Eminent Domain Abuse Forum Held in Hoboken

Hoboken – The Pulse with Peter B., northern New Jersey’s premier cable access show, hosted a forum on eminent domain abuse in Hudson County on Wednesday night, August 28^th, in Our Lady of Grace School. The forum highlighted the Center St neighborhood of Jersey City and the NY Waterway ferry company marina property in Hoboken as examples of local government abuse of eminent domain powers to harm communities and help special interests. Forum panelists included Hudson County community advocates Natalia Ioffe, Mary Ondrejka, and Joshua Sotomayor Einstein. The forum was moderated by show host Peter Biancamano.

The genesis of the forum were the efforts of the Bhalla administration in Hoboken to use eminent domain to evicted New Jersey’s largest ferry company, NY Waterway, from its Hoboken marina property, as well as Jersey City’s plans to gentrify the Center St neighborhood by pushing out current residents in preference for a large developer. Forum panelists discussed the way eminent domain has evolved from a rare process used by the local, state, and federal governments for national security and public need issues such as military, water reservoirs, electrical stations, highways, train stations, hospitals, and schools to a common occurrence in which it is often abused.

Natalia Ioffe, a Jersey City community activist leading the battle against eminent domain abuse  in the Center St neighborhood in which she lives, highlighted the Kelo V New London Supreme Court case in which the majority ruled that the city of New London could forcibly take the property of a homeowner and transfer it to a private developer. “That set a terrible precedent…one of the justices involved called it reverse robin hood,” Ioffe stated. She continued, “if we take the concept of reverse robin hood….that is ultimately what is happening around us and what we have been seeing in our city for the last decade,” Ioffe stated.

Mary Ondrejka discussed her grandparent’s history as a victim of eminent domain abuse and why it has motivated her to fight against the Bhalla administration crusade to take NY Waterway’s Hoboken property. Ondrejka also emphasized the fact, ignored by the Bhalla administration, that NY Waterway has offered roughly 20% of their property as a public park to be paid for by them, as she stated, “the parking lot that is in the site will be given to the city as open space, and we don’t have to pay for it. They are going to pay for it and we can choose what we want there. When have we gotten on offer like that?”