From the Daily News:

The Bloomberg administration agreed in July to pay a real estate firm almost $46 million for 10 acres of vacant land in the East Bronx - where the city wants to build its long-delayed backup center for 911 operators.

The firm, Hutch Realty Partners LLC, is partly owned by two men, Michael Contillo and Joseph Deglomini, who were indicted in the 1990s for racketeering in a scheme with a reputed mobster, the Daily News has learned.

Hutch Realty quietly bought a key portion of the 10-acre Bronx site in January 2005 for $2 million from the state Urban Development Corp.

That was around the time the NYPD began eying the site as a location for its huge new backup 911 center - known as PSAC 2.

The rest of the proposed PSAC 2 site is on an adjacent 18-acre site that Hutch Realty bought from the state in 2001 for $3.5 million.

Why didn't they just use eminent domain?