Little Pink House_ A True Story of Defiance and Courage - Jeff Benedict [63]
“What are our choices?” one council member asked.
There were not many, Londregan explained. The state had put up the money for the project, so the state called the shots. And the state had chosen the NLDC as its agent. If the city wanted $70 million to flow from the state to the city for redevelopment, the city had to be willing to bow to the NLDC and, if push came to shove, give the NLDC final say on homes that had to go.
Londregan made a case for why no homes could be left standing: if the NLDC permitted a few scattered homes to stay, no developer would take the project on. A developer would want a complete site. If the plan called for a complete site, then some tough decisions would be required when it came to using eminent domain.
Mathew Greene was the first attorney Claire had hired after taking over the NLDC. A probate judge with a private law practice in New London, Greene had made friends with all the right people in the city—politicians, fellow lawyers, and businessmen. Likeable, athletic, and handsome, Greene hadn’t been Claire’s first choice to serve as the NLDC’s in-house counsel. But he had come highly recommended, so she obliged.
Greene recognized that eminent domain might be a ticking time bomb. He also understood why the NLDC wanted to use it and why City Hall wanted the NLDC to use it. From a legal perspective, Greene didn’t see any problems for the NLDC. But from a personal perspective, he saw Claire as opening herself up to more and more unfriendly fire. She was already shielding Pfizer and the governor’s office from political heat. Now she would become the shield for City Hall on eminent domain.
Yet it wasn’t Greene’s responsibility to give Claire personal advice. Besides, he figured, she probably wouldn’t take it anyway. He respected her even though he believed that patience and humility were not among her virtues. But she was the real deal, unlike one or two other board members whom Greene viewed as second-rate wannabes riding on Claire’s coattails.
Claire’s approach had Greene hearkening back to something a wise city leader had told him years earlier: “New London politics is about people, not about issues. It’s always about people.” In a city where everyone seems to be related to someone else in the city, outsiders didn’t fare well. Claire was an outsider playing an insider’s game. Dangerous, Greene thought, dangerous.
City Hall officials scheduled two public hearings leading up to the city council’s vote on whether to approve the NLDC’s municipal-development plan. Kathleen Mitchell and the coalition mobilized hundreds of opponents to attend. When the time came, residents from throughout the city packed the hearings.
Mitchell also did some research on Claire’s home. When she had become president of Connecticut College, Claire had moved into the president’s residence, a stately white colonial with red shutters located next door to a land conservatory. Additionally, she and her husband had purchased a second home away from New London in an exclusive waterfront community known as Mumford Cove, on Long Island Sound. She had a personal driver and a limousine to shuttle her from place to place.
Compared to the people Claire had been attempting to drive out of Fort Trumbull, she had some pretty upscale living standards. Mitchell figured the time had come to expose all this to the public. She spread the word that while enjoying two expensive homes Claire was busy trying to deprive others of having only one.
At the close of the second public hearing, Claire addressed the issue of owning multiple homes, defending her and her husband’s lifestyle. “We were very, very, very modestly paid professors when we came