Little Pink House_ A True Story of Defiance and Courage - Jeff Benedict [123]
For a modest fee, Horton agreed to advise the city through the appeals process before the state’s Supreme Court. Relieved, Londregan prepared and filed an appeal challenging Judge Corradino’s decision to return property deeds to Susette and the others on her block. And he filed an opposition brief to the institute’s appeal to overturn the lower court ruling against Beyer, Athenian, and the Cristofaros.
From the day Susette had telephoned him for help years earlier, Mayor Beachy had been the homeowners’ strongest supporter within City Hall. He cheered Judge Corradino’s decision. And despite his hopes of averting an appeal, he respected the rights of those homeowners who chose to press their case.
Nonetheless, he wanted to see the city get on with the development project and he saw no reason why the appeal should stand in the way. After all, of the ninety acres in the NLDC’s hands, only a couple of acres were affected by the appeal. It made no sense not to start developing the rest—the city needed the revenue and the jobs.
There was only one problem. The Fort Trumbull Conservancy—the nonprofit corporation set up by John and Sarah Steffian and Steve and Amy Hallquist with attorney Scott Sawyer—had separately filed a series of lawsuits to block the city’s development plan on environmental grounds. While the Institute for Justice’s eminent-domain lawsuit had garnered all the headlines, the conservancy’s environmental claims had quietly gone unresolved. Attorney Sawyer and the conservancy continued to push for a court resolution.
Beachy was determined to find a political solution, and he figured he was the only one with the political capital to make it happen. No one else at City Hall stood a chance of having a productive conversation with conservancy leader John Steffian, but Beachy and Steffian were friends. They had served on historic-preservation commissions and shared a common passion for historic preservation. And they were two of the founding members of the neighborhood coalition that had been organized to fight eminent domain. The two men trusted each other.
With the complete trust of the Fort Trumbull neighborhood and all those opposed to eminent domain, Beachy was the only one who was also capable of getting the city and the NLDC to the table in hope of finding a compromise that would extinguish the conservancy’s suits. The city’s Boston-based developer, Corcoran Jennison, welcomed Beachy’s efforts, and the company’s president met directly with him to discuss possible compromises.
Beachy shared the developer’s legal opinion that the conservancy’s suits were meritless and would end in victory for the city. But the cost in litigation and in lost construction time made it cost-prohibitive to fight. Beachy suggested an idea to Corcoran Jennison: Agree to relocate the homes owned by Beyer, Athenian, and the Cristofaros from Parcel 3 to Parcel 4-A. This would preserve the last of the neighborhood homes and completely clear Parcel 3 for development.
Corcoran Jennison’s president, Marty Jones, surprised Beachy with her response. She said that if the conservancy would drop its suits, she would agree to leave the homes intact where they stood on Parcel 3 and simply develop around them. At this point the developer had no interest in quibbling over three homeowners, though the developer did prefer that Parcel 3 should be cleared.
Encouraged by Beachy’s progress, the city council passed a resolution authorizing him to negotiate with the conservancy on behalf of the city.
Beachy telephoned conservancy leader John Steffian at home and told him he wanted to come to a compromise that would persuade the conservancy to step away from its lawsuits against the city. After