Fort Trumbull’s
Little Pink House
One of my last
fights for the little guy,
against Big Business,
Crooked Politicians
and their
money!
I had to leave the
cold weather for health reasons.
The battle
actually started in the late 1990s, Fort Trumbull residents noticed real estate
agents poking around their streets.
Neighbors suspected
something was in the works, and in December 1999 the news hit: the city of New
London planned to acquire all 90 acres of Fort Trumbull and turn the land over
to private developers.
Spurred by the
imminent opening of Pfizer Global Research and Development's $300 million
headquarters next door, the city envisioned a
"waterfront
urban village"
of offices, luxury
condominiums, and a four-star hotel with river views.
About 80 property
owners, many of them elderly, voluntarily sold their homes when the city came
knocking.
The remaining seven,
including the Derys, refused. In response, the city-chartered New London
Development Corp.
(NLDC) seized the
remaining houses through a process called eminent domain, which allows
governments to buy property from unwilling owners.
‘Little Pink House’
movie revives eminent domain fight that put New London on national stage.
The Fort Trumbull
peninsula in New London is seen from the air April 25, 2014.
(Sean D. Elliot/The
Day)
The “Little Pink
House” was not the beginning of the Fort Trumbull disaster, nor is it the last.
This was a group of
poor older citizen’s with little to no money, fight to save their homes from
Greed!
The “Little Pink
House” that became the focus of the eminent domain fights over the Fort
Trumbull redevelopment effort.
In late 1997 Gov.
John Rowland, a Republican, decided to make major investments in the state’s
cities, including New London.
Rowland and his
chief of staff, Peter Ellef, brought in local lawyer-lobbyist Jay Levin, a
former legislator and skilled political operative.
Levin solved
Rowland’s problem by reviving the New London Development Corporation, a
private, nonprofit entity established in the 1970s to aid the city with
development planning.
“At
the time, it looked like a wondrous gift to the city, Pfizer with its $300
million.
Plans
for a hotel.
No one
could raise any money to do anything down there and here Governor (John)
Rowland was offering $90 million — none of which made sense.”
New
London citizens lost $70 million, the poor lost their homes.