Issues → January/February 2007 → Feature Stories →

A House Divided: Eminent Domain in Connecticut

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(page 2 of 6)

In his downtown office tucked behind an art gallery, Michael Joplin is so impassioned that he can't stay seated. He paces back and forth, talking with an almost messianic zeal about a master plan he says was designed with the city's interests at heart -- a plan that, among other things, calls for most of the neighborhood around Fort Trumbull State Park to be razed to make way for development intended to bring jobs, tax revenue, and other benefits to the city.

"We don't need another million dollars. We need another $20 million," Joplin says, referring to the consistent shortfall in the city's budget. "Where's it supposed to come from? You need a big chunk of land to generate a big chunk of money. That's what the plan was about."

The plan to which he refers originated in 1998, before Joplin became president of the board of directors of the New London Development Corporation (NLDC) four years ago. Back then, the NLDC was led by Connecticut College's president at that time, Claire Gaudiani, a take-charge woman who quintupled the college's endowment before turning her sights on the city below. One of her recruits to serve on the board of the newly revived NLDC was George Milne Jr., then president of central research at Pfizer in nearby Groton and a Connecticut College trustee. The immediate question before the group was how to make use of a 24-acre former linoleum mill on the outskirts of town.

In January of that year, the state approved a $5 million request by the NLDC to plan for a waterfront redevelopment that included the vacant naval warfare facility, the Fort Trumbull neighborhood, and the site where Pfizer would eventually build a $300 million research headquarters. The state also agreed to spend about $35 million on refurbishment of the 1852 fort, creation of a state park around it, and contamination cleanup. The city and state together pledged $11 million to reduce odor from the city's wastewater treatment plant.

A month later, when Pfizer announced it would locate its new facility in New London, Gaudiani was thrilled. "We said to ourselves ... what if we can create a city where there is no persistent underclass and where the children of the poor [are] achieving at a level that approximates the level of middle-income families? ... [T]hat's the mentality we have here -- that we want to say enough is enough," she told the Hartford Courant in 2001.

Lloyd Beachy, who was then mayor, did not share Gaudiani's enthusiasm. He remembers being called to her office and shown a balloon chart that laid out the Fort neighborhood with circles to indicate various modifications including a new hotel, conference center, parking, and housing. The diagram, he says, had been drawn up by Pfizer's design firm without any input whatsoever from the city: "We were told what we were going to do. It was state-run from the start."

The city's Municipal Development Plan (MDP), as it progressed, came to include the hotel and conference center, an apartment and condominium complex, a biotech incubator, a museum, and a walkway along the river. The state agreed to contribute $73 million primarily to help buy the buildings that would be demolished, to equip the area with updated roads and utilities, and to ameliorate more contamination. The city council gave the NLDC power of eminent domain, and the agency voted to begin taking any remaining properties in 2000. In June 2001, Pfizer opened its doors within easy sight of Fort Trumbull.