Homes. Tiny homes. Things have come full circle. Because according to this report from The Day, New London's daily paper ("Take the steps to pursue Fort Trumbull dreams"), the city's mayor, in order to remove the "stain" of the l'affiare Kelo, has proposed a "tiny house neighborhood" on the leftover parts of the now-vacant land where regular-sized homes were bulldozed as a Public Use. In other words "Little Pink Houses" were taken from their owners so that even smaller homes can be built in their place:
Mayor Finizio said he would like New London to symbolically overturn Kelo by undertaking a true "public use" of the seized private properties. He offered as an example a parking garage, under discussion recently as a means of meeting the parking demands generated by Electric Boat's offices in the former Pfizer buildings, the one major project resulting from NLDC's corporate development vision.This would not be any municipal parking garage, but one with solar panels to power it, landscaping and design to fit it into the setting, and first-floor shops to generate revenues.
"What really gets us beyond the eminent domain debacle may be effectively overturning the Kelo opinion if not de jure before the Supreme Court, then de facto in the city of New London," said Finizio. "What (New London) justified this (eminent domain seizure) on was generating private development for economic development purposes, but what we are actually going to do is create public development for economic development purposes."
As for other parcels in Fort Trumbull, those not obtained through eminent domain, Finizio threw out an idea that he said is in keeping with his campaign vision to seek "green, integrated, mixed use" development.
"Tiny house neighborhoods," Finizio told the editorial board.
Tiny house neighborhoods?
"Small, environmentally self-sustaining homes that are low up-keep, energy self-sufficient, etc. And a lot of cities that are trying to green themselves have looked at this kind of development," he elaborated. "Where you were going to do big, expensive multi-million dollar Village on the Thames condos, you could have a real village on the Thames of micro lots."
Besides, we're not sure that builidng a publicly-owned parking garage to service the private tenant of the former Pfizer building is all that different from what fueled the Kelo reaction, Mr. Mayor. What outraged the nation was that someone's home could be taken because someone else would supposedly make a more economically intensive use of that property. This proposal does little to erase that stain.
