FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Appellate Court Thwarts Yonkers’ From Seizing A Property That It Says Is Crucial Riverfront Development Property

PRESS RELEASE: Appellate court’s Second Department Rules That A Proposed Condemnation By The Yonkers Industrial Development AgencyOn A 3.6 Acre New York City Owned Property May Not Go Forward Under Eminent Domain Laws.

YONKERS: A property at 59 Babcock Place is between the Hudson River and the Metro-North Hudson Line and within Yonkers’ Alexander Street urban renewal area.

QUOTE: “These precious lands should not be sleeping quarters for buses,” Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano has said in the past

#NewYorkCity bought the property in 2005 and leases it to the #MTA.

Yonkers wants to use the MTA Bus Depot site to extend Alexander Street and open up more land for development.

Mayor Mike Spano has described the MTA depot as a barrier to waterfront development.

The Yonkers Industrial Development Agency authorized the use of eminent domain in late 2017, to take the property from the city of New York.

The four-judge appellate panel ruled, the Yonkers IDA can’t take land for public use, if the new public use interferes with an existing public use.

The four-judge appellate court cited several comments made by Yonkers Industrial Development Agency officials at a 2017 public hearing:

Those comments, the appellate justices ruled, confirm that Yonkers’ intended use would interfere with the bus depot.

And the #YonkersIDA condemnation of the property was rejected by the court