New York town’s use of eminent domain to seize land from Jewish Chabad faces legal challenge

A New York city has begun the approach of utilizing eminent domain to seize two parcels of land recently acquired by a Jewish neighborhood business, in a go that faces a legal problem from a religious independence nonprofit.

The Village of Atlantic Beach front in Extended Beach, New York, is eyeing 2025 Park Road, a vacant making that as soon as housed a Cash One particular lender, and 2035 Park Street, a different vacant ton, after Chabad of the Beach locations bought 2025 Park from Emunah 2025 Park Street Holdings final November for $950,000. M.A. Salazar Inc., a authentic estate enterprise, owns 2035 Park. The properties have remained vacant for a long time. 

“We ended up stunned when we been given word that Atlantic Beach front wanted to get our assets,” Rabbi Eli Goodman, the Chabad’s chief, advised Fox Information Digital in a statement on Monday. “The property had been vacant for a long time and for sale for a extensive time. But only immediately after we procured it, the Village declared they have been heading to take it from us.”

The village is likely to courtroom on July 14 to receive the two properties. In accordance to its petition, the village strategies to construct a neighborhood middle and a recreational facility, which would property beach front lifeguard functions, at 2025 Park, and a local community park at 2035 Park. The two houses are adjacent to an current village recreation center that incorporates tennis and pickleball courts, along with a basketball court. The Chabad, in the meantime, intends to create a neighborhood centre for all inhabitants, not just the Jewish community, Goodman stated.

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“They have other spots for a lifeguard command heart exactly where are we likely to go to offer our religious companies in Atlantic Seaside now?” Goodman questioned.

Jeremy Dys, senior counsel at 1st Liberty Institute, the law business symbolizing the Chabad, explained to Fox News Digital that the eminent domain drive amounts to spiritual discrimination and threatened to sue the village if it proceeds with the effort.

“The govt ought to have a really powerful rationale to seize a religious organization’s assets,” Dys claimed in a assertion Monday. “Using a religious organization’s assets to use it as the functions heart for lifeguards is not a compelling purpose.”

“If the Village persists and tries to just take the house, we are organized to stand for the Chabad of the Seashores asserting defenses underneath the Initially Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA),” he included. In a separate assertion, he reported flatly, “It truly is discrimination, spiritual discrimination.”

The village did not respond to Fox Information Digital’s ask for for comment by push time. 

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Atlantic Beach front Mayor George Pappas referred concerns from the Long Island Herald to exterior counsel Joshua Rikon, a associate at the Manhattan-based organization Goldstein, Rikon, Rikon & Levi. The regulation company did not reply to Fox Information Digital’s ask for for remark by push time.

M.A. Salazar, the true estate organization, has owned the 2035 Park Street home considering the fact that 1938, operator Richard Libbey explained to the Very long Island Herald. Libbey reported the Village’s causes for attaining the qualities “are not 100 percent authentic.” He argued that there are other, superior web-sites for a community center.

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Goodman informed the Herald that the Chabad was “startled” by the court action. “It was not performed in a friendly way, and there is more driving it than a land grab.” The rabbi has earlier claimed that he sensed antisemitism and discrimination in the eminent domain motion. 

Atlantic Beach citizens voiced their opposition to the village’s go at a Jan. 10 public hearing. The general public remark period of time ended on Jan. 24, and the village submitted an eminent domain petition on June 14.