No Blight Designation of Fancy

"We are not blighted."

Slogans abound for those opposed to Columbia's proposed Manhattanville expansion, but few are as simple and personal as this.

Two weeks ago, these pages revealed that Empire State Development-a kinder, gentler name for the entity formerly known as the Empire State Development Corporation, which was a kinder, gentler name for the entity formerly known as the New York State Urban Development Corporation-was assessing conditions in the proposed expansion area. The study was funded by $300,000 that Columbia paid ESD in 2004 in preparation for the possible use of eminent domain.

Columbia has reserved the right to ask ESD to consider using eminent domain-the power of government to focibly buy property for "public use"-to deliver land to the University for a new campus. If ESD finds that the area is "blighted," it would pave the way for the condemnation, and eventually, the bulldozers.

"The current conditions of the project area and the project's impact will be important considerations for ESD's participation in the project," said Deborah Wetzel, an ESD spokeswoman. "If there are blighted conditions, the assessment will indicate that."

But what exactly does it mean to be blighted? When I hear the word, I think of what caused the potato famine that drove my Irish ancestors across the Atlantic. Webster's Dictionary offers the following:

blight \ `blit \ n [origin unknown] 1 a : a disease or injury of plants resulting in withering, cessation of growth, and death of parts without rotting b : an organism that causes blight 2 : something that frustrates plans or hopes 3 : something that impairs or destroys 4 : an impaired condition

So when the business owners and residents of the expansion area proclaim simply that "we are not blighted," and as lawyer Norman Siegel has pledged to do in court, they are refuting the assertion that they are impaired, impairing, dead, dying, or frustrating plans or hopes.

But Webster's definitions do not court decisions make. The legal history of blight in New York State is long, and rooted in the 1936 ruling New York City Housing Authority v. Muller, which said that it was legal to condemn tenements because it was a public purpose to clear "disease breeding slums."

Over time, the definition gelled through legislative amendment and legal precedent. The municipal law describes a blighted place as a "substandard or insanitary area."

Exactly what constitutes "substandard" is largely defined by a 1975 decision in Yonkers, which offers criteria including overcrowding, deteriorating buildings, irregularity of plots, crime, lack of sanitation, fire hazards, pollution, and diverse land ownership that makes assembling tracts of property difficult.

"For an area to be termed 'blighted' and thus subject to urban renewal condemnation, degree of deterioration or precise percentage of obsolescence or mathematical measurement of other factors do not have to be arrived at with precision, since combination and effects of such things are highly variable," the ruling says.

Read: it's subjective-and the subject is a public authority not directly elected by any New Yorker. Hence the study, required by law, which, over time, will determine whether or not the area is blighted.

And in the course of that study, one can only hope that ESD will listen to the people who live in the area as to whether or not they are blighted.

Columbia already owns 65 percent of the proposed expansion area, but administrators have turned as silent as puritan parents when their kids ask about sex. Robert Kasdin, Columbia's senior executive vice president and the top official directing the expansion, has parsed his words carefully when asked if Manhattanville is blighted, noting that it's a legal determination that is not his to make.

As ESD officials conduct their survey, examining the nature of the plots, whether or not there are fire hazards, and how sanitary the streets are, they will gather the evidence to make a decision.

But in the minds of some, the determination is organic, and they will speak their truth even after ESD's report is filed.

"We are not blighted."

Jimmy Vielkind is a Columbia College senior majoring in urban studies. Tripping the Light Fantastic runs alternate Wednesdays.

News@columbiaspectator.com.