Justice Palmer's apology to Susette Kelo versus Justice Kennedy's Kelo concurrence: What's the problem that the "public use" doctrine is trying to solve?

It is interesting news that the justice who cast the deciding vote against Susette Kelo on the Connecticut Supreme Court has publicly apologized for his decision. "Had I known all of what you just told us, I would have voted differently," Justice Palmer told a tearful Susette Kelo. But it is (to me) just as interesting that Justice Palmer's apology reveals an incoherence at the heart of the "public use" doctrine that Justice Palmer regrets not having deployed.

What exactly did Susette Kelo tell the justice? Only what I tell my students in my land-use class and what everyone now knows -- that "the city's development plan had never materialized and, as a result, years later, the land at issue remains barren and wholly undeveloped." The problem with the New London Development Corporation's condemnation of Kelo's house, on Justice Palmer's account,is that the New London Development Corporation did not have a reliable plan for disposing of the property after they acquired it, because the NLDC had not pinpointed a developer firmly and financially committed to improving the land after assembly. (The New London Development Corporation has put out a new RFP last May: I have no idea whether any developer bit).

Here's the confusion in "public use" doctrine revealed by Justice Palmer's apology: The facts that make Justice Palmer regret his vote -- the lack of a reliable development plan -- are precisely the facts that induced Justice Kennedy to defend his vote in his Kelo concurrence. Recall that Justice Kennedy concurred in Kelo on the ground that, because "[t]he identity of most of the private beneficiaries were unknown at the time the city formulated its plans," the condemnation could not have had the primary motivation of benefiting a specific private interest.

So what is the problem that the "public use" doctrine is trying to solve -- governmental corruption or governmental stupidity? It cannot solve both simultaneously. If the doctrine insists (as Justice Palmer suggests) that the condemnor have a specific and reliable development plan in place before condemnation -- a position being urged incidentally by the opponents of New York City's Willets Point condemnation -- then condemnors will probably have to choose a specific private beneficiary before the condemnation takes place, risking private corruption. If the doctrine insists (as Justice Kennedy suggests) that condemnations be pure of any taint of private interests, then there will be a greater risk of land assemblies' going forward without anyone's ever improving the assembled land.

Does such a fundamental dilemma at the heart of the "public use" doctrine make the doctrine's revival a hopeless cause?