Little Pink House_ A True Story of Defiance and Courage - Jeff Benedict [47]
“We talked with our lawyer,” Cappelano said soberly, holding back her emotions, as she explained that she and her husband had no choice but to sell. “There’s nothing you can do.”
Susette insisted she would never leave.
“Susette, you have to sell,” she said. “They’re going to put you out on the street.”
“Let ’em try.”
18
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION
Under cover of night, Billy Von Winkle approached the NLDC’s Dumpster. No one appeared to be around. Unsure what he’d find, he rifled through fast-food wrappers, coffee cups, and half-eaten sandwiches until he hit pay dirt: documents. Steve Percy’s name was on many of them, including handwritten correspondence. Von Winkle dug further. He came across the original retainer agreement signed between the NLDC and its law firm, Waller, Smith & Palmer.
The Dumpster contained piles of NLDC internal documents. It turned out that Percy had a habit of handwriting letters, memos, and internal notes. He also saved files with minutes from internal meetings and confidential correspondence to and from George Milne, Claire Gaudiani, and top officials from the Rowland administration and Pfizer. Some documents were torn in half. Others were torn in four pieces. But most of them were easily reassembled.
Surprised that the agency had discarded so many original records, Von Winkle took them. The NLDC had been playing hardball with him. It was now his turn.
The documents showed Pfizer was working hand in glove with the NLDC, while the state gave its stamp of approval for the NLDC to essentially satisfy Pfizer’s wishes.
Von Winkle even recovered a confidential letter written to Percy by Pfizer’s director of facilities planning and management, Paul Begin, who worked very closely with Milne. “Dear Steve, To maximize the benefit of the Pfizer investment in New London, we will need the land flexibility to add buildings beyond the initial 1200 person office building,” Begin had written. “This land flexibility will enable us to ultimately reach an employee population of roughly 2000.
“Upon review of several initial design plans, it has become clear that the properties across from the former New London Mills site along Pequot Avenue are now of extreme strategic importance. Therefore, we ask that the NLDC obtain options on these properties as a top priority, adjusting market values as necessary to reflect this strategic importance.”
Dated March 2, 1998, the letter confirmed that only a month after Milne and Claire had stood with the governor to announce the selection of New London for Pfizer’s new facility, the company had already started eyeing more land. The letter also confirmed that the NLDC would pay above-market price for homes and properties when told to do so by Pfizer, something it had been unwilling to do with Von Winkle on his properties.
Other documents from the Dumpster revealed that the state had told Percy to honor Pfizer’s wishes. Von Winkle found an NLDC confidential internal memo to Claire dated March 27, 1998. It reported on a meeting between top officials from Pfizer, the state, and the NLDC. At the meeting, one of the governor’s top administrators, Rita Zangari, recommended that Percy’s real-estate firm actively pursue the new properties on the top of Pfizer’s get list. She also proposed a new passive strategy toward the holdout properties in Susette’s neighborhood. “Rita explained that by continuing to negotiate options we were bidding against ourselves,” the memo said. “With the MDP [Municipal Development Plan] process there will be plenty of time to acquire properties.”
This strategy change seemed to make it more likely that the NLDC would resort to eminent domain to obtain properties from holdouts. If the NLDC paid above-market value for properties that had been added to Pfizer’s wish list, funds for the Fort Trumbull neighborhood homes would dwindle.
At the state’s request, Percy also put in writing an estimate of how much the New