Once upon a time, a community was taken advantage of- leaving it broken and abandoned. Unfortunately, however, this is not a story. There are no unicorns or pink elephants; this is the truth- and nothing else. This devastating encounter is with a controversial practice: eminent domain. Nearly everyone in the small community of New London, Connecticut was unfortunately blindsided by the harmful effects of eminent domain; and today, the land is simply a “vast empty field” (Source B). Of course, Pfizer used tasteful rhetoric in their writing to make it seem as if this project would create new jobs and revitalize the community, but when the plan fell through, the results were horrifying.
New London was promised a “$350 million research center” and “1500 relocated jobs” (Tucker, Pfizer Gets Eminent Domain). I mean, Jesus! This would’ve been spectacular for the town’s economy! New jobs and a state-of-the-art research center? Wow. However, this never happened; leaving residents “angry and befuddled” (Tucker, Pfizer Gets Eminent Domain). This injustice needs to stop- especially since they now need to wait for the economy to “rebound” before trying to develop for the third time (two other failed developments have happened since the Pfizer disaster in 2009).
Although in some communities this practice has proven to be successful, it has also been proven time and time again to bring about devastating losses to small communities. As land developers, people need to be mindful of how a loss might affect a community- not just how much profit a project could generate.
