Friday’s Wall Street Journal recounted an interesting tactic used by Columbia University in order to get an area declared “blighted” so that it could create a research and academic facility. Columbia can’t use the Kelo justification because the university will not bring in more tax money than the existing businesses and private property, so they’ve got to do it the old fashioned way.

How’d they go about it?

First, they bought up all the properties they could.

So far, so good.

Then they let the properties they bought, fall into disrepair.

You can see where this is going.

Then they attempted to use the fact that the properties they had purchased were turning the neighborhood into a dump as justification for having the area declared “blighted” so that the Empire State Development Corporation could swoop in and seize the remaining properties via eminent domain in the name of revitalizing the neighborhood.

Thankfully, the judge wasn’t buying it.

Judge Catterson also wrote that "the blight designation in the instant case is mere sophistry. It was utilized by ESDC years after the scheme was hatched to justify the employment of eminent domain but this project has always primarily concerned a massive capital project for Columbia."

The story isn’t over. New York Gov. David Patterson could seek to have Catterson’s ruling reviewed by the state’s highest court.

But the entire situation tells you about the contempt many of the elite have for private property rights when they stand in the way of what they perceive as the “greater good.”