronald K. Chen speaks out about the evils of eminent domain, he does so surrounded by a crowd of people who say they have been done wrong by the process.

But Wednesday at the Atlantic City Convention Center, he confronted a completely different animal: as a guest of the New Jersey State League of Municipalities, he was speaking — by and large — to government officials who rely on the controversial power to pursue public improvement projects.

In her cozy white clapboard bungalow three blocks from the ocean in Asbury Park, Angie Hampilos waits. And waits.

For 20 years now, Hampilos, 92, has lived under the specter of losing her home of 47 years to make way for the city's long-awaited oceanfront redevelopment.

She can't sell it; she can't make any big improvements. She just watches it fall apart around her.

With the results of this week’s elections, 34 states have adopted eminent domain reform in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s wildly unpopular decision in Kelo v. City of New London.

Yesterday, two Port Chester property owners joined with the Institute for Justice (the public-interest law firm that litigated the Kelo case) to ask the Supreme Court to look again at the issue of eminent domain abuse and ensure that lower courts do not read Kelo to completely eliminate judicial review.  The case illustrates the dangerous results of the Kelo decision and asks what should be an easy question: 

"Does the Constitution prevent governments from taking property through eminent domain simply because the property owners refused to pay off a private developer?"

EMINENT DOMAIN QUESTIONS PRESENTED TO THE US SUPREME COURT

In Kelo v. City of New London, this Court held that economic development within an integrated development plan was a “public use” under the meaning of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Does Kelo therefore completely preclude all claims of private purpose takings within an integrated development plan area, including a claim that eminent domain was used for financial extortion and the purely private financial goals of a single party?

What limits if any do the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution place on demands for cash in exchange for refraining from the use of eminent domain?

Survey: Public concerned about government power to take land

11/13/06  AP

NEWARK -- Most New Jersey voters dislike the ability of government to take land from its owners for redevelopment, according to a poll released Monday.

The survey also found interest in the topic remains high nearly a year after a U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed a Connecticut city to use eminent domain to seize homes for commercial use.

Several bills to restrict the use of eminent domain are pending in the state Legislature.

The Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll asked respondents to consider four scenarios under which local and state governments might seize property; none was supported by a majority.

One day in 1981, Barbara Fuller looked out the window of her Monmouth County home and saw a surveyor in the yard.

He worked for the state Department of Transportation and was mapping a realignment of Oceanport Avenue that would take it through Fuller's dining room. DOT eventually used its powers of eminent domain to seize her property, along with three neighboring ones, including a house owned by her aunt, Agnes Zager.

The road project never materialized.