Proposed: Atlantic Yards Development - Commercial, Residential, Retail, NBA Arena [Archive] - Page 10

ZippyTheChimp

February 23rd, 2007, 11:51 PM

Isn't it the Federal court's responsibility to review and rule on potential infringements on rights BY states against citizens?The article left out one detail.

Here is another, with the passage highlighted:
Magistrate deals legal blow to critics of Atlantic Yards project
The Associated Press

February 23, 2007, 10:04 PM EST

A federal magistrate recommended tossing out a lawsuit meant to block New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner's $4 billion Atlantic Yards project -- dealing a blow Friday to a group of Brooklyn property owners and tenants facing eviction.

While a U.S. district judge still has final say on whether the suit survives, magistrates' recommendations seldom rejected.

The size of the project -- a megadevelopment of 16 skyscrapers and an 18,000-seat arena -- has dismayed thousands of Brooklyn residents who worry that it would overwhelm existing neighborhoods and give too many concessions to Ratner.

The project will feature office suites, a hotel, 6,400 apartments and a 500-foot glass tower. Under a deal signed by Ratner's development company, at least 2,250 of the new rental apartments will be offered at reduced prices to families living on low or middle incomes; at least 600 condominium units also will be available at reduced prices to families that meet income guidelines.

The suit, filed in federal court last year, charges that seizure of the plaintiff's property under eminent domain would be unconstitutional.

U.S. Magistrate Robert M. Levy concluded in court papers filed Friday that the case "represents important public policy concerns." But he also found that the federal court should abstain from entering the fray because it is a local matter.

Levy noted the matter could still be addressed in state court, where residents attempting to block the project have already brought other ongoing lawsuits.

Despite the recommendation, plaintiff lawyer Matt Brinckerhoff predicted U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis would allow the suit to go forward because it "involves an issue of paramount constitutional importance" -- making it more suitable for federal rather than state court.

But if the magistrate's recommendation is upheld, plaintiffs will refile the suit in state court, said Candace Carponter, a spokeswoman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, one of the plaintiffs.

A spokesman for Ratner's firm, Loren Riegelhaupt of Forest City Ratner, declined comment.

A spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, John Gallagher, applauded the decision.

"Atlantic Yards will create tens of thousands of jobs, provide hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue and thousands of units of affordable housing for the city, and we welcome this recommendation by the magistrate and are looking forward to the project moving ahead," he said.

Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.

This is a lawsuit filed in federal court, not an appeal on a state court ruling. There are pending lawsuits in NY State Court.

I think the magistrate had in mind the Supreme Court ruling in 2005 of Kelo vs City of New London. In ruling that municipal governments had the right to seize private property for private development, Justice Stevens stated, "States are within their rights to pass additional laws restricting condemnations if residents are overly burdened.

BrooklynRider

February 23rd, 2007, 11:55 PM

I was under the impression that the suit was lost in the state courts already. I retract my former post (but will keep it here to cut and paste should it all end up back where I thought it was).

elfgam

February 24th, 2007, 01:19 PM

I think this is just a matter of legal procedure:

the federal government is supposed to "oversee" the states... not issues of local jurisdiction. This means that if a case is running concurrently in both NY and FED courts, the Feds have to let the NY case finish, not rule at the same time (as this would automatically render the state court ruling moot). Once the state case is concluded then one or the other side can appeal to the federal court. In this case, the issue won't be the subject of the case itself, but whether or not the state gave either side full due process of the law -- a much narrower issue.

ZippyTheChimp

February 24th, 2007, 01:55 PM

the federal government is supposed to "oversee" the states... not issues of local jurisdiction. This means that if a case is running concurrently in both NY and FED courts, the Feds have to let the NY case finish, not rule at the same time (as this would automatically render the state court ruling moot).Not necessarily.

See Timothy McVeigh.

He was first tried on 11 counts in federal court, 8 of which were 1st degree murder of 8 federal law enforcement officers. He was convicted and sentenced to death.

Oklahoma had jurisdiction over the other 160 people killed, but the state chose not to file charges, since the death penalty had rendered the matter moot.

BrooklynRider

February 24th, 2007, 02:42 PM

In this case, the issue won't be the subject of the case itself, but whether or not the state gave either side full due process of the law -- a much narrower issue.

I'm not a legal expert, but I think I disagree with this assertion. The Feds can certainly rule about due process, but they can also rule about constitutionality of outcomes on cases where due process was not an issue. I think we'll see due process, but I do think this is going to be appealed. Eminent Domain is on the Federal legislative agenda and the court's earlier ruling last year set parameters through which the court could or would rule on such cases. This might not be a case that saves people's homes, but it will be a case that can impact legislation or spur the Fed Courts to further clarify law if it is filed and argued effectively.

NYguy

March 2nd, 2007, 08:43 AM

NY Post

RATNER READIES WRECKING BALL

By RICH CALDER
March 2, 2007

Developer Bruce Ratner plans to demolish 12 buildings within a 22-acre footprint next week as he revs up efforts to begin building his $4 billion Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn.

The developer - who last week began prep work for the Frank Gehry-designed development featuring an NBA arena and 16 skyscrapers - announced yesterday that he will also begin asbestos removal and abatement work on 12 other vacant buildings he controls in the project zone.

Those buildings will be demolished at a later date, he said.

The $2 million in new construction jobs were awarded to minority-owned firms as part of the project's Community Benefits Agreement.

The buildings scheduled to be razed next week include six on Pacific Street, three on Flatbush Avenue, two on Vanderbilt Avenue and one on Dean Street.

New financial projections for the development, published by The Post yesterday, raise more questions than answers about the massive plan, critics say.

A Post analysis of the documents found that Ratner and smaller investors stand to make close to $700 million in profits by 2015 should the developer ever decide to sell the arena and residential and office space slated to be built.

But sources familiar with Ratner's financing told The Post yesterday that he is taking a big risk - putting up $1.2 billion in equity - although he obviously believes that Atlantic Yards is a sound long-term investment.

Teno

March 2nd, 2007, 06:17 PM

The financial records released were deemed insufficient for a proper analysis. The documents say that Ratner will not really make as much money as AY opponents claim he will.

I'm sure they released slim details and low balled the projections on purpose. I'm sure the full numbers could be skewed in any direction. They could show Ratner would make a lot of money under certain circumstances, or they could show he won't make much under other circumstances. His goal certainly is to make as much money as he can. These are all projections and there really is no way at this point to know with 100% accuracy what will happen, as none of us have the ability to see into the future.

lofter1

March 2nd, 2007, 10:25 PM

One thing I'll bet on: The public expenditure for AY will be higher than is projected.

ablarc

March 3rd, 2007, 11:18 AM

^ Are they ever lower?

kz1000ps

March 8th, 2007, 01:16 PM

Atlantic Yards Loses Lease to Part of Site

By ANDY NEWMAN
Published: March 8, 2007

As it moves forward on its plans for the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, the developer Forest City Ratner has represented itself as controlling nearly all the property in the 22-acre footprint of the site.

But in a decision released yesterday, a judge in Brooklyn terminated Forest City Ratner’s long-term lease on two properties covering nearly an acre of land within the site, after finding that a tenant had sold the lease to Forest City without the owner’s permission.

Control of the properties, a six-story office building and adjacent parking lot along Pacific Street near Downtown Brooklyn, reverts to the owner, Henry Weinstein, the judge ruled.

Mr. Weinstein is one of 13 property owners challenging the state’s right to condemn property under eminent domain law and convey it to Forest City for the $4 billion Atlantic Yards project that includes 6,400 rental apartments and condominiums, office towers, a hotel and a basketball arena for the New Jersey Nets.

Forest City has already begun work on the project on portions of the site it owns in anticipation of ultimately gaining control of the disputed properties.

Officials at Forest City Ratner declined to comment on the ruling.

Mr. Weinstein’s tenant, a company controlled by another major developer, Shaya Boymelgreen, had argued in court papers that Mr. Weinstein had no valid reason to deny him permission to sell his leases to two companies controlled by Forest City. Mr. Boymelgreen’s lawyer contended that Mr. Weinstein was only withholding his consent in order to be able to extract more money from Forest City or the state when he sold the properties.

But the judge, Justice Ira B. Harkavy of State Supreme Court, ruled that regardless of Mr. Weinstein’s motives, the contracts stated “clearly and unambiguously” that the leases could not be transferred without his permission.

A lawyer for Mr. Boymelgreen’s companies, James P. Sheridan, said he would appeal the decision.

Mr. Weinstein had leased the properties, at 762-766 Pacific Street and 535 Carlton Avenue, to Mr. Boymelgreen’s companies in 1999, for a term of 48 years.

In 2003, Forest City proposed the Atlantic Yards project. Forest City is also the development partner for The New York Times Company in building its new headquarters in Midtown Manhattan.

In February 2006, the parties agree, Mr. Boymelgreen’s companies sent a letter to Mr. Weinstein asking permission to sell the leases to Forest City, but sent it to a wrong address. Ten days later, without having heard back from Mr. Weinstein, Mr. Boymelgreen’s companies transferred the leases to Forest City.

Mr. Weinstein said that Forest City must have known that it did not have the right to take over the leases without his blessing. “If you’re buying a lease from somebody and you have thousand-dollar-an-hour, 800-pound gorilla lawyers retained to protect your interest,” he said, “I tend to think that they read the lease and realized that they knew that what they were doing was illegal.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Fahzee

March 8th, 2007, 01:39 PM

So - what's the over/under on how much this will set back the project?

tmac9wr

March 8th, 2007, 02:23 PM

Where can I find a rendering of this project? I know there has to be one on this thread somewhere, but there's over 150 pages here.

lofter1

March 8th, 2007, 03:43 PM

Google Image Search: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=%22atlantic+yards%22&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2

tmac9wr

March 8th, 2007, 10:01 PM

The scale of this project is really amazing...it's like a whole new mini city being built. However, the more I look at Gehry's work the more I dislike it. It seems like everything that he builds is basically the same design on a different scale. I remember waiting a long looongg time to see the design of the Gehry-Ratner building being built in downtown, but had I seen this design before I would have been able to guess the design of the other building downtown. Regardless of the design though, this project is just huge, and it will be really cool to see the Nets move to Brooklyn.

BrooklynRider

March 8th, 2007, 10:04 PM

10 to 1 it turns out NOTHING like the renderings.

tmac9wr

March 9th, 2007, 12:06 AM

Hopefully....While I'm not a huge fan of his buidlings, he's still a great architect...I just hope he doesn't devote the entire development to the same style of architecture so it can actually look like a diverse neighborhood. The fact that this is an enormous development being built by a single person is fine, but if the buildings can't seperate themselves from one another design-wise then Atlantic Yards won't have lived out to its full potential.

lbjefferies

March 9th, 2007, 12:24 AM

10 to 1 it turns out NOTHING like the renderings.

What? Now you like the renderings?

lofter1

March 9th, 2007, 12:55 AM

... it will be really cool to see the Nets move to Brooklyn.

But apparently the Nets won't be playing in Brooklyn as early as Ratner previously claimed ...

For Immediate Release: March 8, 2007 (http://developdontdestroy.org/php/latestnews_Linked.php?id=599)

Forest City Ratner Misleads Public On Construction Timeline;
(Minimum) 15-Year Build Out Looms

Parent-Company CEO Says Arena Won't Open Until 2010;
“We Are Terrible” in Estimating Time Needed for Construction
BROOKLYN, NY- Forest City Ratner (FCRC) appears to be having trouble being honest with the public about its proposed “Atlantic Yards” project. And this time, they've been caught making misleading statements by the CEO of their parent company.

In comments Tuesday at the Citigroup 2007 Global Property CEO Conference in Naples, Florida, Forest City Enterprises (FCE) CEO Chuck Ratner said that the build out for the “Atlantic Yards” would last at least 15 years, and that the planned arena would open by the 2010 season at the earliest. Yet only two weeks ago, FCRC Executive VP Jim Stuckey told The New York Observer “we expect that it will take 10” years to complete construction, and just last week, FCRC CEO Bruce Ratner told The New York Times that “I think we can” open the arena in 2009.

“The memo from headquarters about the project's real timing appears to have suffered the same mail delivery problems as the lease assignment for Henry Weinstein's property,” said Eric McClure, speaking on behalf of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn. “These guys might want to start using the telephone in order to keep their stories straight. We don't imagine that Chuck Ratner is talking worst-case scenario, either; 20 years of construction — and the truck traffic, noise, debris and disruption that accompanies it — is probably more realistic.”

Chuck Ratner's comments at the Citigroup conference were first reported today by AtlanticYardsReport.com (http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2007/03/cleveland-ratner-offers-timeline_08.html), which analyzed a webcast (http://ir.forestcity.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=88464&p=irol-eventdetails&EventId=1492668) of the FCE CEO's remarks. “I'm not at all confident of how long it will take us to finish.”

Mr. Ratner said, while discussing the timetable for “Atlantic Yards.” He added, “we are terrible — and we've been a developer for 50 years — on these big multi-use, public-private urban developments, to be able to predict when it will go from idea to reality.”

The statements by Chuck Ratner further cloud the question of when the proposed project's below-market-rate housing will be available. The great majority of the below-market units are planned for later stages of construction. In addition, the March issue of the real estate publication The Real Deal is reporting slackening demand for Brooklyn office space, which could further limit the “Atlantic Yards” project's already vastly reduced promises of new jobs.

FCRC's misleading statements about construction timing are part of an emerging pattern of inconsistencies. The developer had told the Empire State Development Corporation that it “controlled” the property owned by Mr. Weinstein in the footprint of the proposed “Atlantic Yards” project during the state's review process, despite the fact that FCRC held only a lease, at best, and had obtained that without Mr. Weinstein's required consent. A state court ruled in Mr. Weinstein's favor on Tuesday in a lawsuit regarding the property.

Click here (http://ir.forestcity.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=88464&p=irol-eventdetails&EventId=1492668) to listen to the webcast of Chuck Ratner's comments at the Citigroup 2007 Global Property CEO Conference.

http://dddb.net/frame/logo.gif (http://developdontdestroy.org/index.php)

BrooklynRider

March 9th, 2007, 10:22 AM

What? Now you like the renderings?

Never liked the renderings. Never trusted Ratner to doing anything he says. He has never disappointed on that score. It's an ugly design, but Ratner always finds ways to value engineer even the worst designs into something even less palatable. The arena and it's three companion buildings will go 1st and will be something different (note I didn't say "something great"). Expect the other residential buildings to be as ugly as that one he built by Foley Square.

lofter1

March 9th, 2007, 10:43 AM

RE: Ratner's residential building near Foley Square

Would that be one of the two new-ish buildings on Worth Street between Broadway & Lafayette (opposite the Javits Federal Building)?

If so, which one is the Ratner? The red brick at the west end of the block (336 Broadway) or the Tan brick at the east end of the block (99 Worth; arch.: Costas Kondylis)?

Derek2k3

March 9th, 2007, 11:25 AM

Yes, the tan one. This was before Ratner's supposed architectural epiphany though. Unless Gehry is fired, the AY towers will be better than average (which doesn't take much).

lofter1

March 9th, 2007, 11:33 AM

City: 100M for Yards land

NY Daily News (http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/503657p-424794c.html)
BY JOTHAM SEDERSTROM
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, March 9th, 2007

The city wants to spend $100 million to buy land tied to the Atlantic Yards project - money previously thought to be earmarked for improving infrastructure for the development.

Economic Development Corp. officials acknowledged at a City Council budget hearing Wednesday that about half of the city's contribution to the mega-project will go toward scooping up property on or near the 22-acre site for developer Forest City Ratner.

The agency's admission drew outrage from Brooklyn officials and from critics of the project, who worried that taxpayers would foot the bill on behalf of a private land grab.

"There's no justification to spend public money like this," said Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn Heights). "Government money should be spent on transportation infrastructure, schools and traffic calming - not subsidies for a private company."

Of the $205 million proposed to support the project in the Mayor's preliminary budget, $100 million is slated for land acquisition costs and $105 million for roads, utilities and other infrastructure needs, according to EDC officials.

The state is chipping in an additional $100 million.

"That money should go to traffic mitigation and affordable housing. Period. End of discussion," said Councilwoman Letitia James (Working Families Party-Prospect Heights), a vocal critic of the plan.

The $4.2 billion project in Prospect Heights calls for a pro basketball arena for the NBA's Nets and 16 towers with residential and commercial space.

Construction began last month - even as lawsuits filed by property owners threatened by the state's use of eminent domain remain to be waged in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

"On top of the fact that they're taking land through eminent domain, now that the city is paying for the land for the developer adds another layer of absurdity to this whole project," said Candace Carponter, a member of the opposition group Develop Don't Destroy.

EDC spokeswoman Yonit Golub said the city's memorandum of understanding with Ratner had always included the possibility of buying land, as well as improving the infrastructure.

Forest City Ratner officials declined to comment.

© 2007 Daily News, L.P.

JCMAN320

March 10th, 2007, 02:26 AM

Landowner wins vs. Ratner
He has no claim to building
& parking lot, says judge

BY JOTHAM SEDERSTROM
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

A property owner threatened by the Atlantic Yards project enjoyed a victory after a judge ruled that two of his leases were improperly acquired by the developer, Forest City Ratner.
Property owner Henry Weinstein can keep his six-story building and a parking lot on Carlton Ave., Supreme Court judge Ira Harkavy ruled Tuesday.

But it was unclear how the ruling would affect the project, which broke ground last month.

"The leases in question clearly and unambiguously required tenants to first obtain the written consent of the landlords before any assignment of the leases," Harkavy ruled in an 18-page decision invalidating both leases.

Weinstein leased his property to Brooklyn developer Shaya Boymelgreen in 1999, but he didn't expect Boymelgreen to sell the leases to Forest City Ratner, Weinstein said.

Weinstein, a critic of the Atlantic Yards project, never gave consent to the deal between Boymelgreen and Ratner, which would have allowed the latter to hold onto the leases until 2048.

"We believed from the beginning that Ratner and Boymelgreen had no right to do what they did, so this decision is no surprise," said Candace Carponter, a member of the opposition group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn. "As far as I'm concerned, this decision is unassailable upon appeal."

The $4.2 billion project calls for a pro basketball arena for the NBA's Nets and 16 towers with residential and commercial space, including property near Weinstein's Carlton Ave. building.

The decision comes two weeks after a federal court magistrate recommended another lawsuit filed by 13 other property owners be heard in a state court.

Ratner's lawyer Jeffrey Braun said Boymelgreen believed he had the right to sell the leases, which expire in 2048.

"The decision issued today by Judge Harkavy says that he did not," said Braun of Boymelgreen's decision to turn over the leases to Ratner. "The developer has advised us that he will appeal the decision."

"We do not believe that this decision will have any impact on the project, and are continuing with the preparatory work begun last week," Braun said.

Originally published on March 8, 2007

BrooklynRider

March 10th, 2007, 11:24 AM

City: 100M for Yards land

NY Daily News (http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/503657p-424794c.html)
BY JOTHAM SEDERSTROM
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, March 9th, 2007

The city wants to spend $100 million to buy land tied to the Atlantic Yards project - money previously thought to be earmarked for improving infrastructure for the development.

Economic Development Corp. officials acknowledged at a City Council budget hearing Wednesday that about half of the city's contribution to the mega-project will go toward scooping up property on or near the 22-acre site for developer Forest City Ratner.

The agency's admission drew outrage from Brooklyn officials and from critics of the project, who worried that taxpayers would foot the bill on behalf of a private land grab.

"There's no justification to spend public money like this," said Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn Heights). "Government money should be spent on transportation infrastructure, schools and traffic calming - not subsidies for a private company."

Of the $205 million proposed to support the project in the Mayor's preliminary budget, $100 million is slated for land acquisition costs and $105 million for roads, utilities and other infrastructure needs, according to EDC officials.

The state is chipping in an additional $100 million...

"On top of the fact that they're taking land through eminent domain, now that the city is paying for the land for the developer adds another layer of absurdity to this whole project," said Candace Carponter, a member of the opposition group Develop Don't Destroy...

Forest City Ratner officials declined to comment.

Actually, the $200M initially earmarked by the city was all for infrastructure. This is the first time I recall any money being ponied up for land acquisition. So, the public outlay to this PRIVATE developer and PRIVATE development now tops $400M. The Develop Don't Destroy arguments start becoming prophetic.

ZippyTheChimp

April 5th, 2007, 08:10 AM

April 5, 2007

Clearing of Atlantic Yards’ Site Proceeds as Legal Thicket Grows Denser

By ANDY NEWMAN

Out on the cold damp streets of Brooklyn, work on the Atlantic Yards project is under way, and you don’t even need to peek through a knothole to see it.

In the raw drizzle yesterday, a man and a woman in blue hazardous-material suits ducked in and out of the former headquarters of the Tasty Provision Company on Pacific Street. They were removing asbestos from the building in preparation for its demolition.

Across the street, in the Long Island Rail Road yards that give the mammoth $4-billion-dollar project its name, a raked expanse of dirt testified to the recent removal of an old bus parking lot.

But even as preliminary work proceeds on one of the biggest construction projects in the city’s history, new questions are being raised by Atlantic Yards’ opponents, new facts brought to the surface and new suits filed in courts across the city. All are aimed at forcing the developer, Forest City Ratner, to substantially scale back its plans, which currently call for erecting 8 million square feet of high-rise housing, office space and a basketball arena on a 22-acre swath near Downtown Brooklyn.

Much of the wrangling, not surprisingly, revolves around money. More than three months after the state approved the project, some questions remain unanswered, some numbers unknown. Without knowing the figures, critics of the project say, it is impossible to have a discussion about how big the project needs to be.

In the budget it unveiled in January, for example, the Bloomberg administration quietly doubled its direct subsidy to the project area, to $205 million from $100 million. The difference is bigger than the entire annual budget of the city Buildings Department.

“Are these subsidies that help put the developer over the top so that he can build the project?” asked Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. which opposes the scale of the plan, “Or are they to help him make a superprofit, as we suspect?”

Then there are the lawsuits — at least four.

The most recent was filed last month by Assemblyman James F. Brennan, who is trying to force a state agency that approved the project, the Empire State Development Corporation, to release any Forest City business plan for Atlantic Yards that it has.

The agency denied his earlier requests, he said, on the grounds that the plan consisted of “interagency materials” not subject to the Freedom of Information Law. Early this year, Mr. Brennan said, officials at the agency conceded to him that they did not have a financial plan for the project. They had relied, they said, on an analysis done by auditors that were unable to persuade Forest City to reveal its complete financial plan, either.

Mr. Brennan characterized the information vacuum as bizarre, as well as in violation of an agreement that directed Forest City to submit its business plan to the authorities.

A spokesman for the Empire State Development Commission, Errol Cockfield, took mild issue with Mr. Brennan’s complaints yesterday. “We did not receive a document labeled ‘financial plan,’ but the information we received, taken together, constitutes a financial plan,” he said.

He added that he did not mean to get bogged down in semantics. “The important distinction,” he said, “ is to point out that the project was approved by the previous administration, not this administration. The horse has left the barn.”

Mr. Brennan said it was not too late, though, to lessen the project’s impact on nearby neighborhoods.

“Even though the project has been approved,” he said, “we face a 10-to-15-year window for implementation, and the information is relevant for many years to come in any discussion about amendments or modifications to the plan.”

He added, “How do you know what alternatives and mitigations are possible if you don’t know what’s financially feasible?”

A spokesman for Forest City, Loren Riegelhaupt, said that the company was “not able to make our business plan public” for “proprietary reasons.”

The filing of another lawsuit is planned today in State Supreme Court in Manhattan by a coalition of opponents challenging the environmental impact statement that the authorities used in evaluating the proposed project. Mr. Goldstein of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn said that the development corporation had failed to adequately consider traffic problems and security concerns that the project would raise, among other things.

Another suit, a constitutional challenge in federal court by tenants and property owners aimed at halting the condemnation of buildings on the project site under eminent domain, was deemed a matter for state court by a magistrate judge in February. But last Friday, the federal judge who has control of the case heard several hours of arguments on whether to keep the case in federal court.

Even the work being done on the site now is being duly litigated. George Locker, a lawyer for several residents, said he would take the state development corporation to court next week claiming it was flouting a requirement to have an independent environmental monitor on hand.

Mr. Cockfield, the development corporation spokesman, said that providing a monitor for the asbestos work, at least, was Forest City’s job. Mr. Riegelhaupt of Forest City said that the company did have an air monitor on the site.

Not every interaction between Forest City and the government has been condemned by the Atlantic Yards’ critics. Yesterday, Norman Oder, who runs a blog devoted to Atlantic Yards issues, noted approvingly that the state development corporation had closed its local office on the ghostly third floor of Forest City’s Atlantic Center mall, for which the agency had been paying Forest City $30,000 a year.

The community offices “weren’t getting too much foot traffic,” Mr. Cockfield said. “They weren’t worth the taxpayer investment to keep them open.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Teno

April 20th, 2007, 08:44 PM

Daily Intelligencer
Judge Won't Stand in Ratner's Way

A New York State judge announced this afternoon that she won't stop Bruce Ratner from razing several Brooklyn buildings to start construction on his Atlantic Yards project. Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn appeared in a lower Manhattan courtroom Tuesday to request a temporary restraining order against Forest City Ratner, keeping the developer from starting demolition pending a May 3 hearing on DDDB's lawsuit claiming in inadequate environmental-review process. Justice Joan Madden promised a decision today, and she has now denied the DDDB request. FCR showed Madden a schedule Wednesday outlining the demolition of fifteen buildings between April 18 and the end of June, she wrote. Reasoning that a restraining order "is a drastic remedy which should be sparingly used," she wrote she failed to find "factual support" that the first nine buildings on the block will "affect the nature and character of the area." DDDB chief Daniel Goldstein quickly issued a statement. "The court expressly stated that in making today's TRO decision it was not pre-judging the merits of petitioners claims filed on April 5th," he said in a press release. He has called a protest for Monday at 8 a.m. at 191 Flatbush Avenue, where he expects demolition work to begin.

nymag.com

MidtownGuy

April 20th, 2007, 08:51 PM

Good news. Let's get it goin'!
I wonder when, or if, we'll see final renderings. The last batch left me nonplussed.

Scraperfannyc

April 21st, 2007, 01:53 AM

This is one development I am looking forward to see get going!

These develop don't destroy brooklyn people are all backwards. They shoud be trying to save the priceless art deco townhouses in Midtown and not these rotting bricks.

TimmyG

April 27th, 2007, 11:04 AM

from NY Post
ATLANTIC YARDS BLDG. COLLAPSE
By RICH CALDER

April 27, 2007 -- Part of a building targeted for demolition to make way for the Atlantic Yards Brooklyn arena project collapsed yesterday, raining bricks down on parked cars and leaving 350 homeless people without a shelter.
No one was injured, and FDNY officials said there was no sign of foul play.
Councilwoman Letitia James and others called for an investigation and a halt to the demolition of at least 15 buildings.
Huge cement chunks of a parapet atop the five-story former Ward Bread Bakery came crashing down on Pacific Street at about 9:45 a.m.

Scraperfannyc

April 27th, 2007, 01:13 PM

ZippyTheChimp

May 18th, 2007, 09:07 AM

Metro Briefing | New York

Brooklyn: Atlantic Yards Suit Filed in Wrong Court

By ALAN FEUER

A judge yesterday dismissed a lawsuit filed by tenants challenging the Atlantic Yards construction project, saying they had filed their suit in the wrong court. The suit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, accused the Empire State Development Corporation, the state agency that shepherded the project to approval, of offering an unfair package of provisions to relocate tenants at two buildings in Brooklyn, 473 Dean Street and 634 Pacific Street. Justice Walter B. Tolub said the suit should have been filed directly in the Appellate Division of Supreme Court. A. J. Carter, a spokesman for the development corporation, said the agency was pleased with the decision. George Locker, a lawyer for the tenants, said he would file his suit in the appellate court even though he believed the Supreme Court had jurisdiction.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

ZippyTheChimp

May 23rd, 2007, 08:17 AM

May 23, 2007

Project’s Foes Shown Door in Brooklyn

By ANDY NEWMAN

The letter arrived in Marilyn Oliva’s mailbox yesterday from the Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz. It thanked her for her dedication to the community as a member of Community Board 6, but informed her that her services were no longer needed.

Ms. Oliva was disappointed. She was also not alone. Though community board members’ terms are usually renewed routinely, Mr. Markowitz on Monday replaced at least five longtime members who had sought reappointment to Community Board 6, which covers the brownstone neighborhoods of Boerum Hill, Park Slope and Carroll Gardens.

The five members had one thing in common: they voted yes last year on a resolution denouncing Atlantic Yards, the $4 billion development project that Mr. Markowitz has spent three years and much of his political capital extolling.

Mr. Markowitz refused to comment on the reasons for his move, but there certainly seemed to be something about Community Board 6 that displeased him.

While he did renew the appointments of some Board 6 members who voted against Atlantic Yards, he replaced a greater percentage of Board 6 than of any other community board in the borough.

“It’s a shame to punish people for having independent judgment,” said Jeff Strabone, a board member whose term is not up until next year. “On the one hand, in order to have fresh blood on the board there has to be change, but losing this much leadership at once is a bloodletting.”

The Board 6 members removed by Mr. Markowitz include Jerome Armer, a former chairman of the board who served for more than 20 years. Altogether, Mr. Markowitz removed 9 of the 24 members whose terms were up this year, but it was not clear if all nine had sought reappointment.

New York City’s 59 community boards, all-volunteer bodies of up to 50 members appointed by borough presidents either directly or at the recommendation of local City Council members, wield a fair amount of power in determining how their neighborhoods look and develop.

Although their votes are usually advisory, the boards’ recommendations are often followed by the city agencies that govern land use. Members serve two-year terms, and half of those terms expire each year. There are 18 boards in Brooklyn.

In the case of Atlantic Yards, Community Board 6’s resolution last September, though strongly critical, was almost purely symbolic: the project is being managed by a state agency, the Empire State Development Corporation, and is exempt from the city land-use process.

But Celia Cacace, who has been on the board since the early 1980s — long before Mr. Markowitz was elected — said that he took her aside at a community event a few months ago to criticize her and her colleagues.

“He said, ‘I’m going to get rid of everybody on the board that voted for this,’ ” according to Ms. Cacace, 71, whose term expires next year. “He says, ‘Remember, you are my appointee.’ Every time I tried to say something he totally lambasted me.”

Mr. Markowitz would not comment on the discussion.

Ms. Cacace’s account is at odds with Mr. Markowitz’s public reputation as a genial and often goofy cheerleader for all things Brooklyn. But his passionate advocacy for Atlantic Yards — eight million square feet of high-rise housing, office space and a basketball arena slated for an area near Downtown Brooklyn that includes part of Board 6’s area — has manifested itself in a number of red-faced eruptions in recent months.

“The borough president feels that some of the actions of the board are not in keeping with what he would have liked,” Mr. Armer said, “and it’s his right to appoint whomever. Or not.”

Mr. Armer said he thought the purge was motivated by “probably a combination of things, with Atlantic Yards being somewhat prominent.” Mr. Strabone said that many board members also differed with Mr. Markowitz on how densely the area around the Gowanus Canal should be redeveloped.

Four of the nine members who were removed had been placed on the board by City Councilmen Bill de Blasio, who supports the project, and David Yassky, who favors some redevelopment on the site.

The board’s resolution against Atlantic Yards came during the public hearing period on an environmental impact study that laid out for the first time the strain that the project would put on the local streets, schools and sewage system. The board voted 35-4 that the project, as presented last summer, would cause “irreparable damage to the quality of life” in Brooklyn and should not be approved.

The state eventually approved the project in December. (The project’s developer, Forest City Ratner, is the development partner in a new Midtown headquarters for The New York Times Company.)

The other two community boards in the Atlantic Yards project area have also made critical comments about the project, but did not pass formal resolutions condemning it. Officials of those community boards said yesterday that all the members who had been appointed directly by Mr. Markowitz had been reappointed.

Ms. Oliva, a history professor who has been on the board for seven years, said that, between the Atlantic Yards vote and the growing concern over redevelopment along the Gowanus Canal, the timing of Mr. Markowitz’s decision to replace her and her colleagues was “very interesting.”

She said she had been proud to serve on the board. “I actually never minded going to those meetings,” she added.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

MidtownGuy

May 23rd, 2007, 03:45 PM

Good riddance.

Eugenious

May 23rd, 2007, 03:50 PM

Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out, You Nimby Neophytes

Transic

June 2nd, 2007, 02:32 PM

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/30/22/30_22powerlies.html

Power Lies! It turns out state was wrong — A’Yards will tax electric service, raising rates

By Dana Rubinstein
The Brooklyn Paper

When your electric bill goes up, put some of the blame on Atlantic Yards, Con Edison officials said last week.

The utility’s assessment, given at an Assembly hearing in Albany on May 23, apparently contradicts assurances by Atlantic Yards supporters in the state government who last year insisted that Bruce Ratner’s mega-development would have only an “insignificant” impact on the energy grid.

Con Ed officials testified that they needed a 17-percent rate hike to boost an energy infrastructure that will be strained by developments like those planned at Atlantic Yards and the West Side railyards.

Company spokesman Chris Olert later sought to soften his bosses’ statements, asserting that the Atlantic Yards and West Side railyards are “just one megapixel in the giant diorama of city projects.”

“Look at the projects in Brooklyn alone, like the new passenger ship terminal, the expansion of Steiner Studios in the Navy Yard,” said Olert. “The city’s in the midst of a boom.”

That did little to mollify Atlantic Yards opponents, who saw the company’s very public admission as yet one more strike against the Empire State Development Corporation, the state agency that concluded in November that Atlantic Yards’ “increases in [energy] demand would be insignificant.”

Opponents have long argued that the ESDC’s “environmental impact statement” looked at the eight-million-square-foot Atlantic Yards project in a vacuum without fully considering the impact of the tens of millions of additional square feet of residential, commercial, retail and office space being built or slated to be built in the immediate vacinity of Atlantic Yards.

“When it came to the electrical grid, the state basically said, ‘Don’t worry. No problem,’” said Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, which is fighting the project. “Clearly, they were misleading the public.”

Indeed, the state’s final environmental impact statement declared that, “The municipal systems serving the site have adequate capacity to meet the projected increases in demand from the proposed project.”

The ESDC did not respond to requests for comment, but Olert said the state’s assessment of Con Ed’s capacity was correct.

“We can meet their needs,” said Olert. “For any new project — whether it’s a big development or single family home — we would have to pull pipes or wires. You cannot pin the entire rate increase on one project.”

That said, last month, the energy giant asked for a 17-percent increase in rates. While the exact relationship between the Atlantic Yards project and the rate hikes remains murky, at least one expert said there was little question that the 16-skyscraper-and-arena project would be a drain on the city’s energy resources.

“It’s a pretty big project,” said Jason Babbie of the New York Public Interest Research Group. “Clearly, it will have an impact.”

As any Econ professor will attest, increased demand + limited supply = increased prices. “The economics are pretty simple,” said Babbie.

Transic

June 11th, 2007, 11:20 AM

http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=4&id=13338

Federal Case Against Atlantic Yards Project Dismissed
by Elizabeth Stull (court@brooklyneagle.net (court@brooklyneagle.net)), published online 06-08-2007

Project’s Public Purpose Justifies Eminent Domain, Judge Says
By Elizabeth Stull
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

CADMAN PLAZA EAST — In a much-anticipated decision, Brooklyn federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis has dismissed two eminent domain challenges to Forest City Ratner Companies’ (FCRC) Atlantic Yards Project because they failed to show that the project would not serve a public purpose.

The relative merits of the project and whether it will achieve any of its objectives are political issues the court may not consider after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. New London, Conn., Garaufis observed in a footnote.

The plaintiffs in both cases are property owners and rent-subsidized tenants located in the footprint of the planned 22-acre development project. They challenged the state’s right to forcibly take their property by eminent domain, saying it violates the Constitution. Both cases, Daniel Goldstein et. al v. George E. Pataki and Aaron Piller et. al v. George Pataki, et. al, named several state and city defendants along with the project developer.

After reviewing the cases last winter at Garaufis’ request, Magistrate Judge Robert Levy recommended he abstain from reviewing them based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Burford v. Sun Oil. Under the Burford ruling, a case belongs in state court when the state’s strong interest in the matter outweighs the federal interest and the plaintiffs can have timely and adequate recourse in state court.

But Garaufis rejected this recommendation, and spent more than half of his 66-page decision distinguishing Burford and its progeny from the consolidated cases before him.

“In this case, in contrast to Burford and Alabama, the questions of state law are straightforward and largely duplicative of the questions of federal law that this court must address,” Garaufis wrote.

“[i]t is questions of federal law that predominate, as three of the Plaintiffs’ four claims are based on allegations that their federal constitutional rights have been violated. The three claims do not rely in any way on state law. Therefore, however much discretionary interpretation of state law this case may require — and I find that it requires none — the need to interpret state law is dwarfed by the need to interpret the U.S. Constitution.”

The federal district judge adopted Magistrate Levy’s recommendation to reject ripeness and a Younger abstention as grounds for dismissal. However, he dismissed the case on its merits, finding that the plaintiffs failed to state a valid claim.

Under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.” Therefore, when eminent domain is used to take private property, it must be for a public use and just compensation must be paid to the owner.

In this case, plaintiffs argued that the public use requirement is not met because the primary purpose of FCRC’s development project is to benefit FCRC — not to provide any public benefit.

The defendants moved to dismiss the case. They argued that FCRC’s planned sports arena for the Nets basketball team, as well as affordable housing and new office space, will generate economic benefits and jobs in a blighted central Brooklyn area.

The plaintiffs argued that the area is not blighted, that the project will generate minimal economic benefits and that it will not create jobs or increase available affordable housing.

The judge addressed each of the plaintiffs’ arguments and concluded they were quibbling over the project’s relative value, and did not show that it lacked any public value at all.

“Whether these [housing] units are sufficiently affordable may be an important political question, and if the citizens of Brooklyn are unsatisfied with the answers, then elected officials and their political parties may pay the price at the polls,” Garaufis wrote.

“The Constitution does not enshrine Plaintiffs’ value judgment that a taking lacks a public purpose if it results in ‘luxury’ as opposed to ‘affordable’ housing, and the constitutionality of this taking does not depend on the relative numbers of planned housing units priced at, above, or below market rate.”

The judge cited the Supreme Court's decision in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, an anti-trust conspiracy case which held that plaintiffs must "nudge their claims across the line from conceivable to plausible

Bruce Ratner, president and CEO of Forest City Ratner Companies, hailed the decision as “an important victory not only for Atlantic Yards but for Brooklyn as well.

“This decision means we are one step closer to creating over 2,200 units of affordable housing, thousands of construction and office jobs and bringing the Nets to Brooklyn,” Ratner said.

The plaintiffs plan to appeal.

The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Matthew Brinckerhoff, said, “We are confident that the appellate court will allow this case to proceed to trial, at which the citizens of New York will finally learn the real reason plaintiffs’ properties were selected to be forcibly taken, and why Ratner was chosen to reap an unprecedented financial windfall.”

The plaintiffs claim that more than half of FCRC’s $4 billion Atlantic Yards Project would be subsidized by New York State. The developer has reportedly requested at least $1.4 billion in tax-exempt housing bonds, $637 million in tax-exempt arena bonds, $205 million direct cash subsidy from New York City and $100 million direct cash subsidy from New York State, which adds up to $2.34 billion.

JCMAN320

July 1st, 2007, 11:10 PM

Bloomy slams “Ratner carve-out”

By Ariella Cohen
The Brooklyn Paper

Bruce Ratner “doesn’t need” the massive public subsidy handed to him by the state Assembly last week, Mayor Bloomberg said on Friday — and called for Gov. Spitzer to block the legislation.

In slamming the Assembly handout — which the mayor estimated would cost taxpayers $300 million, not the $175 million originally estimated by government watchdogs — Bloomberg has joined the chorus of advocates, legislators and Atlantic Yards opponents condemning the amendment that would give special treatment to the mega-developer.

“[The bill is] going to hurt the very people that everybody talks about helping and gives some tax breaks to a developer that doesn’t need them and which we didn’t have to do,” Bloomberg said on his weekly WABC radio show on Friday morning.

The mayor added, “I can only hope that the Governor stands up and vetoes [the bill],” which is now awaiting approval from the Senate after passing in the state Assembly last week.

Bloomberg has been an outspoken supporter of the $4-billion residential, arena, office and retail complex. His criticism of the subsidy handout is the first time he has publicly opposed a proposed tax break for the powerful developer, a former city bureaucrat and a college buddy of former Gov. George Pataki.

The city estimates that the developer-specific bonus would cost the city $300 in property tax revenue — a projection nearly double the $175 million loss estimated last week by governmental watchdogs.

See our earlier report, a Paper Explainer, and the Paper’s editorial.

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper

Scraperfannyc

July 2nd, 2007, 01:55 AM

For a 4 billion dollar project, 300 million should be a drop in the bucket for ratner.

The city should start paying the cops some more money, and not payoff rich developers money they don't need.

krulltime

July 9th, 2007, 02:01 PM

Ratner May Net $30 Million On Sale of Arena Hotel Site
Controversial Developer Will Sell Hotel, Not Build It Himself

By Sarah Ryley
Published online 07-09-2007

PROSPECT HEIGHTS — Forest City Ratner Companies will not be building a hotel within Miss Brooklyn, the flagship building of the developer’s arena and high-rise project approved by the state last year, according to documents obtained by Assemblyman James Brennan.

“FCRC indicated that they will not construct the [180-room] hotel, but will sell the site to a hotel developer,” said a December report on the developer’s business plan performed at the request of the project’s sponsor, Empire State Development Corporation.

At a planned 165,000 square feet, the hotel site could fetch $28.8 million if sold at the high end of the Brooklyn market, according to an estimate by Massey Knakal Realty Services partner Brian Leary. He pointed out that the “unique location” at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues has several advantages for a hotel developer.

Once completed, the 22-acre high-rise neighborhood would have a built-in market — 6.4 million square feet of housing and office space, and an 18,000-seat basketball arena for the Nets that would host around 200 events each year, from graduations to concerts.

Miss Brooklyn would rise above one of the city’s largest transportation hubs, one stop from Manhattan and surrounded by the borough’s hottest neighborhoods, including the BAM Cultural District and burgeoning Downtown Brooklyn.

According to information provided by the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, around 7,750 residential units, 1.2 million square feet of office space and 1,000 hotel rooms are in some stage of development surrounding the strip of Flatbush Avenue between the Brooklyn Bridge and Atlantic Yards.

“Sounds to me like its just another giveaway,” said Daniel Goldstein, who is fighting the use of eminent domain to seize his condo for the development. “Basically, it’s eminent domain being used to give the land to Ratner for free, and then he gets to sell it, which again is pure profit to him as opposed to the state and the city.”

A portion of the city’s $205 million contribution to the project could go toward the cost of acquiring the land, and the state Development Corporation is handling current eminent domain proceedings.

When previous financial documents were released to the public, there had been questions about why expenses and profits related to the hotel were left blank. Variations of the project, although not the one generally presented to the public, replace the hotel with office space, which would reduce construction costs.

“The project has evolved several times over the past few years, and the documents relate to earlier iterations [versions] of the plan,” said A.J. Carter, spokesman for the Empire State Development Corporation.

Representatives of Forest City Ratner Companies did not respond to questions for this report.

© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007

BrooklynRider

July 9th, 2007, 02:58 PM

That's a pretty damning report considering Ratner's big Gehry-designed plan. Now, comes the time where Ratner starts reneging and footnoting everything he has said. It certainly proves the critics right.

TimmyG

July 9th, 2007, 03:58 PM

The use of eminent domain for this is pretty ridiculous. I could see it for a road, school, or train line, but not for a developer to make a quick buck.

ablarc

July 9th, 2007, 06:18 PM

I could see it for a road, school, or train line, but not for a developer to make a quick buck.
Well ... more a slow buck. really.

TimmyG

July 10th, 2007, 12:05 AM

Well ... more a slow buck. really.

True.

JCMAN320

July 23rd, 2007, 10:00 PM

RATNER'S PLAN HITS BIG $NAG
TAX DEAL IRKS CITY

By RICH CALDER

July 23, 2007 -- The Bloomberg administration is threatening to pull more than $100 million in city subsidies from the controversial Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn unless a deal providing massive tax breaks for developer Bruce Ratner is drastically revised.

"Pure and simple, it's a giveaway," a high-ranking city official told The Post.

At issue is an affordable-housing reform bill hastily passed by the state Legislature that included a special "carve-out" for Atlantic Yards.

The provision, quietly inserted by Assemblyman Vito Lopez (D-Brooklyn), would provide Ratner with an extra $300 million in property-tax benefits. It also exempts Atlantic Yards from a new definition of government-assisted affordable housing that limits it only to low-income households. Atlantic Yards could still include middle-income tenants.

Many developers, city officials fear, would hesitate to build "affordable" housing that excludes the middle class. A city memo says the bill could kill the construction of 10,000 subsidized units citywide for which middle-income families could qualify, including 5,000 units at Queens West.

Another provision eliminates - for Ratner only - the requirement that at least 20 percent of the housing units in each building in a complex be affordable.

Critics say it opens the door to Ratner "segregating" all of the project's 2,500 affordable-housing units into several buildings.

"More sinister, [Ratner] can build the market-rate housing first and wait a decade to do the affordable housing or, even worse, come back after the market-rate housing is done and then say, 'We can't afford to do the affordable housing,' " an official said.

The project plan currently calls for 30 percent of all housing built during the project's first phase to be affordable, and Ratner's staff says there's no plan to change that.

One high-ranking official at Ratner's company said, "Rather than working with Albany to create more affordable housing for New York, the Bloomberg administration is threatening to kill middle-income housing at Atlantic Yards unless they get what they want."

The city committed $205 million to Atlantic Yards to help Ratner acquire property and make infrastructure repairs. It might not hold back all the funds because the area needs the infrastructure repairs anyway.

Additional reporting by Tom Topousis

rich.calder@nypost.com

From NetsDaily.com:
2007-07-23 09:29:23
City Hall Threatens to Pull $100M in Ratner Subsidies

For the first time since Bruce Ratner proposed a new arena and mini-city in downtown Brooklyn, New York City officials are threatening to pull their support. More importantly, they are threatening to pull $100 million in subsidies to improve infrastructure around the Atlantic Yards project. At issue: Ratner's successful lobbying for a bill that provides him with more than $300 million in property tax abatements. The bill could threaten other housing in the city's outer boroughs, city officials believe.

JCMAN Note of the Night: As a Nets fan, The Prudential Center aka The Rock is looking better and better everyday and if NJ goes along and moth balls the CAA, the Nets could be in the Prudential Center this fall.

lofter1

July 23rd, 2007, 10:17 PM

Bruce ain't as slick as he thought he was :cool:

Teno

July 25th, 2007, 02:42 PM

Power Lies! It turns out state was wrong — A’Yards will tax electric service, raising rates

Doing everything they can to cast AY in a bad light. ConEd has said it will need to raise the rates irregardless of AY. AY does add to the need for more power. But the need for more power is not because of AY alone.

City Hall Threatens to Pull $100M in Ratner Subsidies

Good, its the job of our government to spur business and development but protect public money from greed.

JCMAN320

August 2nd, 2007, 02:07 AM

From NetsDaily.com
2007-07-31 19:24:37

Nets Owner Optimistic, Orders 2,800 Tons of Steel for Arena

There is still one unresolved lawsuit unresolved and the state has yet to issue condemnation orders for the properties needed to erect the Nets' new arena. But Bruce Ratner is optimistic enough to begin ordering steel for Barclays Center. Ratner's contractor ordered 2,800 tons of steel on July 16, the first order needed to construct what will become the $600 million, 18,000-seat arena. Meanwhile, he, along with Darryl Dawkins and Tim Capstraw, have begun a youth-mentoring program in Williamsburg. Ratner is still aiming for an opening during the 2009-10 season.

elfgam

August 2nd, 2007, 03:33 AM

Alonzo-ny

August 2nd, 2007, 09:18 PM

Williamsburg, why?

investordude

August 19th, 2007, 09:46 PM

Given tightening debt markets, is the financing for Atlantic Yards done yet? Otherwise, it striked me that a 4.2 billion loan on an up and coming neighborhood with many potential subprime buyers may be a hard sell with banks.

Thoughts?

Hamilton

August 22nd, 2007, 04:56 PM

Won't the Atlantic Yards be mostly rental? All those folks who have had to foreclose on their ARM-financed McMansions need somewhere
to live, after all.

MikeW

August 22nd, 2007, 05:09 PM

Can the real estate and credit markets do what the Brooklyn NIMBYs couldn't? I tend to doubt it.

ablarc

August 23rd, 2007, 08:15 AM

Is anything happening at Atlantic Yards?

Anyone actually shoveling dirt?

JCMAN320

August 23rd, 2007, 01:56 PM

Nope I was by there 2 days ago, not a damm thing.

BrooklynRider

August 23rd, 2007, 02:46 PM

Well, the JRG Bar building is being demolished. That's something.

ramvid01

August 23rd, 2007, 07:46 PM

Is anything happening at Atlantic Yards?

Anyone actually shoveling dirt?

I think the MTA has to reconfigure its track and the such before actual construction of the deck can happen. That is my understanding of the west end of the site.

Tectonic

August 27th, 2007, 11:20 PM

Atlantic Yards between Carlton and Vanderbilt Avenues looking East
08.27.2007

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/2306/dsc03843mb1.jpg

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/2306/dsc03843mb1.jpg

http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/5590/dsc03842rd1.jpg

Looking West block between Carlton and 5th Avenue:

http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/9864/dsc03845oy4.jpg

ablarc

August 28th, 2007, 08:11 AM

^ They did all that in a week?

Nope I was by there 2 days ago, not a damm thing.

Tectonic

August 28th, 2007, 09:23 AM

^ That block of the project is the furthest east, maybe he didn't see it.

Here you can find construction updates: http://www.atlanticyards.com/html/footer/construction_updates.html

Here's whats happening this week: http://www.empire.state.ny.us/AtlanticYards/ConstructionUpdate6.asp

elfgam

August 28th, 2007, 11:31 AM

HIP HIP HOORAY!
HIP HIP HOORAY!
HIP HIP HOORAY!

A Tower Grows In Brooklyn... :-)

JCMAN320

August 28th, 2007, 03:48 PM

Yea my bad I didn't see it. I was heading to Kensington and stayed on Flatbush I wan't anywhere near Vanderbillt. Good to see some signs of life.

antinimby

August 31st, 2007, 06:35 PM

Wrecking balls

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/assets/photos/30/34/30_34_ratnerdemolitions_z.jpg
Jose Gonzalez’s building at 812 Pacific Street will remain in place while lawyers fight the
state’s plan to condemn the building and turn it over to Bruce Ratner.

By Ariella Cohen
The Brooklyn Paper
September 1, 2007 (http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/30/34/30_34wreckingball.html)

Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner will move forward with a long-planned demolition this week, leaving a family that is suing to stop the project to live, literally, in the shadow of its progress.

Over the next week, the developer will complete the emergency demolition of the Wards Bakery parapet, which collapsed in a near-fatal accident in April, and also move forward with preliminary demolition of buildings at 814 and 818 Pacific St., between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues, according to a construction update issued by the Empire State Development Corporation.

For the village of holdouts that remain in the project’s largely abandoned footprint, the construction notice was dismissed with a sigh.

“All the buildings are coming down. Sometimes if feels like it makes no sense for ours to be standing up,” said Maria Gonzalez, who has lived at 812 Pacific St. with her husband, Jose, for 35 years.

Their rent-stabilized building will be seized via the state’s power of eminent domain and turned over to Ratner, who will level it to make way for an 18,000-seat basketball arena and mostly luxury apartment towers designed by starchitect Frank Gehry.

The Gonzalezes’ lawsuit to halt the eminent domain process was dismissed in June, but the case, officially Goldstein v. Pataki, will be heard in a federal appeals court next month.

Ratner is required by state law to relocate the family — if their legal battle fails.

Like the Gonzalezes, Nelly Heredia could soon be evicted from her rent-stabilized apartment at 810 Pacific St., where she has lived for seven years.

In 2005, when a Forest City Ratner subsidiary bought it for $2 million, she was told that she would be relocated to another apartment. She said that she has heard nothing from her landlord since.

“The only thing I hear is the machines going,” she said. “The construction is my alarm clock.”

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper

Tectonic

September 1st, 2007, 05:42 AM

^^^These guys are opposite the pictures above. 35 years, wow that a looong time, kinda sad.

JCMAN320

September 6th, 2007, 02:58 AM

Ratner is showing his true colors. Atlantic Yards is gasping for air. So umm Ratner how about the Prudential Center all you gotta pay is rent wadda ya say? lol :)

Atlantic Yards: The Suspense Builds
by Matthew Schuerman

Published: September 4, 2007
Tags: Real Estate, Atlantic Yards, Bruce Ratner
This article was published in the September 10, 2007, edition of The New York Observer.

http://mondoweiss.observer.com/files/imagecache/article/files/Schuerman-AtlanticYardsDela.jpg
Matthew Schuerman
The Atlantic Yards site in central Brooklyn.

Forest City Ratner had once imagined that, by now, the Atlantic Yards site in central Brooklyn would be humming with construction activity. Contractors would be tearing up streets to upgrade utilities, moving train tracks for the Long Island Rail Road and digging the foundations for the basketball arena and nearby buildings. Some 588 workers would show up each day and 410 trucks would carry debris and material back and forth, according to the final environmental impact statement published last November.

But lawsuits, a construction accident, and other factors have delayed the pace of construction by two to nine months. The delays are having a number of contradictory repercussions, potentially costing the developer millions of dollars a month and also bolstering the argument that the area is blighted and in need of the dire intervention that the Atlantic Yards project—with its 16 high rises, basketball arena, 6,430 apartments and retail and office space—represents.

While never the image of manicured suburbia, the rectangular site emanating east and south from the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues had been slowly gentrifying before Atlantic Yards was announced four years ago. Three industrial buildings had been converted into condominiums, giving the impression of a half-finished landscape.

Now, the area looks half-begun. Trees grow in the middle of vacant lots where functioning businesses once stood—and, in other cases, long-abandoned warehouses were falling apart. Sidewalk sheds have gone up and equipment has been hauled into place, only to be abandoned when construction is suddenly halted.

Occasionally, an occupant of Newswalk, a former printing plant for the Daily News that has been converted into condominiums, walks by with a dog. It is one of a handful of buildings that will be spared.

“I’m not looking forward to being in a construction zone, but at this point, I just want them to get on with it,” said Cathy Felgar. “I don’t think any of the lawsuits will have any effect.”

Ms. Felgar, 41, moved into Newswalk almost five years ago, just before rumors of Atlantic Yards first surfaced. “I think it’s a total scam, but it’s nothing new in terms of New York real estate,” she said.

The population in the footprint has decreased from about 400 to about 50 since the project was announced, according to Daniel Goldstein, spokesman for the opposition group Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. Still, most of that exodus occurred early on, as Forest City began to buy people out. Newswalk has actually seen a population increase as units get finished and sold. One resident who supports Atlantic Yards can’t tell much of a difference from when he moved in three years ago.

“What are we saving?” asked Tom McKay, 47, gesturing with his arm at the three-block trench of a rail yard and a couple of boarded-up warehouses behind it. “Take a hard look around.”

Forest City Ratner states that it still intends to complete the Frank Gehry–designed arena in time for the opening of the 2009-2010 basketball season, which was the plan when the state’s Public Authorities Control Board approved the development last December. When first announced in 2003, Forest City Ratner said that the Nets, which the company would eventually purchase, would begin playing in Brooklyn in 2006.

“Work has been ongoing on the site since we first announced in April,” spokesman Joe De Plasco said in an e-mail. “We anticipate opening the arena in time for the 09-10 season … not much else we can say.”

Mr. De Plasco did not respond to follow-up questions. A spokesman for the Empire State Development Corporation, the state agency overseeing the project, said that it was not worried about the schedule. “We’re working with Forest City Ratner to achieve the goal of opening the arena by the 2009 season,” the spokesman, Errol Cockfield, said in an e-mail.

IT IS CLEAR, HOWEVER, THAT delays are a sensitive topic. In February, Laurie Olin, the landscape architect who is working on the project’s design with Frank Gehry, told The Observer that it will take 15 to 20 years to complete Atlantic Yards rather than 10 years as Forest City had proclaimed.

After that comment was used by plaintiffs in a lawsuit, James P. Stuckey, the Forest City executive who was in charge of the project (he has since left the company), curtly said in an affidavit, “Mr. Olin is not privy to the relevant information regarding construction of the project and does not have authority to speak on behalf of [Forest City].”

Forest City CEO Bruce Ratner has good reason to insist that he will stick to his schedule. Each month of delay postpones the delivery of the various benefits—jobs, affordable housing and a professional basketball team to restore the borough’s supposedly injured pride—that helped bring the project political support from former Governor George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a raft of others.

At the same time, Mr. Ratner’s financial backers cannot like the idea of foregone profits. Mr. Stuckey, in another affidavit, said that each month of delay would cost the company $4.15 million in construction inflation and carrying costs, while the Nets, which are largely owned by Forest City, would incur $35 million in operating losses if its move to Brooklyn was delayed another year. (The Nets expect to make much more money than they do now in New Jersey.)

Mr. Stuckey called the construction schedule “intricate” and said that “even a short delay could jeopardize the arena’s availability for an entire season.” He went on to assert that a delay “could even jeopardize the project.” Journalist Norman Oder first reported on the affidavit in his blog, Atlantic Yards Report, last April, and has repeatedly questioned Forest City’s ability to complete all phases of the work by 2016.

It is hard to accept Mr. Stuckey’s affidavit on face value (he gave it to counter a motion to freeze demolitions entirely). In the big scheme of things, $4 million a month, or even $35 million a year, must seem like pinpricks. Forest City is planning to spend $4.2 billion on Atlantic Yards, with some $305 million pledged from the city and state so far. A little noticed clause in the project plan approved by the state last year states that “additional fundings shall be made … provided that at no time will the costs reimbursed to [Forest City] by the city and state, in the aggregate, exceed 50 percent of the total costs. …”

The state and city would, however, have to agree to increase their contributions to the project. Mr. Cockfield, the spokesman for ESDC, said, “As far as the state goes we don’t contemplate reimbursing any more than $100 million for infrastructure.”

One cause for the delays is a lawsuit, filed by 13 tenants, homeowners and businesses in the footprint who are resisting the state’s use of eminent domain. A federal judge rejected the case in June but an appeals court will give it a hearing Oct. 9. Another lawsuit is challenging the process by which the state approved the project.

But even outside of those properties, Forest City has proceeded more slowly than planned. The company has not closed on a $100 million deal to lease the 8-acre Long Island Rail Yard from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, but has been working instead under a license agreement. (M.T.A. spokesman Jeremy Soffin said the deal should close at the end of this year or in the beginning of 2008.) While contractors have taken the first step to construct a temporary rail yard on the eastern end of the site—a precondition for work on the arena, where trains are currently stored—that work was supposed to be completed by the middle of August, according to the schedule from last year.

On Aug. 30, the city’s Department of Buildings imposed a stop-work order on an adjacent parcel after finding that there were no approved plans for the work and there was no permit posted, according to online records.

Forest City had also, according to last year’s schedule, planned to have closed the Carlton Avenue bridge last fall for nine months, but it has yet to do so. Nor has the developer vacated a pair of buildings on the western edge of the site that houses P.C. Richard & Son and Modell’s Sporting Goods, which Forest City was supposed to have demolished a month or two ago.

In April, the parapet of a former bakery collapsed onto the sidewalk while workers were preparing the building for demolition. While no one was injured, cars on the street were damaged and work was temporarily halted. The Department of Buildings said it would subject Forest City to more rigorous scrutiny.

Forest City has even fallen behind a schedule it put out as recently as last April, which anticipated that demolition on 15 buildings it owned would have begun by mid- to late June. Of those named, only six have been leveled, according to Mr. Goldstein, and demolition work has begun on just two others.

“Why they won’t follow their own schedule is a mystery,” said Mr. Goldstein, who is active in both lawsuits and also lives in the footprint. “There may be some buildings they may feel that they want to wait on in case they lose the lawsuits, so they would like to have the buildings standing. Who knows? I would think they would want to bring everything down as fast as they can.”

Mr. Goldstein says that should his side lose the appeals court case, it will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and that all in all, the legal battles will tie up the project for years. The group’s war chest, he said is “strong,” although he would not give a precise amount. Develop Don’t Destroy is holding another walk-a-thon next month. While it is not releasing targets, last year’s event raised about $96,000, Mr. Goldstein said.

The delays, while creating a less pleasant place to live, are also giving opponents more time to make their case and develop alternatives, one of which they plan to unveil later this month.

“I think it is good for the opponents to have these delays,” said Ron Shiffman, a former city planning commissioner and a member of Develop Don’t Destroy’s advisory board. “We have time to raise consciousness for people in decision-making positions. It gives us time to work on a proper way of developing the rail yards.

“This is a project that will be there for a century or more. For us to have rushed into that with a plan that was totally inappropriate in terms of scale and architecture would be a serious mistake.”

JCMAN320

September 9th, 2007, 08:38 PM

NetsDaily.com
2007-09-09 05:50:44
Redesign of Nets' Brooklyn Arena Due Soon

The New York Times reports that architect Frank Gehry will soon release his redesign of the first phase of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards, including the Nets' new arena. The redesign has been awaited by Ratner's critics who criticize the scale of the $4 billion project. The Nets won't be alone. Developers are also about to release a design for a new Madison Square Garden at Penn Station. And a conservative writer claims New York is unlikely to ever recoup its investment in the Nets' arena.

Architectural Shifts, Global and Local - Nicolai Ouroussoff - New York Times
Stadium Sustenance - Duncan Currie - Weekly Standard

JCMAN320

September 12th, 2007, 06:49 PM

From Brooklyn Daily Eagle on 9-12-07:

Forest City Ratner Enterprises, the parent company of Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner Companies, said Monday its fiscal second quarter profit rose to $67.8 million, or 63 cents per share, compared to $7.5 million, or 7 cents per share, during the second quarter last year, the Associated Press reports. Revenue rose to $287.6 million from $250.8 million, but FCRE president and CEO Charles Ratner said he doesn’t expect the good times to last forever.

“The downturn in the for-sale housing business and the related impacts on the subprime mortgage business lead us to believe that we will see no signs of improvement in the near term and, in fact, we expect to see continued softening,” said Ratner (a cousin of FCRC CEO/President Bruce Ratner).

If former FCRC executive James Stuckey were correct, delays to the company’s Atlantic Yards project due to lawsuits could contribute to further losses. In an affidavit to prevent the court from halting demolitions until the lawsuits are decided, Stuckey said, “Each month of delay would cost the company $4.15 million in construction inflation and carrying costs, while the Nets, which are largely owned by Forest City, would incur $35 million in operating losses if its move to Brooklyn was delayed another year.”

Project opponent Daniel Goldstein estimates that the lawsuits, including one that involves the use of eminent domain to seize his co-op, could delay the project for years (unless they win).

JCMAN320

September 12th, 2007, 07:06 PM

From Atlantic Yards Report.com

Forest City executive: AY lawsuits cleared by mid-2008

Could the planned Atlantic Yards arena (aka Barclays Center) open for the 2009-10 basketball season, as Forest City Ratner officially insists, even though the project is way behind schedule?

Well, officials from parent Forest City Enterprises (FCE) didn't assert an arena timeline yesterday during a conference call with investment analysts. However, when one executive predicted that legal cases challenging the project likely would persist through the midpoint of 2008, he again provided evidence that contradicts the company's stated timeline, which assumed that arena block would be flattened by now.

Without resolution of the Atlantic Yards legal cases--a pending challenge to the environmental review in state court, and a federal eminent domain appeal to be heard on October 9--certain buildings can't be demolished and/or construction can't go forward.

Could the cases be closed in less then ten months? That's not implausible, but it's not a lock, either. It implies success at the appeals court level for the defendants in both cases and (likely) no final appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court or the New York State Court of Appeals. So further legal delays could push the timeline back even more.

AY overview

Yesterday FCE's Bob O’Brien (right), Executive Vice President, Strategy and Investment Management, provided an overview of several projects, and got to Atlantic Yards at about 22:00 of the webcast:

We continue to move forward with our most visible and perhaps most ambitious project, Atlantic Yards. As we’ve indicated previously, we’ve acquired or controlled the vast majority of the land in Brooklyn necessary for this development. We’ve obtained all of the public approvals needed to proceed with this development. However, those approvals have been challenged in the courts. We are working with the support of the city and state and other interested public parties to defend and clear those lawsuits. We remain confident in our positions in all legal challenges and we are targeting resolution by the first half of fiscal year 2008.

Our long-term objective there is to build the Nets basketball team into a great franchise, relocate them to Brooklyn, a city of more than two-and-a-half million people, and develop a large-scale mixed-use project with the Nets and a Frank Gehry-designed arena as catalysts for the project and the further revitalization of downtown Brooklyn. Our commitment to build not only market-rate but also affordable housing as part of this development is one of the largest of its kind and addresses a significant housing shortfall for the people of New York.
(Emphasis added)

Long-term view

Forest City CEO Chuck Ratner (right), at about 32:00, again spoke about how the developer's long-term commitment to projects ultimately pays off. He cited MetroTech in Brooklyn as among several "ten to 20-year projects, and all had significant uncertainty in a time of significant risks," but worked out well for the company and investors.

He was not quite so candid as he was last March, when he acknowledged:
We are terrible, and we’ve been a developer for 50 years, on these big multi-use, public private urban developments, to be able to predict when it will go from idea to reality.

However, the timeline flexibility he mentioned again suggested that Atlantic Yards likely would not take ten years, as planned.

Office market

One investment analyst pointed out that Forest City seemed to be putting more emphasis on retail and housing. What's the outlook for office space?

The New York portion of that answer was turned over to Joanne Minieri (right), the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Forest City Ratner in New York. Her answer, at about 43:45, contained enthusiastic words but was delivered in a less authoritative tone, perhaps given the current slowdown in the Brooklyn office market, and the cut in projected Atlantic Yards office space.

She commented:
We think it’s still a very strong office market, we continue to look for opportunities where they exist and as part of—some of the development in the Atlantic Yards project, there will also be some office opportunity there. Y’know, we’re very committed to the office development.

We believe New York is a strong market. We’re committed to the office business in the New York area. We’ll continue to look for opportunities to the extent they’re available. Land is difficult to find, but we keep our options open, and we’ll continue to produce that product here in the city.

Forest City Ratner has a considerable amount of land at Atlantic Yards for its office business. It just chose (for now) not to build office space, likely because housing is more lucrative and a switch from office space placated Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who was concerned about competition with his Lower Manhattan district.

Moving cautiously

At about 47:50, Chuck Ratner talked about moving cautiously, and placed a special emphasis on Atlantic Yards:
As we’ve told you guys often, as a large developer, perhaps the more risky part of the real estate business, as opposed to acquisition, but the part where we think we can add more value, clearly you have to look to ways to moderate and manage your risks. And one of the ways we’ve learned that you manage and moderate your cost risks is by making sure you don’t start before you have complete plans and prices.

Particularly in a market with the kind of cost pressure that New York has and building a building with a signature architect like Frank Gehry, we’re being very cautious and careful that we know where we are before we start, and Joanne and her team have done a great job of managing this process.

Investor conference in NYC

On October 9, the same day the eminent domain appeal will be heard in federal court in New York, FCE will hold an "investor conference" during which analysts will get a closer look at the New York portfolio, including the site of the conference, the new Times Tower developed by Forest City Ratner along with the New York Times Company.

"It'll be a great day, an exciting day; you'll get to meet our New York team," said Chuck Ratner in closing the conference call yesterday.

# posted by Norman Oder @ 6:51 AM

JCMAN320

September 28th, 2007, 02:40 AM

Nets host a party for city kids
Team says it will stay involved after move to Brooklyn

Wednesday, September 26, 2007
BY BARRY CARTER
Star-Ledger Staff

There was music, food, games, Sly the mascot and the Nets Dancers.

Nets small forward Bostjan Nachbar was also there as kids at the West Side unit of the Boys and Girls clubs of Newark did popular dances like the "Cha-Cha" Slide and "Crank dat Dance."

It was part of a "Fun for Fall," back to school celebration Monday sponsored by the Nets Foundation.

About 100 kids ate hot dogs and popcorn, wore their Nets T-shirts and danced. They did fitness exer cises, following along with an instructor who had them doing jumping jacks and other calisthenics.

Cynthia Banks, director of operations for the Boys & Girls clubs, said events like yesterday's show the kids that people care for them.

"It's about the kids," Banks said. "It's allowing them to be kids again."

Though the Nets are planning to move to a new arena in Brooklyn in two years, the team said it in tends to maintain its ties to the Garden State.

"It is our responsibility to give back to the fans that have mattered most to us and the ones who have been with us for the longest period of time ," said Brett Yor mark, chief executive officer of Nets.

"New Jersey will always be dear to our hearts. When we move to Brooklyn, we'll be very heavily engaged with the community there, but I can see us always having a presence in New Jersey."

Felix Rouse, chief executive officer of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Newark, said he was disappointed at first that the Nets were leaving the state, but pleased they are trying to keep the fans close.

"They pleasantly surprised me that they are maintaining a level of community involvement," Rouse said. "They have always been good to the Boys & Girls clubs."

The Nets, which considers itself a regional team, has been involved in a number of community outreach programs over the past year to demonstrate its commitment to the residents in the state.

Jason Kidd treated 25 underprivileged kids to a holiday shopping spree. Players served Thanksgiving meals to the homeless at the Montclair Salvation Army and visited pediatric patients at the Hack ensack University Medical Center and St. Peter's Hospital. The team also held a coat drive with New Jersey Cares and worked with Habitat for Humanity to build a home.

"I think it's fair to say we'll always be involved in New Jersey one way, shape or form," Yormark said.

Barry Carter covers Newark. He can be reached at bcarter@starled ger.com or (973) 392-1827.

NYguy

September 28th, 2007, 08:57 AM

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/30/38/30_38unityplan.html

No love for ‘UNITY’ from city, state

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/assets/photos/30/38/30_38_unityplanmodel_z.jpg

A model of the UNITY plan.

By Ariella Cohen
September 28, 2007

City and state officials say they don’t intend to consider a community-based alternative development plan for the Prospect Heights site of Bruce Ratner’s controversial Atlantic Yards project that was unveiled this week.

The so-called UNITY proposal includes mostly affordable apartments, no arena and doesn’t require condemning land via eminent domain. But to be anything more than a few planners’ dream of ideal, community-driven development, support from city and state officials is necessary.

That support is not there.

“We remain committed to the vision set out in the General Project Plan approved for Atlantic Yards,” said Errol Cockfield, a spokesman for the Empire State Development Corporation, the lead agency on Atlantic Yards, which contains 16 towers, 6,430 units of housing, a 19,000-seat basketball arena, a hotel, and hundreds of thousands of square feet of office, retail and commercial space.

Cockfield declined to comment directly on the UNITY proposal, saying only that the agency is “open to hearing community concerns about the project.”

The city was similarly discouraging about the future of the grassroots plan. When asked whether the city would look at a plan other than Ratner’s, City Planning spokeswoman Rachaele Raynoff said only, “The city expects the Atlantic Yards plan to move forward.”

UNITY advocates say that the city and state’s ambivalence is to be expected — for now. They say that attitudes will only shift when the developer’s circumstances do, which they think could happen as a result of pending lawsuits or a downturn in the real-estate market (see The Explainer, left).

“Politicians are practical people so as the ground shifts under this particular project they will take a second look at this proposal,” said planner Marshall Brown, a former Fort Greene resident and architecture professor at the University of Cincinnati.

Brown said he and his fellow planners — former Planning Commissioner Ron Shiffman and Hunter College professor Tom Angotti — fear that Ratner will only build the first phase of his project (the arena and several skyscrapers at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues) and then lose interest, run out of money, or give in to the declining market.

Councilwoman Letitia James (D-Prospect Heights) said that she plans to push state officials to meet with her to discuss the proposal, which sprang out of a community planning process that began three years with the support of her office.

__________________________________________

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/30/38/30_38plaintiffs.html

Lawsuit against Atlantic Yards is losing its plaintiffs one by one

By Ariella Cohen
September 28, 2007

Two of the final holdouts in the Atlantic Yards footprint have quietly settled with developer Bruce Ratner, a move that signifies that the opposition to Brooklyn’s largest real-estate project may be entering its endgame.

The two tenants who settled had sued the developer — along with 11 other property owners and tenants whose homes and businesses the state intends to condemn to make way for Ratner’s Frank Gehry-designed towers.

Their withdrawal from the one-year-old lawsuit should not be construed as support for the Atlantic Yards mega-development, but merely an acceptance of reality, according to their lawyer, Jennifer Levy.

“[The tenants] don’t agree with the project, but their rights are limited under the law, so if they are being offered something that protects their rights, they will take it,” she said.

The tenants’ exit from the case — which was dismissed by a judge in June, but will be heard in a federal appeals court on Oct. 9 — indicates that some have lost hope that the $4-billion, state-approved project can be stopped.

Four other renters represented by Levy are currently in settlement talks with the developer, she said.

The tenants declined to speak publicly because of confidentiality clauses in the agreements.

The move represents a change of strategy for Forest City Ratner, which earlier had been unwilling to negotiate with tenants in the lawsuit, said Levy.

“There is certainly a sense now that [the developer] would like to move forward with a settlement,” she said, ascribing the change to a desire to “stick with [the project’s] timeline.”

The need to settle and relocate the small number of holdouts who remain in the project’s 22-acre footprint is partly motivated by simple economic fact. Each month of delay costs Forest City Ratner $4.15 million in construction and carrying costs, according to a legal affidavit submitted by the company last year.

State law requires the developer to relocate anyone who loses a home to eminent domain. The laws that surround renters, however, are murkier. Rent-stabilized tenants often lose their most-cherished protection against a booming real-estate market: a state-regulated, below-market-rate lease.

Even a generous settlement will not help tenants find another protected unit, or permanently guard them from the city’s gentrifying real-estate market, though Ratner has promised to provide the displaced tenants stabilized apartments in Atlantic Yards when he completes the first phase of the project in, he says, 2010.

“Some of these people don’t have other options,” said Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn spokesman Daniel Goldstein, who stands to lose a luxury condo to the project and is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit.

One rent-stabilized tenant who remains a plaintiff in the lawsuit said he recently reopened informal negotiations with Ratner. Ratner had stopped discussing a buyout last year after the tenant rejected an offer that he felt was stingy, the tennant said. The new offer on the table calls for more money, he said.

He said that he felt the developer was trying to knock him out of the eminent domain suit before that Oct. 9 appeal hearing.

“They want to be able to say that the plaintiffs are dropping like flies,” he said.

Forest City Ratner declined to comment on the litigation or settlements.

krulltime

September 28th, 2007, 09:46 AM

I am glad that the lawsuit thing is coming to and end, but I am worry that the price tag for the whole development is too high already and Ratner might want to sell the parcels instead. Which may or may not be a good thing. But it will take forever to built anything there. So the long wait can continue.

JCMAN320

October 8th, 2007, 05:57 PM

A victory for activists: City withdraws eminent domain findings in Downtown Brooklyn

This is important breaking news that has not yet been covered by the blogs or the press.

The City is withdrawing its controversial eminent domain findings in Downtown Brooklyn. The Downtown Brooklyn site includes the Duffield Abolitionist homes, as well as over 40 rent stabilized apartments and several other businesses. The City has not abandoned its plans to build an underground parking garage on Duffield, and will hold a new public hearing.

The withdrawal is in response to several law suits on behalf of a variety of stakeholders - Joy Chatel, rent-stabilized tenants of three apartment buildings at Albee Square, the community organization FUREE and neighborhood artists who had spent the past three years developing a 30,000 square foot recording studio, local nightclub, and community artists space.

The City will probably try to go forward with its plan, but this is a major victory in that the local activists. It gives a chance for new community input in which properties the City will confiscate through eminent domain.

ramvid01

October 8th, 2007, 09:37 PM

NYguy

October 15th, 2007, 08:42 AM

http://www.nysun.com/article/64557

Brooklyn NBA Arena's Foes Point To Security Problems

By Associated Press
October 15, 2007

Opponents of Brooklyn's planned basketball arena said yesterday that Governor Spitzer should address security concerns connected to the project, citing the decision by officials in Newark, N.J. to close streets abutting a new arena there.

A spokesman for the group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, Daniel Goldstein, said the terror risk for the planned Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn "is potentially far greater than that faced by the Newark arena.

"The time for a review of the impacts of a terrorist threat against Atlantic Yards and a state hearing on the issue is now," Mr. Goldstein said. He said Mr. Spitzer's homeland security czar, the Deputy Secretary for Public Safety, Michael Balboni, should testify at such a hearing on Atlantic Yards terrorism security issues. Additionally, Mr. Goldstein said the Empire State Development Corporation, the state agency using its eminent domain powers to condemn and seize buildings on the Atlantic Yards site, should "learn from Newark's lack of planning and initiate a proper review of Atlantic Yards and terrorism security."

A spokeswoman for Mr. Spitzer had no immediate comment on the issue.

An executive vice president with the developer, Forest City Ratner, Bruce Bender, said the project had always paid attention to security issues. "From the start, Forest City Ratner has worked very closely with security experts on Atlantic Yards, and the top police, fire and security experts in the city have reviewed and approved our comprehensive plan. Anyone who has any experience in security knows that you do not discuss sensitive security matters in public for very obvious reasons," he said.

NYguy

October 15th, 2007, 08:44 AM

I do not think this has to do with Atlantic Yards at all but instead an underground parking lot that will be constructed in downtown (with a park on top of it).

Right, between Fulton St and Metrotech .

BigMac

October 16th, 2007, 01:11 PM

NY Sun
October 16, 2007

Developers To Close Streets Near Atlantic Yards

By Special to the Sun

In a step forward for Brooklyn's $4 billion Atlantic Yards complex, the state and private developer Forest City Ratner will soon close streets within the footprint of the project. The planned complex will contain more than 6,000 units of housing and a Frank Gehry-designed basketball arena.

Forest City Ratner intends to announce the closure of a bridge on Carlton Avenue within the next few weeks, the developer told community leaders yesterday, as the bridge is being replaced in preparation for the complex.

The company intends to permanently close the streets running through the project's footprint in the first three months of 2008, creating two large superblocks at the edge of the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.

© 2007 The New York Sun, One SL, LLC.

DarrylStrawberry

October 16th, 2007, 02:14 PM

Superblocks are usually anything but "super".

:mad:

BrooklynRider

October 16th, 2007, 04:50 PM

This will effectively create a rat(ner) hole.

This project just has a visceral feel of impending disaster. Nothing about it is exciting. I think Ratner is just getting ready to lower his pants and take a huge sh*t on Brooklyn.

MikeW

October 16th, 2007, 07:00 PM

^

Let's see? Take a slum, and a rail yard, build a major sport/entertainment venue, some offices, and vast amounts of housing? Sounds pretty damn exciting to me.

But some people would rather have a slum and a rail yard.

investordude

October 16th, 2007, 08:19 PM

I don't think its accurate to describe the AY project area as a slum, although there are a few blighted structures along the railyards.

BrooklynRider has a legitimate argument about superblocks being bad. Adam Smith (who I'm sure you've probably noticed I'm a fan of by now) said roads should be publicly owned, and I tend to agree. When you create a private ownership of roads, the developer makes access difficult for surrounding places, and this creates slums. We see this in most of the places superblocks were tried in the NY area in the sixties. Even Lincoln Center was crappy for a long time after the superblock was created there.

The project would be better without a superblock concept, if that's technically feasible. I'm not sure it really is though. Let's not forget a large part of this area is an open pit, so connecting it logically with existing streets may not be that easy. All in all, I'm still glad this is getting built so that we reconnect neighborhoods that have been separated from each other. I'd prefer they get rid of the subsidized housing component because I think similar concepts like Coop City have shown large subsidizing housing works badly and creates aging, dying communities with no jobs.

But given the political realities of New York City, this is probably about as good a project as could be hoped for.

NYguy

October 17th, 2007, 06:06 PM

http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2007/10/as-expected-one-of-ay-rental-tenants.html

As expected, one of AY rental tenants' legal cases dismissed

October 17, 2007

As expected, one of the two lawsuits filed by 13 renters in the Atlantic Yards footprint has been dismissed by a state appellate court. During oral arguments on September 26, a panel of five judges in the First Department was steadily skeptical of attorney George Locker's argument that the tenants are not actually condemnees, with an ownership interest in their leases.

Courts had previously not decided that issue; however, state law defines a condemnee as “the holder of any right, title, interest, lien, charge or encumbrance in real property subject to an acquisition or proposed acquisition.”

Supreme Court Justice Walter Tolub had dismissed Locker's challenge in May, saying his clients did not have standing in trial court and instead should have gone to a separate appeals court, the Second Department, which has exclusive jurisdiction over the Eminent Domain Procedure Law, or EDPL, and would not hold a trial to hear a broader array of evidence.

"Friendly condemnations" coming?

The court's brief ruling yesterday would seem to open the door to planned "friendly condemnations," in which Forest City Ratner-owned buildings are transferred to ownership by the Empire State Development Corporation. That would end the leases far more speedily than the process would occur under New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR), which oversees rent-regulated buildings.

However, those same tenants have filed another challenge in the Second Department and, during oral arguments on October 5, some judges seemed sympathetic to the argument that the state had not provided a "feasible plan" to find them new housing.

"I think they’re going to send this back," Locker said yesterday. "The determinations and findings will be annulled, it will be returned to ESDC to do what it feels is appropriate to conform with the decision."

(Two other cases, organized by Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, are pending; one, in federal court, challenges the use of eminent domain, while the other, in state court, challenges the environmental review of the project.)

A brief ruling

The court order was circulated yesterday by a Forest City Ratner spokesman under the somewhat misleading subject line "NY State Court Unanimously Rejects AY Opponents' Appeal." (These tenants may oppose the project, but the DDDB-organized cases more clearly represent community opposition.)

The court order stated:

Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Walter B. Tolub, J.), entered on or about May 22, 2007, which, in a declaratory judgment action challenging defendant's authority to condemn multiple dwellings in which plaintiffs reside as rent stabilized tenants, granted defendant's motion to dismiss the complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, unanimously affirmed, with costs. Since the condemned buildings are located in Kings County, the Appellate Division, Second Department has exclusive jurisdiction over plaintiffs' challenges herein to defendants' constitutional and statutory authority to condemn their rent stabilized leasehold interests (EDPL 207).

[i]We reject plaintiffs' argument that they are not "condemnees" within the meaning of EDPL 103(C), and therefore lack standing to seek relief under EDPL 207 (see Matter of City of New York, 306 NY 278, 282 [1954]). Any lingering concern that plaintiffs may have in this regard ought to have been allayed by defendant's main argument herein that plaintiffs do have standing (see Gale P. Elston, P.C. v Dubois, 18 AD3d 301, 303 [2005] [doctrine of judicial estoppel]).

The last sentence indicates that the court believes Locker's clients could still raise their claims--that DHCR should have oversight and that the creation of private roads for the project requires a jury trial--in the Second Department of the appellate court.

Locker had said in court that it's too late. Yesterday, he said, "I believe this means that, because ESDC said in the Tolub case that we had standing to raise constitutional and statutory claims in an EDPL proceeding, ergo, we had such standing. In my own view, ESDC is not free to bestow rent-regulated tenants with a status that the legislature did not intend them to have."

Looking at the precedent

The court order cited p. 282 of a case called Matter of City of New York (or In re City of New York). While that previous court opinion is not available on the web, another case, regarding TransGas Energy Systems, cites the very same page.

It states:
In discussing the question of who was an "owner" who had some form of recognizable interest in the real property involved in a condemnation proceeding, the Court of Appeals stated that: "With the passage of years, the statutes have been renumbered, revised and amended but it has not been made to appear that the interests cognizable by the Supreme Court sitting in condemnation proceedings have been limited thereby. Rather it would appear that, by the very language used in defining the interests which make one an owner' of real property', the Legislature intended to include as many of those different interests in real property affected by the condemnation proceedings as possible." (In re New York, 306 N.Y. 278, 282 [1954] ). Accordingly, the court held that the vendee under an executory contract to purchase land was an owner.

That leads to some murkiness. Yes, the language of the law--"any right, title, etc."--leads to the conclusion that renters could be considered "owners," and the case cited concludes that the Legislature intended a broad reading of the law. However, the case cited doesn't directly address the current case; a contract to purchase land is not the same thing as a rent-regulated lease.

More rights for tenants?

No previous case had stated that rent-regulated tenants have the rights and remedies available to condemnees. "The change of the law comes about in amazing ways," observed Locker, who suggested that if lawyers like him who represent tenants had asked for that principle to be established, they would not have been successful. "I’d be willing to guess that, in the past, the ESDC has not treated rent-regulated tenants as condemnees."

MidtownGuy

October 18th, 2007, 02:42 PM

I wish we'd see final renderings. The last round was goofy looking and forgettable.

antinimby

November 10th, 2007, 03:37 AM

Yeah, I support AY but I just hope Frank doesn't give us these type of blocky buildings. Not attractive.

Gehry sued! Cracks at MIT cast doubt on ‘Miss Brooklyn’

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/assets/photos/30/44/30_44_gehrysstatacenter_z.jpg
M.I.T.'s Stata Center

By Gersh Kuntzman
The Brooklyn Paper
November 10, 2007 (http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/30/44/30_44gehrysued.html)

Gehry Partners, the architect’s Los Angeles-based firm, was paid $15 million for the Stata Center design. The innovative building, which Gehry once said “looks like a party of drunken robots got together to celebrate,” has been hailed by critics and its users since it opened in spring, 2004.

But its janitors were never fans.

Almost immediately, according to the suit, the center’s outdoor amphitheater began to crack due to drainage problems. And snow and ice slid dangerously down the angled roofs and piled up in ways that blocked emergency exits.
Mold grew on the exterior and there were regular leaks in the roof, the suit continued.

The suit also named Skanska Construction, the New Jersey-based firm that actually built the Stata Center. But a Skanska executive told the Boston Globe that the fault was in Gehry’s flawed plans, not in Skanska’s execution of them.

“This is not a construction issue, never has been,” said Paul Hewins, Skanska executive vice president. He told the Globe that Gehry rejected Skanska’s formal request to create a design that included soft joints and a drainage system in the amphitheater, and “we were told to proceed with the original design.”

As a result, Hewins said, Skanska spent “a few hundred thousand dollars” fixing the problem.

“It was difficult to make the [Gehry] design work,” he added.

Gehry is currently designing Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards mega-development, which has the 52-story Miss Brooklyn tower — and an 18,000-seat basketball arena — as its focal points. A spokesman for Forest City Ratner declined to comment on whether the company was concerned about the design issues raised by the M.I.T. lawsuit.

The arena will be built with public money — and Ratner’s relocated New Jersey Nets would only be a tenant in the state-owned building, said a spokesman for the Empire State Development Corporation, which is partnering with Ratner to build the $4-billion Atlantic Yards project.

The spokesman declined to explain if the public or Ratner would have to pay to repair any flaws in Gehry’s design.

Gehry did not respond to requests for comment from The Brooklyn Paper, but he did tell the New York Times that new buildings such as his “are complicated.”

“They involved a lot of people, and you never quite know where they went wrong,” he said. “A building goes together with seven billion pieces of connective tissue. The chances of it getting done ever without something colliding or some misstep are small.”

He claimed that professors who work in the Stata Center have sent him e-mails saying that they are “dumbfounded that their institution is doing this.

“I think the issues are fairly minor,” he added. “M.I.T. is after our insurance.”

Perhaps, but it’s not the first time that Gehry has had problems at one of his trend-setting buildings. In 2004, he sandblasted parts of his celebrated Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles after people complained that the aluminum skin caused a blinding glare.

A swirling, $62-million building that Gehry designed for Case Western Reserve in Cleveland was likened by the New York Times to “a tanning mirror” that “sent snow and ice sliding off the sloping stainless-steel roof onto the heads of pedestrians below.”

The Times also reported that three years after Gehry’s celebrated Guggenheim Bilbao opened in 1997, brown stains on the titanium exterior provoked embarrassment and finger-pointing. Gehry said at the time that it was simply a matter of cleaning.

M.I.T. would not officially comment on the pending suit, but after it was filed, critics of the starchitect piled on.

“It really is a disaster,” said former Boston University President John Silber, who attacked the Stata Center in his book, “Architecture of the Absurd: How ‘Genius’ Disfigured a Practical Art.”

“[Gehry] thinks of himself as an artist, as a sculptor. But the trouble is you don’t live in a sculpture and users have to live in this building,” Silber said.

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper

JCMAN320

November 14th, 2007, 04:34 PM

Don't look now but I read weekend before last in a side bar in the Daily News, that Ratner was taking a trip to the Prudential Center in Newark to take a tour of the place. If things in Brooklyn go South as they appear to be going, Newark just might become a reality for my beloved New Jersey Nets.

Jack Krohn

November 15th, 2007, 12:51 PM

1. Ratner tours the Prudential Center.
2. Therefore the Nets will remain in New Jersey.

I'm not sure how this adds up.

I recently saw the Prudential Center and it's a gorgeous building. I can't wait until the Barclay's Arena opens in Brooklyn.

lofter1

November 15th, 2007, 01:03 PM

You're gonna have to wait ^ at least 5 years :cool:

JCMAN320

November 15th, 2007, 07:17 PM

Jack I'm not sayin that lol. I'm a Nets fan of course I'll follow them to BK, but I wouldn't midn them stayin in NJ where the franchise orginated as the NJ Americans in 67. Just a lot of obstacles in AY's way and they keep mounting. Nothing is set in stone yet that's all I'm saying.

GVNY

November 15th, 2007, 08:40 PM

I guess now would be my time to voice my disapproval for the design of this project. I really am just not a fan of Gehry and the style they are trying to implement at Atlantic Yards.

Don't build it. I think it would be instantly regrettable.

investordude

November 16th, 2007, 12:49 PM

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/30/45/30_45barclays.html

I realize that these politiicans are probably looking for a reason to derail the project, but I also think that if Barclays wants a PR boost from naming the stadium they should consider the PR boost of not financing an insane dictator.

Clarknt67

November 30th, 2007, 04:25 PM

Bruce Ratner is planning to build the city’s tallest residential tower — a whopping 1,000-foot skyscraper that would dwarf the 512-foot Williamsburgh Savings Bank building, Brooklyn’s tallest.

But as with Ratner’s Atlantic Yards mega-development, the secret, closed-door deal is already casting a shadow.

“No comment,” Ratner told a Brooklyn Paper reporter who approached him at the annual Metrotech Christmas tree lighting ceremony on Wednesday night, hours after renderings of the Renzo Piano–designed 1,000-foot-tall edifice at the corner of Jay and Tillary streets were splashed all over the city’s tabloids.

Earlier in the day, a Ratner spokesman said by e-mail that the drawing “was quite old and not indicative of current plans.” But the spokesman refused to say what the current plans are.

Secrecy is nothing new for Ratner. As at Atlantic Yards, Ratner is partnering with a public agency — in this case, City University of New York — in a process that will not undergo the city’s rigorous land-use review process. Current zoning allows Ratner to build as high as he wants — but neither his company nor CUNY officials would say how high that is.

Here are some details about the closed-door public-private partnership:
Naomi Village: In the heart of the Poconos

• The complex — on Jay Street between Tillary Street and Tech Place — would consist of a new, 11- to 14-story City Tech laboratory and classroom building, and an adjacent underground auditorium and gym. It is not known how much Ratner would be paid for this work.

• As part of the package, Ratner would control the corner lot at Jay and Tillary streets — currently home to City Tech’s antiquated Klitgord Auditorium.

• CUNY picked Ratner’s company over rival developer Tishman Speyer in 2005. Details of each company’s bids have not been released to the public despite repeated requests. As a result, it is unclear how much the chosen developer stands to benefit from this public-private partnership.

The Ratner spokesman’s renunciation of the rendering shrouds the project in additional secrecy. The New York Post reported that the building would rise anywhere from 700 to 1,000 feet and include 600 market-rate apartments, retail space on the ground floor and office space for CUNY.

This project represents Ratner’s second attempt to build the tallest building in Brooklyn. His Frank Gehry–designed “Miss Brooklyn” tower was originally slated to be well over 600 feet, but its height was trimmed to 511 feet just before the Atlantic Yards project was approved by the state.

The new “Mr. Brooklyn” tower does not show up in the glitzy presentation of the future of Downtown Brooklyn released last month by the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership.

But Partnership president Joe Chan said he is “excited” by the building, whatever its height may be.

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/30/47/30_47mrbrooklyn.html

Clarknt67

November 30th, 2007, 05:34 PM

oh, apologies, I guess this would have been better in the downtown bklyn development thread, it's not actually Atlantic Yards. I was confused on the location.

Clarknt67

January 2nd, 2008, 01:53 PM

Wait Until 2010, Nets Say of New Brooklyn Arena
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Nets, who had hoped to move into a new arena near downtown Brooklyn in time for the 2009-10 season, have acknowledged that construction will not be finished until sometime in 2010.

Legal challenges to the 22-acre Atlantic Yards project have altered its timetable. Construction of the 19,000-seat, glass-walled arena has not begun.

The project’s developer, Forest City Ratner, said it had razed 20 buildings and started to build temporary yards for the Long Island Rail Road.

“Our goal is to be in the arena during the calendar year 2010,” said Barry Baum, a spokesman for Forest City Ratner.

Baum said the arena could be ready before the 2010-11 season begins.

The Nets will continue to play at Izod Center in East Rutherford, N.J., under a lease extension signed last year. The extension, which goes through the 2012-13 season, gives the team an annual option to leave for Brooklyn.

In 2004, Nets officials said the new arena would be ready in 2006. Last year, the team said it would move into the new facility in 2009.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/sports/basketball/12arena.html?ref=basketball

Citytect

January 2nd, 2008, 08:59 PM

In 2004, Nets officials said the new arena would be ready in 2006. Last year, the team said it would move into the new facility in 2009.

Perfect conclusion to that little article.

MikeW

January 3rd, 2008, 12:30 PM

Maybe Ratner should sue all the protest groups for a few hundred million bucks for delaying the project.

Citytect

January 3rd, 2008, 07:10 PM

And then maybe the protest groups could in turn sue Ratner for suing them. :rolleyes:

lofter1

January 3rd, 2008, 09:36 PM

The longer it's drawn out the better chance the nightmare will never become a reality.

btw: any action from Bruce and his crew over at the site these days?

Derek2k3

January 3rd, 2008, 10:45 PM

Though far from perfect, I'd hardly consider this proposal a nightmare. Walking around the railyards and Atlantic Ave. now is far more horrible anything Gehry will put up.

BrooklynLove

January 3rd, 2008, 10:48 PM

most of the activity recently seems to be w/n the cut east of atlantic center. no recent street level demos that i've noticed, but i don't pass by here all that often, so maybe someone else on this board has less stale info. the lingering final tidbits of litigation seem to still be holding up full tilt progress.

BrooklynRider

January 4th, 2008, 12:07 AM

The gas station closing is a big deal. That will allow the whole Flatbush frontage to be cleared.

BrooklynLove

January 4th, 2008, 09:10 AM

yeah. there's a lot to be done still where the arena is slated to go. strangely though it seems as if most of the recent action is taking place down toward vanderbilt. they need to just get this over with b/c pacifc is becoming one of the modern world's largest rat colonies down by vanderbilt.

MidtownGuy

January 4th, 2008, 01:33 PM

Good riddance to the gas station. I was once chased by a crazed feral dog there as I walked to visit a friend on the other side of Atlantic..:eek:

antinimby

January 4th, 2008, 08:19 PM

"Crazed" usually means the animal may have rabies. Good thing you didn't get bitten.

About AY, I just wished they didn't do the "towers in the park" layout for the residential components and didn't seal off Pacific St.

At the WTC, they are recreating the streets but here they are doing the opposite. Don't these planners realize superblocks don't work?

BrooklynLove

January 4th, 2008, 09:46 PM

i think that we'll see a great deal of what follows the arena change over time, so i wouldn't lose hope yet

ZippyTheChimp

January 12th, 2008, 11:48 AM

January 12, 2008

Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Seeking to Block Atlantic Yards

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

A state judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a coalition of community groups against the Atlantic Yards project near Downtown Brooklyn, dealing a major setback to opponents of the $4 billion development plan.

The lawsuit had been widely considered the last major one standing in the way of the project, second perhaps only to an eminent domain suit that was dismissed by a federal judge in June.

The project’s developer and supporters applauded Friday’s decision, while opponents said they would appeal and continue to try to have the eminent domain decision overturned.

In her ruling on Friday, Justice Joan A. Madden of State Supreme Court in Manhattan rejected a claim by the coalition of 26 community groups that the environmental impact statement the state used in evaluating the project should be annulled.

The groups contended that the review did not fully address the project’s potential impact on traffic, security and open space in the neighborhood, and that it had failed to take a “hard look” at alternative sites for the project.

But in a detailed 71-page decision, Justice Madden disputed most of the groups’ arguments.

In rejecting a claim, for example, that the review failed to properly address the prospect that the project would provide a tempting target for terrorists, the judge said the project did not have as many inherent hazards as “facilities with some degree of dangerousness, such as an oil supertanker port, a gas storage facility or a hazardous waste facility.” She also noted that state law did not require the developer to consider in its environmental impact statement “the potential security issues and impacts of a terrorist attack.”

Justice Madden also rejected claims that a timetable for the project was inaccurate, and that the environmental impact statement did not consider the major effect the project would have on traffic in the neighborhood, on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and on the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.

“Petitioners submit no competent proof from a traffic expert to support their objections,” the judge wrote in her decision.

The project’s developer, Forest City Ratner, a development partner in the new Midtown headquarters of The New York Times Company, has begun work on the property, and says that about half of the structures on the site either have been demolished or are being demolished. The plans for the site include a basketball arena for the New Jersey Nets, more than 6,000 apartments and considerable office space. Supporters of the project say it will generate thousands of jobs, hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue and badly needed units of subsidized housing. The project is being overseen by the Empire State Development Corporation, which would exercise eminent domain.

In a statement, Bruce Ratner, the chief executive of Forest City, said the decision was “a significant step forward.”

“We are very pleased with Judge Madden’s decision, as it further clears the way for Atlantic Yards and the thousands of jobs, affordable housing units and world-class arena — the Barclays Center — that will accompany the project,” he said. “After an exhaustive three-year review process, we are continuing to move full speed ahead on the project.”

The plaintiffs said that the concerns raised by the lawsuit still remained.

“Our elected leaders, who understand those concerns, must gird themselves to bring more pressure to bear on Gov. Eliot Spitzer, now that we’ve had this legal decision,” said Candace Carponter, a lawyer and a member of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, a coalition of groups and individuals opposed to the project. “With the project in financial jeopardy and the real estate market treading in such troubled waters, and with a pending eminent domain lawsuit, it is time to rethink the Atlantic Yards project.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

pianoman11686

January 12th, 2008, 12:50 PM

Any opinions on this? All these lawsuits seem to be tumbling like dominoes, just as Ratner predicted.

BrooklynLove

January 12th, 2008, 01:28 PM

waste of time and money. if loser paying the other side's legal fees was mandatory in our legal system we'd be so much better off.

BrooklynRider

January 13th, 2008, 12:42 AM

Pols: Pull Ratner off the trough

By Gersh Kuntzman
The Brooklyn Paper

A City Council effort to reign in a tax break enjoyed by Madison Square Garden should bring about a cutback of the massive public subsidies lavished on Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner, two councilmembers demanded this week.

After the Council’s Finance Committee discussed MSG’s $11-million-per-year property tax abatement on Monday, Councilmembers Letitia James (D–Fort Greene) and David Yassky (D–Brooklyn Heights) demanded that the city and state revisit its subsidies for Ratner’s $4-billion mega-development.

“If you think the MSG deal was crummy, the Atlantic Yards deal is far worse,” Yassky, an early Ratner supporter, told The Brooklyn Paper.

Critics of MSG’s 25-year-old property-tax abatement say it has cost the city just under $300 million since 1982.

But Yassky pointed out that the city has already allocated $205 million to help build the proposed Atlantic Yards basketball arena, plus agreed to tax breaks that will bring the package to at least $500 million.

“So this is a much worse deal than MSG,” he said. “If we are going to scrutinize MSG, we have a responsibility to do the same for Atlantic Yards.”
Both councilmembers said they would put forward a resolution within days that would “scrutinize the effectiveness all the these tax breaks citywide,” James said.

She questioned, for example, why Ratner still gets tax breaks for his decades-old Metrotech complex and both his Atlantic Avenue shopping malls.

“He may have needed those subsidies in the past, but Brooklyn is hot right now, so these subsidies are inappropriate,” she added.

Yassky and James have called on Speaker Christine Quinn, who is spearheading the attack on the MSG subsidy yet is also a strong Atlantic Yards supporter, to bring the resolution to a vote.

It is unclear what would happen even if a City Council resolution passes. Any effort to trim or eliminate subsidies to MSG or Atlantic Yards would require approval in Albany.

The MSG deal was created in 1982, when the owners of the arena argued that if they didn’t get property tax relief, they would take the Knicks and Rangers out of New York City. At the time, it seemed like a plausible threat.

But now, money is flowing into Madison Square Garden, thanks to a privately funded renovation of the “World’s Most-Famous Arena” in the 1990s and a huge influx of revenue from cable TV, luxury boxes and higher ticket prices.

Meanwhile, opponents have turned their attention to the Atlantic Yards arena, which, unlike the Madison Square Garden renovation, will be built with public money.

The Independent Budget Office said that when its bean counters crunch the numbers, MSG’s tax break is greater than the $140 million in subsidies that Atlantic Yards will receive over 40 years — but that figure does not include the $305 million in direct city and state infrastructure improvements, a spokesman for the IBO said.

It also does not take into account that Ratner will not pay property tax at the Atlantic Yards arena for the entirety of his $1-per-year lease, not just for the 40 years that the IBO studied.

The growing hostility towards the subsidies was fanned last year when an investigation by Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez revealed that Ratner is the single biggest recipient of property tax abatements. According to Gonzalez’s review of city records, Forest City Ratner paid the city $9.7 million in taxes in 2006 on half a dozen commercial buildings in Downtown Brooklyn — but if the tax abatement was not in place, Ratner’s bill would have been $26.3 million.

Following a longstanding company policy, a spokesman for Forest City Ratner declined to comment for this article.

For her part, Quinn’s spokesman, Andrew Doba said: “Speaker Quinn continues to believe that … it’s time for MSG to pay its fair share. As far as Atlantic Yards is concerned, once the councilmembers introduce a resolution, it will be referred to committee, where it will receive thorough and proper review.”

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/2/31_02ratnertrough.html

BrooklynRider

January 13th, 2008, 12:45 AM

Public sees new face of Atlantic Yards

By Mike McLaughlin
The Brooklyn Paper

The state’s newly appointed Atlantic Yards ombudsman met with the public for the first time and promptly squelched lingering fears about future traffic disruptions and security threats at the proposed basketball arena.

Ombudsman Forrest Taylor countered persistent concerns that securing the arena will require street closings — as a similar new arena did last year in Newark — by saying that it won’t happen in Brooklyn.

“The NYPD says it has no plans in taking any lanes of traffic,” Taylor told a packed meeting at the Belarusian Church on Atlantic Avenue on Tuesday night.

But that didn’t satisfy some.

“What [Taylor] said was that the police department has reviewed the plans and said all is right with the world,” said Councilwoman Letitia James (D–Fort Greene), who has called for an independent security review of the glass-walled arena, which would be set back from busy Atlantic and Flatbush avenues by just 20 feet. “But the NYPD should not be the final arbiter.”

As ombudsman for the biggest — and arguably most controversial - development in Brooklyn history, Taylor’s job is to smooth relations between the affected communities and the state and developer Forest City Ratner, something he seemed eager to get to.

“I recognize there’s going to be some misery,” said Taylor, and “to the best of my ability I’m trying to lower that misery [for the public].”

One of the first mini-crises Taylor tried to fend off in his calm, casual persona was the Jan. 16 two-year shutdown of the Carlton Avenue bridge, a main link between Prospect Heights and Fort Greene.

Taylor sounded testy after repeated questions about the bridge and said he had met with high-level FDNY officials who assured him the fire station on Dean Street would be properly informed in time for the bridge closing. He admitted that he did not visit the firehouse.

For some, the presence of Taylor, a former aide to Mayor Giuliani and Speaker Gifford Miller and a high-level official in the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, was enough to improve their attitude.

“It was good that he came out and met with [us],” said Eric McClure of the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods. “We had always had a hard time getting the Empire State Development Corporation to respond to legitimate requests.”

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/2/31_02newfaceofayards.html

meesalikeu

January 15th, 2008, 11:11 PM

waste of time and money. if loser paying the other side's legal fees was mandatory in our legal system we'd be so much better off.

imy understanding is that it is for some things in some states and cities. just not here.

BrooklynLove

January 16th, 2008, 09:02 AM

imy understanding is that it is for some things in some states and cities. just not here.

unfortunately, loser paying fees is not mandatory in our country's legal system. fees are basically a form of punitive damages available in select situations in our system.

if they were mandatory, we'd see a huge reduction in shakedown litigation, and the resulting drain on our economy and legal system.

Jim856796

January 28th, 2008, 02:32 AM

The likelihood of the Barclays Centre Arena getting built is low.

ablarc

January 28th, 2008, 07:23 AM

^ Source?

Jim856796

January 28th, 2008, 08:52 AM

I meant the chances of this arena getting built are slim to none.

lofter1

January 28th, 2008, 11:06 AM

OUCH, that Credit Crunch hurts!

Your Morning Credit Crunch: Will Atlantic Yards Be a Victim?

CURBED (http://curbed.com/archives/2008/01/28/your_morning_credit_crunch_will_atlantic_yards_be_ a_victim.php)
Monday, January 28, 2008
by Robert

http://curbed.com/uploads/2008_01_AY%20Dollars.jpg

Don't look now, but Forest City Ratner is citing the credit crunch and "turmoil" in the credit markets
and sort of admitting that it could have some trouble obtaining financing (http://www.nypost.com/seven/01282008/news/regionalnews/court_trouble_793583.htm) for the $4 billion Brooklyn project.
This morning's Post relates an affidavit filed in an appeal of a court court case lost a couple of weeks ago (http://curbed.com/archives/2008/01/11/curbedwire_another_atlantic_yards_lawsuit_dismisse d.php)
by opponents of the project. The Post writes that "developer Bruce Ratner is running into trouble securing
funding" for the project. The affidavit is actually a plea to the courts to speed up the lawsuits lest credit
problem get worse while the litigation continues:
The credit markets are in turmoil at this time. Many lenders
and bond insurers are facing financial difficulties and more
are becoming much more cautious...There is a serious question
as to whether, given the current state of the debt market, the
underwriters will be able to proceed with the financing for
the arena while the appeal is pending.
The document asks the court to rule, and fast, while the developer can still
get financing.

· Court Trouble: Ratner Admits Arena Funding Woes (http://www.nypost.com/seven/01282008/news/regionalnews/court_trouble_793583.htm) [NYP]
· Ratner Affidavit (warning: PDF) (http://www.nypost.com/seven/01282008/news/regionalnews/Silberfein_Affidavit.pdf) [NYP]

MikeW

January 28th, 2008, 02:51 PM

^
Is that a reason or an excuse (that could be used for a number of purposes).

lofter1

January 29th, 2008, 02:24 PM

I this whole project just SMOKE & MIRRORS ?????

Makes one wonder how folks could have been driven from their homes via Eminent Domain considering ...

The Morning After: Atlantic Yards Money Woes & Musical

CURBED (http://curbed.com/archives/2008/01/29/the_morning_after_atlantic_yards_money_woes_musica l.php)
January 29, 2008
by Robert

The little Brooklyn project known as Atlantic Yards has heated up again this week with news about new concerns over financing the project (http://curbed.com/archives/2008/01/28/your_morning_credit_crunch_will_atlantic_yards_be_ a_victim.php). Here's a day-after look at the latest turn of events:

1) It turns out that Bruce Ratner can walk way from the project without penalty because no binding contracts were signed. [NYP (http://www.nypost.com/seven/01292008/news/regionalnews/builder_can_nix_nets_plan_339736.htm)]

2) "It will be riskier and more expensive than ever envisioned for the Nets to construct the Barclays Center arena ... Turns out the Devils, Yankees, Mets, Giants and Jets were lucky to have financed their pleasure palaces before the financial crisis. The problem, which began with the tanking of subprime mortgage loans, has led to sharply higher interest rates for loans to highly leveraged companies, such as real estate developers, if they can obtain financing at all." [NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/sports/basketball/29sandomir.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin)]

3) Get ready for Atlantic Yards: The Musical (or drama). A Manhattan theater company called The Civilians that "combines investigative reporting with stories, song and dance" is going to do a production based on the big project for the 2009-2010 theater season. Who will play DDDB's Daniel Goldstein? Borough President Marty Markowitz? Developer Bruce Ratner? Will a Norman Oder character (http://www.atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/) provide narration? [NYDN (http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2008/01/29/2008-01-29_theater_critics_to_review_atlantic_yards-1.html)]

4) Speaking of which, Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn posted a long item this morning about how "Atlantic Yards has never been a 'done deal' beside the real estate speculating firm's PR mantra...It is quite literally the case that no deal has really been done when it comes to Forest City Ratner's project." There's a list of points including the fact that the rail yards haven't been transferred to the developer and that no money has changed hands. [DDDB (http://dddb.net/php/latestnews_Linked.php?id=1203)]

5) Still want more? Here's a very complete roundup of all the Atlantic Yards money woes coverage. [No Land Grab (http://www.nolandgrab.org/archives/2008/01/credit_woah.html)]

JCMAN320

January 29th, 2008, 03:50 PM

COURT TROUBLE
RATNER ADMITS ARENA-FUNDING WOES

By RICH CALDER

January 28, 2008 -- Don't fork over money to reserve seats for the Brooklyn Nets just yet.

Developer Bruce Ratner is running into trouble securing funding for his controversial $4 billion Atlantic Yards project, which would bring an NBA arena for Ratner's Nets and 16 skyscrapers with residential and commercial space to Prospect Heights, according to court documents obtained by The Post.

The papers, filed Friday by Ratner's firm in an attempt to speed up the appeal process in a lawsuit by project opponents, reveal for a first time that the biggest development in Brooklyn's history is in jeopardy because of dragging litigation and a slumping fiscal market.

"The credit markets are in turmoil at this time . . . There is a serious question as to whether, given the current state of the debt market, the underwriters will be able to proceed with the financing for the arena while the appeal is pending," one affidavit says.

Read The Affidavit (PDF)http://www.nypost.com/seven/01282008/news/regionalnews/Silberfein_Affidavit.pdf

The document says that although financing isn't locked up, Goldman Sachs "has been selected" as lead underwriter on the bond financing of the arena, estimated at "several hundred million dollars."

As The Post reported last year, the proposed 18,000-seat arena is slated to be called the Barclays Center through a record $400 million naming-rights deal. It would be formally owned by a local development corporation set up by the Empire State Development Corp. and leased to an affiliate of Ratner's firm.

The court papers contend Ratner and the new corporation "are likely to encounter significant difficulties and cost increases in concluding the bond financing that is essential to the arena's completion" should the appeal not be decided quickly.

Bruce Bender, a vice president for Ratner's firm, said in a statement the company is committed to building Atlantic Yards, and "regardless of the opponents' delay tactics, we will continue to move forward as quickly as possible."

But Jeffrey Baker, the opponents' attorney, said the financial market knows "how much of a risk" the project is when the litigation is factored in.

The papers were filed by Ratner's company regarding a suit by opposition group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn that alleges the project was approved by the state in December 2006 without a proper environmental review.

The case is now before an appellate panel in Manhattan after Ratner won a lower-court ruling. Develop Don't Destroy is also appealing a decision in a federal suit it filed opposing the use of eminent domain to take private land for the 22-acre project.

While preliminary work on Atlantic Yards began in March 2007, construction on the arena hasn't started. The Nets recently announced that their anticipated move from the Meadowlands to Brooklyn has been pushed back from late 2009 to sometime in 2010.

Project opponents say they believe the litigation will make reaching the new goal difficult.

Stroika

January 29th, 2008, 04:43 PM

as someone who lives in prospect heights, i'm thrilled that we'll have more exposed railroads and rat- and trash-infested wastelands instead of cultural centers, retail and residence. at least we've taken down the "corporate man," never mind if it means less jobs for the working (or not-working) folk.

this news will definitely give the norman odor-led NIMBY crowd heart, and i don't doubt they'll use it to their advantage to keep up their litigious kvetching. what the courts need to do is just throw out all of this B.S.

perhaps most sadly, blocking/torpedoing construction of AY will mean the atrocious atlantic shopping mall will be that much more visible. granted, that was ratner too but it definitely wasn't gehry.

curses to you, NIMBYs. and get a job.

pianoman11686

January 29th, 2008, 05:17 PM

Get Barclays to provide financing at a lower rate than the competitors, and cut their naming rights deal in half, or more.

lofter1

January 29th, 2008, 07:05 PM

All NYers should be cheering that this project -- which is clearly not well funded and would end up costing the taxpayers a bundle -- looks like it will be put on hold.

No doubt Ratner would have come out OK if the project went forward, but NYers would have gotten the shaft.

BrooklynLove

January 29th, 2008, 09:46 PM

press feeding fenzy. project is okay. it's moving faster now then ever before.

ablarc

January 29th, 2008, 09:56 PM

All NYers should be cheering that this project -- which is clearly not well funded and would end up costing the taxpayers a bundle -- looks like it will be put on hold.
Nonsense; this is only true if taxes actually went up. If they don't, it's a discretionary use of taxpayer money like any other civic expenditure --and better than the genuine boondoggles.

No doubt Ratner would have come out OK if the project went forward, but NYers would have gotten the shaft.
New Yorkers ARE getting the shaft: railroad yards, rats, vacant lots, general dishevelment, lack of progress, absence of Nets.

press feeding fenzy. project is okay. it's moving faster now then ever before.
Hope you're right. Where do you get your info?

BrooklynLove

January 29th, 2008, 10:44 PM

Hope you're right. Where do you get your info?

i walk by there all the time. ever since the most recent cases were dismissed the demo prep and actual demo kicked up a notch, carlton ave bridge closed, and excavation and pile testing in the cut picked up. not a sign of distress.

this whole press frenzy finanancing doomsday scenario started with a court document arguing in ratners favor for expeditious dismissal of remaining cases. lawyers plus press - not a good combo for acurate portrayals of reality.

MikeW

January 30th, 2008, 01:30 AM

Ablarc beat me to it.

Yeah what NYC need to do is keep a decrepit rail yard and neigboring slum, and give up thousends of jobs and housing units, and in the end a substantial amount of ongoing tax revenue (after it's built and the deals expire).

However, I think to many people have to much invested in this for it to go down that quietly. I agree with the others who said that this is just an attempt to light a fire under the courts to clear out the nuisance cases.

All NYers should be cheering that this project -- which is clearly not well funded and would end up costing the taxpayers a bundle -- looks like it will be put on hold.

No doubt Ratner would have come out OK if the project went forward, but NYers would have gotten the shaft.

MidtownGuy

January 31st, 2008, 11:34 AM

The rail yard is horrible. I want to see construction begin...I'm concerned about the final design though, the last version was uninspired.

Tectonic

January 31st, 2008, 11:36 AM

I'm getting really impatient over this project.

BrooklynLove

January 31st, 2008, 03:05 PM

for example ...

http://www.brownstoner.com/brownstoner/archives/2008/01/ay_demos_626_pa.php#comments

antinimby

February 1st, 2008, 02:08 PM

Federal appeals court says Atlantic Yards project can go forward

By LARRY NEUMEISTER | Associated Press Writer 12:29 PM EST, February 1, 2008 (http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--atlanticyards0201feb01,0,5431615.story)

NEW YORK - A federal appeals court gave a green light Friday to a $4 billion, Frank Gehry-designed project that would bring a new arena for the NBA's Nets to Brooklyn.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a lawsuit by a group of property owners and tenants facing eviction, agreeing with a lower court judge who had ruled that the seizure of the property under eminent domain would not be unconstitutional.

The appeals court wrote: "For affected property owners, monetary compensation may understandably seem an imperfect substitute for the hardships of dislocation and the loss of a home or business.

"But federal judges may not intervene in such matters simply on the basis of our sympathies. Just as eminent domain has its costs, it has its benefits."

The Atlantic Yards project envisions 16 skyscrapers, an 18,000-seat arena for New Jersey's basketball franchise and thousands of apartments rising from a stretch of Brooklyn now occupied by a rail yard and mostly industrial buildings.

The development planned by Nets principal owner Bruce Ratner has been approved by state officials and praised by Mayor Michael Bloomberg as "the most exciting private development Brooklyn has ever seen."

Matthew D. Brinckerhoff, who argued for property owners opposed to the deal, said he would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"We're certainly disappointed. We believe the decision is wrong. And we think it will present an opportunity for the Supreme Court to re-examine the use of eminent domain," he said. "This case is all about their ability to forcibly take my client's property."

He said the plaintiffs will sue in state court if the federal case is rebuffed.

Ratner praised the decision, saying it was a victory for the public good and underscored the importance of "investing in diverse communities."

"Atlantic Yards will bring thousands of affordable homes and needed jobs to Brooklyn," he said. "We believe, and the courts have repeatedly agreed, that these are real benefits that will have a significantly positive impact on the borough and the city."

Ratner announced plans to develop the area in 2003. Three years later, the property owners sued, claiming the development would overwhelm existing neighborhoods and unfairly enrich Ratner.

Another legal appeal seeking to block the development is pending.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press

Alonzo-ny

February 1st, 2008, 04:48 PM

Tectonic

February 1st, 2008, 05:08 PM

From Crains NY Business

Federal appeals court OK's Atlantic Yards

The court agreed with an earlier ruling that said seizure of property to develop the $4 billion project falls under eminent domain.
February 01. 2008 1:35PMBy: Tommy Fernandez (breakingnews@crain.com)

http://cnimg.sv.publicus.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=CN&Date=20080201&Category=FREE&ArtNo=119572947&Ref=AR&maxw=319&border=0 Bloomberg News
Forest City Ratner’s controversial $4 billion Atlantic Yards project won another major legal battle Friday when a federal court rejected a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state’s use of eminent domain for the site.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court judge in Brooklyn who had ruled that the seizure under eminent domain would not be unconstitutional. The suit, filed in October 2006 by property owners and tenants facing eviction, had sought to block the seizures and also sought unspecified damages.

“For affected property owners, monetary compensation may understandably seem an imperfect substitute for the hardships of dislocation and the loss of a home or business,” wrote the appeals court. “But federal judges may not intervene in such matters simply on the basis of our sympathies. Just as eminent domain has its costs, it has its benefits.”

The project will comprise of 16 skyscrapers and an 18,000-seat arena that will house the New Jersey Nets, whose principal owner is none other than Bruce Ratner. The development, designed by noted architect Frank Gehry, will provide over 6,400 units of housing, 336,000 square feet of office space, 247,000 square feet of retail space and a 180-room hotel.

Although another legal appeal seeking to block the development is pending, Bruce Ratner, chairman and chief executive of Forest City Ratner Companies touted today’s decision as a significant victory.

“Atlantic Yards will bring thousands of affordable homes and needed jobs to Brooklyn,” Mr. Ratner said in a statement. “We believe, and the courts have repeatedly agreed, that these are real benefits that will have a significantly positive impact on the borough and the city.”

The company says the project would generate 15,000 union jobs; over $40 million worth of contracts; over 6,400 permanent jobs and $5.6 billion in tax revenue over the next 30-years. Activists against the project vigorously dispute these figures.

Attorney Matthew Brinckerhoff, who represented the plaintiffs who filed the suit, vowed to take the case to U.S. Supreme Court and “will continue to pursue every avenue available” to prevent the seizures.

“It should trouble all citizens who, unlike Bruce Ratner, lack the power and money to co-opt the government's power of eminent domain for their private use,” he says.

Eugenious

February 1st, 2008, 08:42 PM

BrooklynLove

February 2nd, 2008, 09:27 AM

I can understand why construction isnt moving forward on the parts of the project that are on land being seized by eminent domain buy why hasn't construction started on the yards themselves where no one is being displaced?

i'd need to go back into the latest project plans (or reports on the plans), but from what i recall the plan here was to do all demo and site prep before beginning work on individual sites. the ongoing litigations on varous sites had been holding up the full tilt demo due to the wasted expense, inefficiency and prolonged neighborhood disruption of doing the demo in a piecemeal fashion.

anyway, now that most of the cases are gone, and about to be entirely gone, you can see that the building demos and earthwork in the cut is kicking into a higher gear. this is FINALLY happening. exciting times for the boro.

lofter1

February 2nd, 2008, 11:35 AM

Alonzo-ny

February 2nd, 2008, 12:19 PM

Seems now he should have aquired the yards and got to work and maybe he would at least have something by now.

ablarc

February 2nd, 2008, 02:32 PM

Federal appeals court says Atlantic Yards project can go forward

A federal appeals court gave a green light Friday to a $4 billion, Frank Gehry-designed project that would bring a new arena for the NBA's Nets to Brooklyn.
Keeps getting green lights.

Somebody, see if you can find the crank.

BrooklynLove

February 2nd, 2008, 08:02 PM

An article above states that the actual transfer of properties / payment of funds has not taken place.

Perhaps that is why the work hasn't commenced.

Could be that it's now time for Ratner to pay up so he can get to work.

well, that would certainly explain things. maybe it's a little of both. i'm going to make an educated guess that much of the financing was lined up and even some moneys paid into escrow before going so far as to incure the expenses of litigation.

lofter1

February 4th, 2008, 12:20 PM

Does AY delay cost $6M a month? $12M?
Forest City Ratner's fuzzy math

Atlantic Yards Report (http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2008/02/does-ay-delay-cost-6m-month-12m-forest.html)
posted by Norman Oder
February 4, 2008

How much money is Forest City Ratner losing each month because of delays in the Atlantic Yards Project. In an effort to convince an appellate court to expedite the appeal in the suit challenging the AY environmental impact, a top executive and top lawyer both offer some very fuzzy math.

While last April executive Jim Stuckey estimated (http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2007/04/would-stay-on-demolitions-unduly-delay.html) $4.15 million a month -- a little more than .1% of the projected cost of the project -- in an affidavit (http://dddb.net/FEIS/appeal/PICrossMotion/respondents/FCRC/GilmartinAffidavit.pdf) filed 1/17/08, his successor MaryAnne Gilmartin now claims $6 million a month.

However, the text of the affidavit offers no explanation of why that cost has escalated, and in fact cautions in more than one place that the developer can't predict cost escalations.

http://bp1.blogger.com/_mJPzxRaCL64/R6ZoJ4yyxaI/AAAAAAAAByE/xNAPbEaWWIk/s320/ishot-74.jpg (http://bp1.blogger.com/_mJPzxRaCL64/R6ZoJ4yyxaI/AAAAAAAAByE/xNAPbEaWWIk/s1600-h/ishot-74.jpg)

Compounding that, FCR attorney Jeffrey Braun, in his legal affirmation (http://dddb.net/FEIS/appeal/PICrossMotion/respondents/FCRC/Braun%20Affidavit.pdf) unaccountably doubles down, claiming that Gilmartin's affidavit indicates that The expenses that FCRC would continue to incur while a stay was in effect and that are relatively easy to calculate would exceed $12 million per month, and that does not include the operating losses that the New Jersey Nets basketball team incurs while it continues to use an antiquated arena as its home venue.

Gilmartin's affidavit

Let's look at the relevant section of Gilmartin's affidavit, reproduced in full, with some interpolation.

C. The Financial Impact of Delay
11. Delay in the progress of construction work for the Project not only would defer the Project's important public benefits, but it would expose FCRC to severe irreparable harm, resulting from, among other things, (a) the prolongation of the time in which FCRC must carry the real property and the Project's overhead without generating income, (b) costs incurred in connection with equity invested in the Project, and (c) the prolongation of the Nets basketball team's operating losses arising from its use of the current inadequate arena in New Jersey.

12. At this time, it costs FCRC about $2,400,000 per month to carry the real property that it has acquired for the Project and the overhead that is in place to work on the Project — a figure that does not include FCRC's legal fees and also does not take into account the operating losses that the Nets basketball team, which has been owned by an FCRC affiliate since 2004, continues to incur while it is based at its current venue in New Jersey.

13. Delay on a construction project such as this one probably would subject FCRC to significant escalations in its eventual construction costs. FCRC cannot accurately predict the amount of these cost escalations. However, given that the costs of materials historically have increased over time and also given the magnitude of the Project, it is reasonable to assume that a delay would cause a significant adverse financial impact. A delay also would subject FCRC to penalties and claims from construction contractors that would be forced to stop work, demobilize and subsequently start up again. FCRC cannot accurately quantify these penalties, but they would be significant.

(Emphases added)
Last April, Stuckey claimed (http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2007/04/would-stay-on-demolitions-unduly-delay.html) that construction costs escalated $1.75 million per month.
14. In addition, during the construction of the temporary rail yard described in Mr. Sanna's accompanying affidavit, the Long Island Railroad ("LIRR") must modify its operations to allow trains displaced from the MTA's Vanderbilt Yard facility to be serviced elsewhere. As a result, FCRC is now paying approximately $300,000 per month to cover the increase in the LIRR's operating costs. A stay pending appeal would increase the period of time during which FCRC must make these payments.
The total of known costs would thus be $2.7 million a month, plus a significant chunk for cost escalations. Yet Gilmartin then picks some numbers seemingly out of thin air.
15. Therefore, if construction work on the Project was stayed temporarily for even one month, the damages to which FCRC would be subjected would be about $6,000,000 per month, not including the escalation of construction costs. A delay of two months would thus expose FCRC to damages of at least $12,000,000.
It just doesn't add up.

***

JCMAN320

February 22nd, 2008, 10:15 PM

Rod Thorn, the NEW JERSEY Nets president, admits on WFAN with Mike and the Maddog that the team can still be bought and moved to Newark at the Prudential and acknowledges that the Brooklyn Arena is taking way too long and that there are NO I repeat NO shovels in the ground yet for the arena!!!!!

New Jersey Devils owner James Vanderbeek has said publicly he would like to buy the team and move it to Newark!! The Prudental also has an NBA Ready lockeroom and offices. The Nets very well could stay in New Jersey!!!!!!!!

http://www.dddb.net/php/latestnews_Linked.php?id=1243

Alonzo-ny

February 22nd, 2008, 10:19 PM

The Nets could also very well move to the moon, calm down.

JCMAN320

February 22nd, 2008, 10:22 PM

Alonzo I'm a die-hard Nets fan and from New Jersey, I would love nothing more than for them to stay. I have even marched and donated money to the lawsuits of the residents!

BrooklynLove

February 22nd, 2008, 10:27 PM

jc - time to start devoting your energy to seton hall b-ball. sorry.

JCMAN320

February 22nd, 2008, 10:43 PM

Brooklyn this aint done yet and SPC is a very big basketball progream as well and we play Seton Hall so no thanks. Time for you to devote your energy to the hapless Knicks!!!

Until this is a done deal I will not stop fighting. Nobody can stop me, I mean nobody!!!

I won't stop rooting for the team because unless they change the name "Nets" they will never be completely your team doesn't matter if you have Brooklyn in front of it or not!!! They will always have ties to New Jersey. If they change the Nets name then I'm out!

BrooklynLove

February 22nd, 2008, 10:59 PM

jc - i like your spirit. truthfully i'm not much of a basketball fan at all - but bringing a primary league pro franchise back to brooklyn would make me one immediately.

JCMAN320

February 22nd, 2008, 11:12 PM

That's the difference between you and me. I have been a New Jersey Nets fan since 92/93 season when my father first took me to my first game when I was 6. Chuck Daly was coaching the team had Drazen Petrovic, Kenny Anderson, Derrick Coleman, etc.. I still have my old Nets jersey Kenny Anderson #7 from when I was 6 years old. I love this team, my ftahers favorite picture of me is with his Nets cap on when I was a kid and also a former NBA star from my highschool Jim Spanarkel is one of the broadcasters and hes from Jersey City and my family is very friendly with his, how can I not be a fan.

I know the whole tragic twisted history of the team from their inception as the New Jersey Americans in 1967 playing at the Teaneck Armory all the way to the J-Kidd trade, who was my guy and he will be missed and nobdy will ever wear #5 for the Nets, his number will be retired.

The Nets since being in the NBA in 1976 had won one playoff series and never won a divsion title or Eastern Conference title. Then J-Kidd came to the team in 2001 and that all changed. He enginered one of the greatest franchise turn arounds in NBA history. The year before he came we had 26 wins; he came and we won 52 games and went all the way to NBA Finals for the first time ever. Since then the Nets have 4 Atlantic Division titles 2 Eastern Conference Titles, two consecutive trips to the NBA Finals, and a 6 playoff apperance consecutive streak, the second longest currently in the NBA all because of Jason Kidd. He promised he would make the Knicks the #2 team in the area and he did!!!

I am a greenhorn and love this team, have met the players, have many autographs including Kenny Anderson, Vince Carter, Jason Kidd, Richard Jefferson, Lawrence Frank, Sean Williams, etc...

So I will keep fighting until that arena is finished or even started for that matter. With the team president admitting that Newark is an option is enough hope for me.

BrooklynLove

February 22nd, 2008, 11:27 PM

well, i do remember watching those guys play like it was only a few years ago. wasn't jayson williams on those teams as well ...?

anyway, my dad and his dad were long time dodger fans so i think that i'm entitled to jump on the first team that gets back here (whatever sport that may be) like a transfer hottie in junior year of high school.

Scraperfannyc

February 23rd, 2008, 03:31 AM

New York lost two football teams to Jersey. Manhattan has the Knicks, the bronx has the Yankees, so I don't see anything wrong with the Nets going to brooklyn. Would it be any better if the nets were bought by California like the NY giants and Brooklyn Dodgers?

JCMAN320

February 23rd, 2008, 05:42 PM

So what are we going to get stuck with, one extremely good hockey team bearing New Jersey in the name, while two football teams and soccer team play and are headquartered in New Jersey but call themselves New York is hardly fair for New Jersey. we give you the Nets and you give us the Jets!!! That's fair, an eye for an eye.

pianoman11686

February 23rd, 2008, 05:45 PM

Alonzo I'm a die-hard Nets fan and from New Jersey, I would love nothing more than for them to stay. I have even marched and donated money to the lawsuits of the residents!

I'm sorry to say, you've been wasting your time (and your money.)

Alonzo-ny

February 23rd, 2008, 06:52 PM

The Jersey team talk is boring can we stick to Atlantic Yards.

Tectonic

February 26th, 2008, 05:25 PM

Crains:

Atlantic Yards quietly scaled back?

Watchdog blog Atlantic Yards Report posted what it called previously-undisclosed portions of a Forest City Ratner transcript outlining amendments to the project.
February 26. 2008 3:13PM By: Kira Bindrim (kbindrim@crain.com) and Erik Engquist (eengquist@crain.com)

http://cnimg.sv.publicus.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=CN&Date=20080226&Category=FREE&ArtNo=829937044&Ref=AR&maxw=319&border=0 Bloomberg News

Forest City Ratner’s enormous Atlantic Yards project may have become a little less enormous. Or not.

On Tuesday, watchdog blog Atlantic Yards Report posted (http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2008/02/forest-city-to-investors-more-ay-office.html) portions of a previously undisclosed transcript of an Forest City meeting with investors in early October at the New York Times Building. During the meeting, Forest City executives said the Brooklyn project would span “21 acres in downtown Brooklyn, with 6.5 million square feet of residential and commercial development.” That’s smaller than the 8-million-square-foot, 22-acre project publicly outlined by the company.

But a company spokesman says the 6.5 million figure does not include the Barclays Center, a basketball arena for the Nets, which will be owned separately by Nets Sports and Entertainment, which is 21.5% owned by Forest City. Nor does it include Site 5, current home of P.C. Richard and Modell’s, which will be developed separately. Including the arena and Site 5, the square footage adds up to what was previously projected, he said.

During the meeting, Forest City also referred to the Frank Gehry-designed Miss Brooklyn tower as having 528,000 square foot of zoning rights. Earlier, it had been pegged at over 900,000 square feet. Forest City has nixed plans to include condominiums, instead offering additional office space, which is now seen as more profitable. A company spokesman says the smaller square footage reflects the concession announced last fall to reduce Miss Brooklyn’s height to 511 feet, one fewer than the borough’s tallest building, One Hanson Place.

Among other disclosures, Forest City executives said it will take up to five years to rebuild the Metropolitan Transportation Authority rail yard, instead of the three-and-a-half year estimate in an initial environmental review. The developer is even reducing the number of planned hospitality suites (from 170 to 130) it will rent out in the Nets’ new 18,000-seat arena.

During the October meeting, Forest City executive vice president MaryAnne Gilmartin said the firm had signed and completed funding agreements with both the city and the state, allowing Forest City to “be reimbursed for investments made in infrastructure and land to date on the project.” Yet company sources suggested to Crain’s last month that said no such funding agreements had been completed because litigation against the development was still pending.

A source familiar with the agreements says they were indeed signed by Forest City Ratner last fall but are still waiting for approval by the city and state comptrollers.

Separately Tuesday, the Brooklyn Eagle reported that Forest City has yet to apply for the $177 million in affordable housing bonds it is seeking for the project this year. The city Department of Housing Preservation and Development told the Eagle that Ratner’s application, when it comes through, won’t be given special treatment.

Earlier this month, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Brooklyn judge’s rejection of a lawsuit against the use of eminent domain at the site. The suit, filed in October 2006 by property owners and tenants facing eviction, had sought to block the property’s seizure, as well as unspecified damages.

ASchwarz

February 26th, 2008, 08:17 PM

This article is stupid. It's from a blog that posts weekly attacks on Ratner and Atlantic Yards.

They don't know how to read the reporting documents, or if they do, they are trying to create more "controversy." The reporting documents list the square footage for different uses separately.

Regardless of what you think about Ratner and Atlantic Yards, I think everyone can agree that a NIMBY blog formed against the development is not a reliable source of info.

Alonzo-ny

February 26th, 2008, 10:23 PM

Ratner's other battle

While Atlantic Yards still faces hurdles, the developer's Westchester project is under way

Forest City Ratner’s Ridge Hill Village project, top, and Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn.
By Marc Ferris

Forest City Ratner is practically a household name in the city because of its controversial Atlantic Yards project, which is set to remake a massive swath of Brooklyn.

But a short distance north, in Westchester County, the developer has another contentious project—one that is several steps ahead of its Brooklyn development.

Four miles from the Bronx border, Ridge Hill Village will be the largest development project in Yonkers history—just as Atlantic Yards will be for Brooklyn.

The mixed-use complex is projected to cost $630 million. After five years of fierce opposition and legal challenges, the company held a ceremonial groundbreaking on the site in November, and construction is now in full swing.

The development will include 1,000 apartments, 160,000 square feet of office space, a 175-room hotel and convention center, and a multi-screen cinema. Ratner has already signed leases with L. L. Bean, Whole Foods, Banana Republic, New York & Company and movie-theater operator National Amusement.

"It's a done deal," said Hezi Aris, a political blogger at YonkersTribune.com and the publisher of the Westchester Times Tribune. "The administration and other interest groups eviscerated the challenge, and everyone threw in the towel."

The price tag and scope of the project pales in comparison to the $4 billion redevelopment of the Atlantic Yards site, but the two plans are both considered massive for their communities. What's more, they have followed similar trajectories.

Last month, a State Supreme Court judge ruled in Forest City Ratner's favor on Atlantic Yards, dismissing a lawsuit that was attempting to block the project from moving forward. However, there are still federal lawsuits challenging Ratner's use of eminent domain.

Until the legal hurdles are cleared, the only work being done on the site is the demolition of several buildings the company owns.

In Yonkers, it's a different story. Ratner has cleared all of the legal hurdles.

Like some Brooklyn officials who hail the Atlantic Yards project for all of the jobs it could create, officials in Yonkers, which has long struggled to remain financially afloat, say Ridge Hill Village will jump start the droopy economy with thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in desperately needed revenue, creating an important tax base.

Also like the Atlantic Yards site, the Ridge Hill Village site has a unique history. The more than 80-acre site was once home to a drug treatment center and defense contractor Lockheed Martin, which was bought out of its lease once redevelopment efforts began. In the early 1990s, New York State began marketing the property to developers. In 2002, the city signed an agreement with Forest City Ratner for the project.

From the outset, Ridge Hill Village was dogged by opposition.

According to the Journal News, a paper that covers Westchester County, the neighboring towns sued Yonkers over the plan. They eventually dropped the suit as part of a deal in which Ratner agreed to give them $5 million to help fund short-term traffic improvements.

The company has also created a task force to be overseen by former Governor Mario Cuomo.

Another lawsuit filed by three council members argued that the city changed the number of votes needed for approval, in order to make an end run around the Westchester County Planning Board.

A State Supreme Court judge annulled the city vote, but the project won approval on the second go-around.

There were additional accusations of improprieties. The city was harshly criticized when it created the Ridge Hill Development Corporation—a non-profit corporation that was not subject to public oversight—to collect the money generated by the development.

"From the beginning, the whole thing had been shrouded in secrecy," said Aris. "The city created an entity to administer the plan that is not accountable to anyone."

According to published reports, opponents were upset that the corporation was filled with politically-connected members. The city has said it would dissolve the corporation, but even now not everyone is satisfied. Debra Cohen, a lawyer who has challenged other city developments, said the city has not come clean with where the assets went.

And last year the City Council was served with a federal subpoena that sought records connected to the project.

"They were looking at all sorts of documents, especially audio tape relating to Ridge Hill," said Chuck Lesnick, president of the Yonkers City Council.

Lesnick noted the development corporation has been liquidated but that it "has incurred certain expenses." He said after it pays off title, legal and consultant fees, along with incurred interest, it will be dissolved and then "there should be complete disclosure."

Despite all of the opposition, Forest City Ratner bought out the lease for $26 million and now owns the land outright, said company spokesman Loren Riegelhaupt.

The project is scheduled for completion in summer 2009.

Helping Forest City Ratner weather the opposition in Yonkers was the fact that the lion's share of scrutiny has been aimed at the city, not the developer. In addition, the remote location has kept the actual construction process out of the public eye.

As the name implies, though, the site represents a challenging place to build. The only existing access to the hilltop abuts the New York State Thruway's service road. Forest City Ratner is constructing a new egress to Tuckahoe Road, a heavily congested commercial corridor that may require widening and other improvements.

BrooklynLove

February 26th, 2008, 11:18 PM

This article is stupid. ...

this has been a recuring theme among real estate reporting recently in nyc. intelligent reporting is getting to be rarer than cheap financing.

BrooklynRider

February 26th, 2008, 11:36 PM

This article is stupid. It's from a blog that posts weekly attacks on Ratner and Atlantic Yards.

I view it as a community watchdog group that is doing the in-depth investigations we once depended on the press to do. Certainly, you are entitled to your opinion, but blogs are very reputable and are viewed equally with mainstream media. If you read the NYTimes.com, you would know that, when you click on the NY Region section, it is no longer traditional reporting that comes up. Instead it is their City Blog. The dominant healine on the site last night was "Live Blogging From the Democratic Debate."

I don't want to drag anyone kicking and screaming into the 21st Century, but a person looks less silly if they ride the horse in the direction it is going.

They don't know how to read the reporting documents,

What evidence supports this claim?

or if they do, they are trying to create more "controversy."

So, you don't actually know if they are right or wrong. You are just trying to create more "controversy" by making a totally ambivalent statement.

The reporting documents list the square footage for different uses separately.

I am going to venture a guess that this statement is totally irrelevant to the point that they are making. It is probably fair to assume that you spent a lot less time studying these documents or comparing them to previous Ratner claims and submissions than a blog entirely dedicated to reporting on the development.

Regardless of what you think about Ratner and Atlantic Yards, I think everyone can agree that a NIMBY blog formed against the development is not a reliable source of info.

Actually, I think everyone can agree that you aren't a spokesperson for everyone.

Personally, I think anyone so virulenty and systematically anti-NIMBY is, in effect, the equal to a NIMBY. The reason being that the anti-NIMBY person is totally dependent on the NIMBY for an identity. If not for this blog's reporting, you actually would have had nothing to add to this thread today. The stuff you add is nothing new - has no facts - has less credibility than the well-established and oft-quoted blog.

ASchwarz

February 27th, 2008, 12:52 AM

The stuff you add is nothing new - has no facts - has less credibility than the well-established and oft-quoted blog.

From todays Crains NY:

"But a company spokesman says the 6.5 million figure does not include the Barclays Center, a basketball arena for the Nets, which will be owned separately by Nets Sports and Entertainment, which is 21.5% owned by Forest City. Nor does it include Site 5, current home of P.C. Richard and Modell’s, which will be developed separately. Including the arena and Site 5, the square footage adds up to what was previously projected, he said."

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080226/FREE/829937044/1058

Since you apparently DO take this NIMBY blog as scripture, nothing anyone posts that contradicts their lies/distortions will be of any interest to you.

ASchwarz

February 27th, 2008, 01:00 AM

This sort of "gotcha" crap is so lazy and transparent. The DDD blog (basically one person) ranted and raved that the complex was "too big". Now they are mad it is "too small".

The reality is that nothing changed, but Dan Goldstein either misread the public documents, or deliberately posted falsehoods on his blog. Either way, it reflects the blog's public worth.

BrooklynRider

February 27th, 2008, 04:39 PM

From todays Crains NY:

"But a company spokesman says..."

A guess if a company spokesperson makes a statement to rebuke an allegation it must automatically be true. You've offered nothing to back up your claims of what the facts area (once again), only another post in a long string of angry posts in reaction to people disagreeing with you.

Since you apparently DO take this NIMBY blog as scripture, nothing anyone posts that contradicts their lies/distortions will be of any interest to you.

There is nothing in my posts to indicate that I take the blog as scripture and don't presume to know what is or is not of interest to me.

JCMAN320

March 1st, 2008, 07:30 PM

From the Atlantic Yards report, the project pushed back again possibly to 2011-2012. Opponents dealy arugments till September and gain procedural edge.

http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2008/02/atlantic-yards-opponents-gain.html

STEAMWORKSNYC

March 1st, 2008, 11:46 PM

Good grief , I know this is my first post on this forum.But I got to vent . This city is full of high hopes and no back bone.Why in the hell are they leaving this case open until 2009.This is what the opposition wants ,more delay that adds more cost to the project. This city and state just continues to blow opportunities that lands right in their hands .If it isn't the West Side stadium ,its the Fulton street station or the Javits. What's next on the chopping block ? :mad:

BrooklynLove

March 2nd, 2008, 09:05 AM

STEAM - i share your frustration re the senseless delaying of this project. however i wouldn't place your blame on the city - blame the opposition's distateful abuse of the court system for the purpose of furthering a minority interest in stopping this project. i caution you against getting your facts from the editorial on the AYreportblog - a decidedly anti-AY site. you're better served reading the cited resources directly, and to the extent the cited sources themselves are non-primary, taking a similar approach.

JCMAN320

March 4th, 2008, 12:17 AM

:New York Sun; :Mar 3, 2008; :Front Page; :1

Unease Erodes Ambition in Real Estate

By PETER KIEFER Staff Reporter of the Sun

After years of sustained growth marked by grandiose, ambitious plans for the city, the real estate development industry is displaying troubling symptoms.

The number of citywide building permits is expected to drop, public and private funding for projects is drying up, and a stream of multibillion-dollar plans is coming in over budget and behind schedule, with many designs being scaled back or scrapped altogether.

“There are very disquieting signs that have ominous implications for the next few years,” the president of the New York Building Congress, Richard Anderson, said.

Last week, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said the price tag for the completion of the first leg of the Second Avenue subway line had ballooned to $4.35 billion from $3.8 billion. Critics are questioning whether Lower Manhattan transportation projects such as the Fulton Street Transit Center and the Santiago Calatrava-designed PATH Station are worth their soaring price tags, and the projects’ elaborate designs are being pared down.

The planned redevelopment of Penn Station has a budget shortfall of at least $1 billion. A public spat erupted between city and state officials over Governor Spitzer’s plan to scrap the expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center after cost estimates more than doubled to $5 billion, and last week one of the five original bidders in the proposed development of the Hudson Rail Yards project on Manhattan’s West Side — Brookfield Properties — dropped out. A shortage of federal housing subsidies and ongoing litigation from resident groups is threatening Bruce Ratner’s $4 billion Atlantic Yards project near downtown Brooklyn. The list of public and private projects on hold seems to grow on a weekly basis. The president of the Real Estate Board of New York, Steven Spinola, said widespread concern in the real estate community has — so far — fallen short of “panic.”

“I don’t know if they are collapsing,” Mr. Spinola, a former deputy mayor for economic development, said. “There is clearly concern among our members, which is probably more than I feel. Four months ago people believed that if they had a project, that the financing would be available even if they had to put more equity in, or maybe the costs might be slightly higher. A month ago there was a concern that the financial institutions would not want to finance anything. I think we’ll get over that bump.”

In many instances, the current development projects are so large that it could be necessary, and even acceptable, that construction schedules last longer than two business cycles, he said.

Many observers say the problems concerning the large development projects are myriad, and the difficulty in isolating the causes speaks to the complexity of a number of these deals. The approvals process can drag on for years, and the increase in annual construction costs of an average of 12% over each of the past few years has been a continual thorn in the side of developers. In addition, the credit crunch has led to more restrictive lending policies and greater caution at the state level, experts say. City and state tax revenues are shrinking, and the mayor and governor are looking for budget cuts.

A professor of urban policy and planning at New York University, Mitchell Moss, said the current situation is the result of a glut of projects that have been pushed through without enough reflection by elected officials. Mr. Moss said he believes the only way out of the current situation is increased commitment and investment by the state, and Governor Spitzer.

“The dilemma is we need to be prudent, and part of the problem is that every politician has their favorite project,” Mr. Moss said. “The political system has encouraged a large number of projects to enter the planning and design phase, but not enough to get to the implementation phase. There is a need to recognize that we have to pick the projects that are a high priority rather than let a thousand flowers bloom.”

When asked which of the projects he deemed most important, Mr. Moss was unequivocal: the planned redevelopment of Penn Station, which many see as the key development project that could open up the West Side of Manhattan.

Known as the Moynihan Station project, after a late senator of New York who was the original proponent, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the plan currently has a budget shortfall of at least $1 billion and typifies the complexity of the hybrid public-private public works projects that are becoming more commonplace. The project requires coordination among Amtrak, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, New Jersey Transit, the Long Island Rail Road, the city subways, and Madison Square Garden, which owns the air rights above the arena along with two private developers — Vornado Realty Trust and the Related Companies.

The man charged at the state level with keeping the Penn Station project on track is the cochairman of the Empire State Development Corp., Patrick Foye. In an interview, Mr. Foye called the project “one of the most complicated things” that he has ever worked on. “The challenges are many and large, but the deal was dead a year ago and we are now in the public hearing process that ought to be concluded by the end of the year. There are still some challenges we have crossed off the list and there are lots of challenges left. But we are committed to getting it done.”

Mr. Foye’s counterpart at the city level is the deputy mayor for economic development, Robert Lieber. In an interview, Mr. Lieber said he is confident that the market would work itself out, and noted how any assessment of the current state of affairs must be kept in perspective.

“I don’t have a crystal ball,” he said. “I don’t know how these financial markets are going to react. I am confident that the fundamentals of our economy and our capital structure will prevail. And these projects are sustainable; they aren’t born of a bull market and they won’t die in the bear market.”

Mr. Lieber said one of his biggest concerns is the consistent rise in construction costs and the mounting delays between when a project is announced and when construction actually begins.

“What you design as feasible today — if you are not in the ground with it today — by definition is going to have some kind of a shortfall in a year. And if it is three years, you are going to be 30% over budget. So that is part of what is happening,” he said.

Mr. Anderson of the Building Congress concurs.

“The government has loaded up the development process with burdensome and costly reviews and contractual stipulations, more so than any other city in the U.S.,” he said.

As it stands, many in the industry are in wait—and—see mode even while bracing for tough times ahead. There are some large projects that appear to be on schedule for completion. Both the new Yankee Stadium and the new stadium for the Mets, known as Citi Field, are on track to be completed for opening day in 2009. The new Goldman Sachs headquarters in Lower Manhattan and the new Bank of America office tower near Bryant Park in Midtown appear set to open on schedule. After long delays at ground zero, work is under way on the Freedom Tower, and the Port Authority recently handed over development sites to Silverstein Properties for the construction of new office towers along Church Street.

The chairman of the Singer & Bassuk Organization, Andrew Singer, said he thinks a scaling back of the number of projects could alleviate the rising construction costs that have come with the development log jam over the past few years. On the financing front, Mr. Singer has already seen a marked change in financing structures from even just a year ago, when a developer could obtain between 90% and 95% of the costs of a project from available financing. He said today that figure is down to around 70%.

“That is not a bad thing,” he said. “It means that those projects that go ahead are with the developers that are the most substantial. It is a de-leveraging of the real estate business in general. The high leveraging has created this bubble. It hasn’t burst yet. Whether the air gets let out or it comes crashing down remains to be seen,” he said.

BrooklynLove

March 4th, 2008, 08:14 AM

the net effect of this article? 360 degrees - i knew just as much before reading it as i now do after reading it. negative speculation has replaced positive speculation as the flavor du jour.

JCMAN320

March 14th, 2008, 06:39 PM

Paterson Could Derail Development
Opposes Use of Eminent Domain

By PETER KIEFER
Staff Reporter of the Sun
March 14, 2008

If David Paterson as governor displays the opposition to eminent domain that he showed as a state senator, several high-profile development projects in New York City could be derailed or delayed, including a Columbia University expansion, the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, and the transformation of Willets Point in Queens.

As a state Senate leader, Mr. Paterson in 2005 held a rally with Council Member Letitia James and state Senator William Perkins on the steps of City Hall during which he called for a statewide moratorium on the use of eminent domain.

Mr. Paterson said a decision handed down by the Supreme Court in the Kelo v. City of New London case could lead to a "gold rush" of eminent domain use across the state, The New York Sun reported at the time. He said he would gather legislators and introduce legislation to impose a moratorium on its use.

"He stood with me and proposed some legislation and I am very hopeful that the lieutenant governor and soon-to-be governor will honor his commitment and will either issue a moratorium or review the abuse of eminent domain across New York City," Ms. James said yesterday in an interview.

Ms. James's district is in Brooklyn, and she opposes developer Bruce Ratner's $4 billion Atlantic Yards project near downtown Brooklyn, which would require use of eminent domain.

Mr. Paterson's opposition to eminent domain could also pit him against Mayor Bloomberg, who has defended its use. "You would never build any big thing any place in any big city in this country if you didn't have the power of eminent domain," Mr. Bloomberg once said.

A moratorium on eminent domain "would be shocking," a developer, who declined to speak for attribution before any official action was taken by Mr. Paterson, said. "It would be really out of left field and send a very scary message."

At the time of the rally, Mr. Paterson was a state senator whose Harlem constituents were concerned about the expansion of Columbia University.

The Supreme Court had just ruled that the use of eminent domain for economic development did not violate state and federal constitutions.

Mr. Perkins, who assumed Mr. Paterson's seat when the latter became lieutenant governor and considers Mr. Paterson a friend, said he hadn't had a chance to discuss the issue with Mr. Paterson but was "very confident that we are going to work well together."

A spokesman for Mr. Paterson was unavailable for comment yesterday.

The president of the Real Estate Board of New York, Steven Spinola, said he was not very concerned about the issue, and that other pressing needs such as resolving the state budget would dominate the agenda for now.

"It would clearly be a mistake for the state to give up one of its powers to get public improvement projects off the ground," said Mr. Spinola.

Instability in Albany is a concern to developers, as Governor Spitzer, the scion of a large New York real estate family, had been viewed as a friend to the industry. The assumption of power by Mr. Paterson comes at a precarious time for the development and construction industries, and developers say it is difficult to gauge how development-friendly Mr. Paterson will be.

"I don't believe he has a built in prejudice against economic development or development. It is still premature to try to figure out what he is going to do but he is somebody we have been able to work with for 20 years when he was in the state Senate," Mr. Spinola said.

At a press conference yesterday Mr. Paterson was asked how his policies differed from Mr. Spitzer's. His response suggested that positions he previously held had not changed very much.

"There are some points of view I guess that I've changed over the years, but I'm pretty much the same person," he said.

Mr. Ratner is planning to build a basketball arena and 16 mostly residential towers on 22 acres in Prospect Heights. The plans would remake the low-rise neighborhood with 8 million square feet of development, including more than 6,000 apartments, "affordable" housing, and office and retail space in a complex designed by architect Frank Gehry.

A spokesman for Forest City Ratner declined comment.

Other projects that would be affected include the $7 billion proposed expansion of Columbia University over the next 25 years, which would extend the campus with glass-walled buildings, tree-lined streets, and student dormitories in Upper Manhattan. There is also the Bloomberg administration's $3 billion plan to turn 75-acre site near Shea Stadium in Queens — known as Willets Point — into a destination retail and entertainment facility.

Both plans would likely call for the use of eminent domain.

A spokeswoman for Columbia University said the University is hoping to reach agreements with all of the commercial property owners that could be affected.

http://www.nysun.com/article/72905

BrooklynLove

March 14th, 2008, 10:03 PM

this article is rediculous. you're just setting yourself up for further disappointment if you believe this, JC.

go rangers!

Love4NY

March 14th, 2008, 10:37 PM

That article is dumb. The project will be built. I don't necessarily agree with much of the views of the developer, but i will say that he took risks when no one wanted to develop the area, he helped push progress to an area that needed much economic stimulus (metro tech is ugly, so is the mall, but it created jobs, and provided places for locals to shop. #1 target in the country). I live in Brooklyn, i cant wait to go to a Nets Game. Brooklyn would be the 3rd most populated city on its own, the least it deserves is its own national sports team, we did loose the Dodgers :(
Ms. James is a BANANA/NIMBY if one ever existed. She is also a hypocrite, as the tenants of her building how good of a land lord she is. She plays Public political theater, meanwhile she has her own agenda and ways to gain from what she does. Someone who is a slum lord shouldn't be so negative about much needed housing. I wonder why the INTERNET media (curbed, Brownstoner, etc.)doesn't speak about the negative ways she treats her tenants. Anyway enough of a rant, the new Governor couldn't pass the bar after graduating Hofstra, that tells you enough about his qualifications.

Later, :cool:

BrooklynLove

March 15th, 2008, 08:20 AM

love4 - where in bk are you? if convenient you should check out the latest progress on the new LIRR terminal - it's pretty much fully glassed! i'm looking forward to that scaffold coming down and the construction elevator and shed on wsb going away as well.

JCMAN320

March 15th, 2008, 04:20 PM

Rangers Suck, Devils in First!!!! HAHAHA!! Listen I'm a fan not a bandwagoner like the rest of you guys will be and Love4NY why can't you be a fan while they are in Jersey if they ever do move. Rod Thorn even acknowledged that the breautiful Rock is a definate possiblity if this project keeps languishing. It's called being a fan of your team and where your from.

STEAMWORKSNYC

March 15th, 2008, 07:23 PM

Love4NY

March 15th, 2008, 07:30 PM

BKlove, I'm from Coney Island but I'm moving to 306 gold street within the next 3 months. I love the area. Its definitely live and pumping. I cant wait to be so near to Juniors & BAM. I'm also a fan of the new buffalo wild wings that opened up, it was a great place during football season. I was actually thinking about how the progress was coming along on the new LIRR terminal. I'll stop by next week i guess. Wasnt the MTA behind all the delays on that project?

JCMAN- I'm a Knicks fan, always have been, even now that they suck. I do feel i will have to be a big BK Nets fan, this is my home turf, no doubt about it!

JCMAN320

March 15th, 2008, 08:42 PM

I'm not a fan of the Nets, but you can't tell me the Nets as an whole organization wise would be better off on the other side of the hudson.NY usually attracts good players and they would receive more media coverage . Jason Kidd said it best , we were on the wrong side of the hudson..

I think the Nets would be a big draw in Newark as well. The Nets average 17,000 a year with 17,000 being the NBA average. With the Rock being at basketball capacity 18,000 the Nets most likely would see a 10% jump in ticket sales being at the Rock. And wait Jersey can't attract great talent...umm Vince Carter, Jason Kidd, Richard Jefferson, Devin Harris, Drazen Petrovic, Kenny Anderson, Sam Cassell, etc.. don't give me that bull, get a real arguement. Kidd was wrong it wasn't so much being in Jersey, it was being in the Meadowlands. Vince Carter had a chance to go the Knicks but he decided to come to Jersey. Hell even Kiki Vandeweghe decided to become GM with the Nets AND doesn't want the coaching job with the Knicks!!!

The New Jersey Devils attract star talent with the Babe Ruth of goalies in Martain Broduer, Scott Stevens, Ken Danyeko, Partick Elias, etc.. New Jersey can does attract great talent!!!
Oh also the Devils ticket sales went up 15% when they moved to the Rock. I mean the Devils are a recent hockey dyansty and are first in the Eastern Conference while the Rangers and Islanders lack behind yet again!!!!

If you want to use NY to attract players...umm then how come the Knicks have no real stars to speak of because they are a joke and a disgrace. I know what you are saying about NY being a draw, but don't Jersey bash to make a point that doesn't work with me nor does it deter me or shut me up!

I really do not want this project to go through. I hope it keeps getting delayed and evenutally dies a slow death. I mean the Nets PRESDIENT Rod Thorn acknowledged that Newark and the Rock is a viable alternative if this project keeps stumbling. Also James Vanderbeek, Devils owner, said he would love for Ratner to put the team up for sale so he can buy them and move them to Newark with the Devils at the Rock where there is an NBA ready lockerroom seperate from the Devils and Seton Hall lockerooms. This project is not a done deal yet as far as I'm concerned.

Stroika

March 15th, 2008, 09:06 PM

it's disappointing how lacking in vision the city and state leadership can be. there's no sense that you need to allow developers to build things in order to create and keep jobs; instead, a strange feeling of entitlement seems to pervade everything from community boards to the state assembly which treat downtown brooklyn and midtown manhattan as if they were UNESCO sites, not a world financial capital that needs to compete with other top-notch cities worldwide to compete for jobs.

even empty lots in midtown are now being called off-limits to skyscrapers, while the city tries instead to cobble together cockamamie mega-projects with state support. big surprise that those don't seem to go as planned... this short-sightedness needs to change.

STEAMWORKSNYC

March 15th, 2008, 09:20 PM

I think the Nets would be a big draw in Newark as well. The Nets average 17,000 a year with 17,000 being the NBA average. With the Rock being at basketball capacity 18,000 the Nets most likely would see a 10% jump in ticket sales being at the Rock. And wait Jersey can't attract great talent...umm Vince Carter, Jason Kidd, Richard Jefferson, Devin Harris, Drazen Petrovic, Kenny Anderson, Sam Cassell, etc.. don't give me that bull, get a real arguement. Kidd was wrong it wasn't so much being in Jersey, it was being in the Meadowlands. Vince Carter had a chance to go the Knicks but he decided to come to Jersey. Hell even Kiki Vandeweghe decided to become GM with the Nets AND doesn't want the coaching job with the Knicks!!!

The New Jersey Devils attract star talent with the Babe Ruth of goalies in Martain Broduer, Scott Stevens, Ken Danyeko, Partick Elias, etc.. New Jersey can does attract great talent!!!
Oh also the Devils ticket sales went up 15% when they moved to the Rock. I mean the Devils are a recent hockey dyansty and are first in the Eastern Conference while the Rangers and Islanders lack behind yet again!!!!

If you want to use NY to attract players...umm then how come the Knicks have no real stars to speak of because they are a joke and a disgrace. I know what you are saying about NY being a draw, but don't Jersey bash to make a point that doesn't work with me nor does it deter me or shut me up!

I really do not want this project to go through. I hope it keeps getting delayed and evenutally dies a slow death. I mean the Nets PRESDIENT Rod Thorn acknowledged that Newark and the Rock is a viable alternative if this project keeps stumbling. Also James Vanderbeek, Devils owner, said he would love for Ratner to put the team up for sale so he can buy them and move them to Newark with the Devils at the Rock where there is an NBA ready lockerroom seperate from the Devils and Seton Hall lockerooms. This project is not a done deal yet as far as I'm concerned.
What I mean about attracting allstar players , I mean by the means of FA's. Not draft picks, not by two or three way trades by disgruntle players who just want a way out of their current team. By means of NJ Nets was my first choice to play for . Everyone you mention was either a draft pick or had issues with their current team and demanded a trade such as Carter.
With the Devils tickets going up 15% shouldn't be no surprise to you or anybody.They were playing at the Meadowlands aka No mans land. I have season tickets for the Jets and going their for a day game is torture. I can't even imagine going their for a night game where there is no mass transit , no bars and a old arena. Face it people like new things and when it comes to new stadiums and arena's people want to be apart of it.The Devils was over due such as is the Islanders. If Wang can pull of this Lighthouse project you will see the same results. New arenas will bring back the fans. I understand you want the Nets to stay in Jersey ,but IMO I think they will benefit greatly in Brooklyn.Now the Knicks as a whole are a different story, but their still is an attraction to play for them. Even Kobe named them some time ago as the team he would love to play for.I know the Atlantic Yards is not a done deal ,and I hope they don't screw this up . We are going to have to wait and see.
Oh and if I remember correctly , Marty was drafted by the Devils so it wasn't like in the beginning of his career he had a choice.;)

BrooklynLove

March 16th, 2008, 06:53 PM

BKlove, I'm from Coney Island but I'm moving to 306 gold street within the next 3 months. I love the area. Its definitely live and pumping. I cant wait to be so near to Juniors & BAM. I'm also a fan of the new buffalo wild wings that opened up, it was a great place during football season. I was actually thinking about how the progress was coming along on the new LIRR terminal. I'll stop by next week i guess. Wasnt the MTA behind all the delays on that project?

good stuff. i'm a big fan of oro, been watching that building and its neighbors progress over the past several months from my vinegar hill vantage point. by the way, my dad grew up in CI, but i grew up over by AY. speaking of AY, i noticed today that down toward vanderbilt they've begun installing cylindrical spans to support the deck over the cut.

BrooklynLove

March 19th, 2008, 09:16 PM

in the interest of keeping AY in this thread, i'm bringing this post in the Solow East Side thread over here:

http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showpost.php?p=221176&postcount=1126

i wonder sometimes as to how many of the speculators questioning whether AY will make it off the ground have recenty visited the site. they are working there regularly and making significant progress each week.

ramvid01

March 20th, 2008, 02:42 AM

BrooklynLove

March 20th, 2008, 09:16 AM

^^ I think the speculation is based on if the whole project will be finished. I am pretty sure that with the money already invested into the project that it will proceed, at least Miss Brooklyn and the arena.

As for the rest of the development, I would not be as optimistic.

by the time this poject gets to that stage we'll be back in a gowth phase of the econ cycle and the credit markets will be out of their funk, so i doubt that this will not get fully built - may take longer than previously projected, but it will happen.

brianac

March 21st, 2008, 07:24 AM

Slow Economy Likely to Stall Atlantic Yards

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/03/21/nyregion/yards600.jpg Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Some residents oppose the Atlantic Yards project over concerns that it will flood the area with new residents and heavy traffic.

By CHARLES V. BAGLI (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/charles_v_bagli/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: March 21, 2008

The slowing economy, weighed down by a widening credit crisis, is likely to delay the signature office tower and three residential buildings at the heart of the $4 billion Atlantic Yards (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/a/atlantic_yards_brooklyn/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) project in Brooklyn (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/classifieds/realestate/locations/newyork/newyorkcity/brooklyn/?inline=nyt-geo), the developer said.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/03/21/nyregion/yarslarge.jpg

“It may hold up the office building,” the developer, Bruce C. Ratner, said in a recent interview. “And the bond market may slow the pace of the residential buildings.”

Mr. Ratner, chief executive of Forest City Ratner, did not specify the kinds of delays possible, but suggested that construction could be put off for years. His comments are his first public indication that the darkening economy has slowed the ambitious project, spanning 22 acres at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues.

The developer did say he was confident about starting construction on a $950 million basketball arena for the Nets by the end of the year. The arena was to be surrounded by the office tower, known as Miss Brooklyn, and three residential buildings in the first phase of the project.

But Mr. Ratner has yet to secure an anchor tenant for the Miss Brooklyn building, and now plans to phase in the residential buildings slowly.

Economic downturns have a history of delaying, and sometimes killing, large construction projects in New York.

The Riverwalk project, a plan to build five residential towers on a 30-acre platform over the East River, surfaced in 1980 but collapsed a decade later after the economy slowed. A developer for the redevelopment of Times Square was selected in 1984, but work did not begin for 12 years — with a different developer — largely because of a recession, as well as 47 lawsuits.
New York is not alone in seeing projects falter or even collapse in recent months. Ian Bruce Eichner’s $3.9 billion Cosmopolitan Resort Casino, a condo-hotel complex in Las Vegas, is facing foreclosure after he failed to finalize a deal for financing.

The once high-flying developer Cameron Kuhn has defaulted on loans related to projects in Orlando and Jacksonville, Fla. And in Los Angeles, a number of residential projects have been delayed or abandoned.

Mr. Ratner’s remarks were a far cry from the optimistic days of December 2006, when the state approved Atlantic Yards and Forest City indicated that it would build the first phase of the project within four years and complete the entire venture in a decade.

In another indication of the problems facing the project, Forest City recently sent a letter signed by the project’s celebrity architect, Frank Gehry (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/frank_gehry/index.html?inline=nyt-per), to chief executives of many of the city’s biggest corporations, inviting them to become a tenant in the “centerpiece of the project,” Miss Brooklyn. It was originally scheduled to be completed in July 2009.

Brokers said that developers usually home in on companies actively looking for new headquarters, rather than cast such a wide net. Forest City’s approach was more akin to cold-calling to solicit interest, a possible sign, they said, that the developer was struggling to find tenants.

Mr. Ratner insisted that the Brooklyn office market remained healthy, but he conceded that “until we get a tenant, we won’t start Miss Brooklyn.”

“It’s not going to happen in a nanosecond,” Mr. Ratner said during an interview across Atlantic Avenue from the railyard where he plans to build the arena. “I hope it’s not going to be drawn out. I’d hope that the first residential building will be done within six months of the opening of the arena, and a second one a year after that.”

Atlantic Yards has been the target of protests and lawsuits since Mr. Ratner proposed it more than four years ago. Some local residents say the project is oversized and will overwhelm the neighborhood, flooding it with new residents and heavy traffic. They also oppose the government’s use of eminent domain to condemn property on behalf of a private developer.

The courts have ruled in Mr. Ratner’s favor 18 times, but two cases are on appeal, or are expected to be shortly. Mr. Ratner said his project had been held up for nearly two years by lawsuits brought by one group, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, and its supporters.

Given the current environment, some critics worry that Mr. Ratner will negotiate for deeper subsidies, reduce the amount of low- and moderate-income housing included or eventually sell off portions of the site to other developers who could use their own, less expensive designs.

“We need leadership in the city and the state to face the music,” said Daniel Goldstein, the sole resident remaining in a building on the Atlantic Yards site and a leader of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. “The project needs to be reconfigured, rethought and renegotiated. The promise was affordable housing. It’s clearly been put on the back burner, while the arena has been moved to the front burner.”

Atlantic Yards began with Mr. Ratner’s purchase of the Nets in 2004 and the idea of moving the team, which currently plays in New Jersey and loses about $30 million a year, to the railroad yard. It was near the spot that the Brooklyn Dodgers once considered for a new stadium before the team fled to Los Angeles after the 1957 season.

The project swelled into 8 million square feet of apartments, office space, stores in 16 towers, an arena and eight acres of open space, stretching from Flatbush to Vanderbilt Avenues.

At least 30 percent of the roughly 6,000 apartments are to be for low- and moderate-income families and individuals.

The arena sits at the west end of the site, embraced by Miss Brooklyn and three residential buildings with about 1,000 apartments, as well as a separate building at what is known as Site 5, which is also being delayed. In the second phase, a residential complex with 5,000 units in 11 towers would be built on 13.6 acres between Sixth and Vanderbilt Avenues in Prospect Heights.

The undertaking will require Forest City to spend more than $550 million in the early stages to buy land and build new sewers, water mains and a railyard for the Long Island Rail Road. The city and the state agreed to provide $300 million in subsidies, and tens of millions in tax breaks.

Mr. Ratner faces the same stiff challenges that are suddenly hobbling other developers after a 10-year boom: an economy teetering at the edge of recession, a credit market that has all but closed for large-scale real estate projects and a lack of tax-exempt financing for housing.

“Financing is very difficult to come by, and it’s becoming even more difficult,” said the developer Douglas Durst (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/douglas_durst/index.html?inline=nyt-per), who is completing the Bank of America (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/bank_of_america_corporation/index.html?inline=nyt-org) tower on 42nd Street in Manhattan. “Nobody knows how bad this is going to be. As for commercial projects, now doesn’t seem to be the time to start one.”

Adding to the uncertainty surrounding Atlantic Yards is the ascension of a new governor. Gov. David A. Paterson (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/david_a_paterson/index.html?inline=nyt-per), who took office on Monday, called for a statewide moratorium in 2005 on the use of eminent domain, which is needed to clear the site of about 20 property owners. Mr. Paterson was a state senator when he made the proposal; his office said it is reviewing the matter.

The Internal Revenue Service (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/i/internal_revenue_service/index.html?inline=nyt-org) has also issued a proposal to tighten the regulations on the use of tax-exempt bonds for stadiums and arenas, which could swell the cost of the arena beyond the current $950 million estimate. And there is increasing competition by developers for the limited number of tax-exempt bonds for residential development that include affordable housing.

Mr. Ratner, whose company was a development partner in the new Midtown headquarters of The New York Times Company, said he remained optimistic and committed to building the affordable housing. He has been working with Avi Schick, chief executive of the Empire State Development Corporation, to complete all the documents for the project this summer, so that the state can start and finish condemnation by the end of the year.

Some work has started: Buildings on the site have been demolished, and construction is under way on a temporary railyard for the Long Island Rail Road. The city and the state have already provided $58 million of the $300 million in public funds for the project.

Mr. Ratner has had plenty of experience with long-term projects. The 4-million-square-foot MetroTech office complex nearby, for instance, took nearly two decades to complete.

“This is a good project,” he said of Atlantic Yards. “Good things sometimes take a long time.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company.

brianac

March 21st, 2008, 07:39 AM

Architecture

What Will Be Left of Gehry’s Vision for Brooklyn?

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/03/21/arts/21atla-600.jpg Gehry Partners
Frank Gehry’s design for Forest City Ratner’s proposed Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn. Much of the project may now be delayed.

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/nicolai_ouroussoff/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: March 21, 2008

The growing possibility that much of the multibillion-dollar Atlantic Yards (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/a/atlantic_yards_brooklyn/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) development in Brooklyn will be scrapped because of a lack of financing may be a bitter pill for its developer, Forest City Ratner. But it’s also a painful setback for urban planning in New York.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/03/21/arts/21atla-650.jpgGehry Partners
Part of the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, as originally envisioned by Frank Gehry.

Designed by Frank Gehry (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/frank_gehry/index.html?inline=nyt-per), the project was a rare instance in which the architectural talent lined up for a New York project matched the financial muscle behind it. When it was unveiled in late 2003, it seemed to signal a genuine effort to raise the quality of large-scale development in a city still stinging from the planning failures at ground zero.

So if the decision to proceed with an 18,000-seat basketball arena but to defer or eliminate the four surrounding towers is defensible from a business perspective, it also feels like a betrayal of the public trust.

Mr. Gehry conceived of this bold ensemble of buildings as a self-contained composition — an urban Gesamtkunstwerk — not as a collection of independent structures. Postpone the towers and expose the stadium, and it becomes a piece of urban blight — a black hole at a crucial crossroads of the city’s physical history. If this is what we’re ultimately left with, it will only confirm our darkest suspicions about the cynical calculations underlying New York real estate deals.

The project that the city approved in late 2006 would have included eight million square feet of residential and commercial development on an eight-acre site extending east from Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, one of the borough’s most congested intersections. For many who opposed it early on, it was yet another instance of powerful economic interests trampling on the rights of a deeply rooted middle-class community — one that had already been reshaped by waves of transplanted Manhattanites. Mr. Gehry’s involvement was simply a bit of window dressing intended to give the project an aura of enlightenment.

I sympathized with these arguments to some degree. New York has had a terrible track record with large-scale planning in recent years. Look at Battery Park City. The MetroTech Center. Donald Trump (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/donald_j_trump/index.html?inline=nyt-per)’s Riverside South. All are blots on the urban environment, as blandly homogenous in their own way as the Modernist superblocks they were intended to improve on.

But it’s important to remember that this is also the city that spawned Rockefeller Center, a 22-acre development at the core of Manhattan that became a glorious emblem of the 20th-century metropolis. For some of us Atlantic Yards presented a creative opportunity for the 21st century.

If large-scale development is unavoidable, why not enlist serious talents like Mr. Gehry to come up with an alternative to the bottom-line proposals that have been the accepted norm for decades? Finally a big developer had turned to a legitimate architectural hero for help, rather than the usual corporate hacks.

As it turned out, Mr. Gehry’s design revealed both the promise and the limits of that collaboration. The main residential blocks to the east of the arena lacked the architect’s signature ebullience. A series of mismatched towers along two sides of a central courtyard encompassing several blocks, they followed most of the usual planning rules: adhere to the street grid, pack in a good deal of retail along the street, add a dose of public space.

But if that part of the development bordered on soporific, his design for the arena block was a tour de force. Most urban sports arenas are big, windowless boxes that suck the life out of their surroundings; Mr. Gehry’s great invention was to conceal this one behind a dense array of residential and commercial towers. The most glamorous of these, Miss Brooklyn, clad in cascading sheets of glass, anchored the arena to Flatbush Avenue. Three smaller residential towers, their playful forms like unevenly stacked children’s blocks, framed the arena on the east and south.

This imaginative fusion of inside and out, with the intensity of the sports arena paralleling the bustle of the street, spelled promise. Visitors arriving by subway would spill out into a multitiered glass atrium; directly above, the voluptuous curves of Miss Brooklyn would be a counterpoint to the nearby Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower — a classic stone phallus.

Between the bases of the towers, views would open up from the street onto the concourses that envelop the arena. During a Nets game, pedestrians strolling along Flatbush Avenue would be able to catch glimpses of anguished fans inside; when the arena was empty, its dark, gaping void could have the haunting effect of the ruins of a Roman coliseum. A cold, characterless intersection might thereby be transformed into Brooklyn’s vibrant answer to Times Square, minus the saccharine Disney décor.

The first sign that something was amiss arose when Forest City began to reduce the percentage of affordable housing units in the design and add condominiums, decisions that altered the project’s character. Then the developer quietly asked Mr. Gehry to redesign Miss Brooklyn to cut costs. The delirious exterior was replaced by a less graceful design, with floors piled loosely on top of one another, their forms twisting as they rose. The atrium was reduced to an empty glass hall with a set of bleachers overlooking the street.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gehry invested more energy into designing a 20-story tower for a site across Flatbush that he hoped would balance his composition by creating a visual bond between the sides of the avenue.

Still, the core of his concept, the charged relationship between the enclosed arena and the street, remained intact.

Without the towers the arena is likely to become an enormous eyesore. Even if Mr. Gehry adorns it with a seductive new wrapper, its looming presence will have a deadening impact on a lively area. The magical peekaboo effect of peering between the bases of the towers into the arena will be lost. The atrium, once a vital public space, will be reduced to a barren strip of pavement.

No development at all would be preferable to building the design that is now on the table. What’s maddening is how few options opponents seem to have.
We could wage a public campaign to stop it. We could pray that Forest City Ratner comes up with more money. But given that the city approved the plan, we cannot prevent the developer from building the arena. Nor is there any way of preventing Forest City from selling off pieces of the property to other investors, who could then come up with any design they liked, as long as they abided by zoning and density guidelines.

Mr. Gehry, on the other hand, could walk away.

In the old days, when he was still a budding talent with an uncertain future, he walked off jobs when a client began pushing things in the wrong direction. This was not simply an act of vanity; it showed that the quality of his work mattered more to him than a paycheck.

Years later, he has been backed into a familiar corner. There’s much more money at stake here, and I expect that he is torn between a sense of loyalty to his client and a desire to make good architecture.

But by pulling out he would be expressing a simple truth: At this point the Atlantic Yards development has nothing to do with the project that New Yorkers were promised. Nor does it rise to the standards Mr. Gehry has set for himself during a remarkable career.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company.

BrooklynLove

March 21st, 2008, 10:45 AM

“This is a good project,” he said of Atlantic Yards. “Good things sometimes take a long time.”

i think i may get that tatooed on my ass. if i do, i promise to post pictures here.

BrooklynRider

March 21st, 2008, 01:40 PM

Oh dear. He might only build the arena and this only a few days after getting a couple of hundred million in public financing.

Eugenious

March 22nd, 2008, 12:03 AM

love it

Ratner will f$#@ Brooklyn again JUST LIKE I SAID...

:)

Now do you admit Pianoman you were wrong? (back in 2006:P)

BrooklynLove

March 22nd, 2008, 12:04 AM

this is ratner's fault how?

pianoman11686

March 22nd, 2008, 06:10 PM

Now do you admit Pianoman you were wrong? (back in 2006:P)

Huh? Wrong about what?

I've always been against this project using public subsidies and eminent domain. The thing I objected to was the use of frivolous lawsuits to delay it. Looks like Goldstein and DDDB got lucky with their timing.

lofter1

March 22nd, 2008, 06:32 PM

If the downturn causes Miss B to go unbuilt then we're all lucky.

BrooklynLove

March 22nd, 2008, 09:35 PM

well for a project that's dead they sure are making nice progress on the sub deck shoring down toward vanderbilt.

Scraperfannyc

March 23rd, 2008, 11:39 PM

So Long, Atlantic Yards!

Ratner Kills Miss Brooklyn, most of Atlantic Yards
By Gersh Kuntzman
The Brooklyn Paper

March 21, 2008

Bruce Ratner’s controversial Atlantic Yards project — which envisioned 16 skyscrapers, eight acres of open space, more than 2,250 units of below-market-rate housing, new top-of-the-line office space and a publicly financed basketball arena at the center — now consists of little more than the arena and two scaled-back residential buildings, the developer told the New York Times today.

In the bombshell story, Ratner blamed the downturn in the economy for killing virtually all of his $4-billion mega-development.

But the Times front-page article also included these shocking developments:

• The cost of the publicly financed arena, whose original pricetag was $435 million, but increased to $637 million last year, has now ballooned to $950 million.

It is unclear where the newly inflated figure comes from — the Times story merely stated it as an aside, “The developer did say he was confident about starting construction on a $950-million basketball arena for the Nets by the end of [2008]” — but if the cost of the area has indeed increased by such a large amount, it would have to be re-approved by the Public Authorities Control Board, an obscure state panel controlled by Gov. Paterson, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D–Manhattan) and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R–Rensselaer).

The panel approved the project in late December, 2006, though Silver later admitted that he voted “yes” without being shown key financial documents.

Under the current plan, Ratner’s arena would be built by New York state and city taxpayers, who would supposedly get their money back via tax revenue from the sales of tickets, food and souvenirs — though analysts have long questioned the economics of publicly financed arenas and stadiums.

• The proposed “Miss Brooklyn” skyscraper at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues — a building Ratner and his architect Frank Gehry once wanted to be the tallest in Brooklyn — does not have an anchor tenant and will not be built, even in its scaled-back, 511-foot form.

“Until we get a tenant, we won’t start Miss Brooklyn,” Ratner told the Times.

It is very rare for developers to propose large towers without an anchor tenant, experts said. Ratner has been having so much trouble finding a main occupant for Miss Brooklyn that his company recently had Gehry write a solicitation letter inviting the city’s biggest corporations to move to Miss Brooklyn, the Times reported.

“Forest City’s approach was akin to cold-calling to solicit interest, a possible sign…that the developer was struggling to find tenants,” the newspaper stated.

• The rest of the project — including nearly a dozen residential buildings, plus an office building at the current P.C. Richards site on the southwest corner of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues — is “put off for years,” Ratner said.

It is in those buildings where the majority of the below-market-rate rentals were to be.

If the Times article is accurate, Ratner has virtually eliminated all of the supposed “public benefits” touted by the Empire State Development Corporation when it approved the general project plan in late 2006:

• The “thousands of rental units for low-, moderate- and middle-income New Yorkers”? There are merely a few dozen under the scenario Ratner has now described.

“I’d hope that the first residential building will be done within six months of the opening of the arena, and a second one a year after that,” he said.

BrooklynLove

March 24th, 2008, 08:54 AM

i'm not saying that this project isn't stalling for the present time, but did you actually read the article? you say that only the arena is getting built, but then look at the final quote you've pasted ...

further to that point, a lot of the times article is the author's commentary, not ratner's representations. maybe i'm a bit hopeful, but i'm taking some of this with a grain of salt b/c the poplular press flavor these days is to color things on the side of financial gloom and doom and anti-AY ...

anyway, stick around the next few years and we'll know the truth of all this either way.

lofter1

March 24th, 2008, 11:18 AM

You might want to go back and re-read the article.

Ratner's own words indicate that ~ 75% on AY is not happening anytime soon, if ever -- and not merely "stalling".

MikeW

March 24th, 2008, 12:46 PM

So that part of Brooklyn stays a slum.

Scraperfannyc

March 24th, 2008, 02:39 PM

It's a pessimistic title that may as well be true. The article states that the Arena is what Ratner wants to build now, and anthing after looks uncertain and questionable.

Alonzo-ny

March 24th, 2008, 02:59 PM

I think the arena is quite vital, it will really boost Brooklyn IMO.

MikeW

March 24th, 2008, 04:34 PM

So now what the hell is he going to do with his not particularly good basketball team?

lofter1

March 24th, 2008, 08:11 PM

Please explain how the outrageous and ever-increasing cost of the arena -- borne by taxpayers -- is justifiable ...

The cost of the publicly financed arena, whose original pricetag was $435 million, but increased to $637 million last year, has now ballooned to $950 million.

It is unclear where the newly inflated figure comes from — the Times story merely stated it as an aside, “The developer did say he was confident about starting construction on a $950-million basketball arena for the Nets by the end of [2008]” — but if the cost of the area has indeed increased by such a large amount, it would have to be re-approved by the Public Authorities Control Board, an obscure state panel controlled by Gov. Paterson, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D–Manhattan) and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R–Rensselaer).

The panel approved the project in late December, 2006, though Silver later admitted that he voted “yes” without being shown key financial documents.

Under the current plan, Ratner’s arena would be built by New York state and city taxpayers, who would supposedly get their money back via tax revenue from the sales of tickets, food and souvenirs — though analysts have long questioned the economics of publicly financed arenas and stadiums.

Optimus Prime

March 24th, 2008, 08:19 PM

If Ratner is allowed to only build the arena, the public is definitely going to get hosed. Publicly financed venues only make sense economically when they anchor larger developments that are privately financed (which is what we had before the rest of the plan went down the tubes).

And really, if it's too pricey and the economy is too dicey for Ratner to build all the other stuff, why should the public fork over the money for the arena? If Ratner won't pay, why should we?

This is a raw deal and Sheldon Silver better actually read the documents when this comes back up. :rolleyes:

Scraperfannyc

March 24th, 2008, 08:20 PM

I suspect a profit? Let's skip building the expensive office and apartment buildngs and let's build an arena at more than double the original cost. Was Gerhy just ploy to get everthing started? Since this development is done on undeveloped land, it is not as terrible as Macklowe behavior whose image I see as "Let's screw the city, it is cash in time."

BrooklynLove

March 24th, 2008, 10:16 PM

it's a shame that all the controversy surrounding this project has drawn so much negative attention. i think that the positive aspects of these plans far outweigh the negatives.

this arena is going to be an amazing step for downtown brooklyn and the boro's second coming of the brownstone boom. once the arena is up and running, the surrounding development of the yards will fill out quickly.

in fact, i'm hoping to move back to that area (its where i grew up) right as the development is hitting its stride.

lofter1

March 24th, 2008, 10:49 PM

Oh, I get it ^

Just like the building of MSG in the 1960s spurred the instant development and upgrading of that part of midtown.

:cool:

BrooklynLove

March 24th, 2008, 11:06 PM

i don't think the state of RE development in nyc during the 1960s is a fair comparison to that of nyc in the 2000s. people were fleeing the city in the 60s-70s, now they're flocking to the city. this arena area will attract many new residents and businesses in the way that the developments along flatbush-x, metrotech and albee are going to bring in new residents, retail and commerce.

JCMAN320

March 24th, 2008, 11:36 PM

BKLove this project has to go back for approval again by the State and it is less clear if it will pass that hurdle again. This project still isn't a done deal. They are doing prep work yes with the platforms, but no shovel has gone in yet for the arena. I mean the Rock and the Barclay''s were concieved at the same time and the Rock is a success and is quickly cementing itself as one of the great arenas in the US. Barclays still is on the drawing board and a final product rendering has not yet been produced. I'll believe it and accept once I see steal rising.

Also do you really feel that the taxpayers and state and city paying for this Billion dollar arena is sensible??

BrooklynLove

March 25th, 2008, 09:07 AM

jc - i think that this project is worth the use of public funds given its long-term benefits to brooklyn.

so many residents of this city are quick to complain about use of public funds for anything - the use of funds in a particular manner or the lack of funding for a desired purpose - yet people freak at the notion of this city adjusting real estate taxes across the board to a level that even gets close to making sense. if property owners across the 5 boros were taxed in an equitable manner, there would be sufficient city funds to make everyone happy.

BrooklynRider

March 26th, 2008, 09:51 AM

...this arena area will attract many new residents and businesses in the way that the developments along flatbush-x, metrotech and albee are going to bring in new residents, retail and commerce.

This arena will attract new residents where? It is not like we have large swaths of uninhabited housing crying for tenants.

The arena will attract new businesses where? It might displce existing businesses with chains willing to pay higher rent, but an arena plopped down over a major transit hub - like MSG - sees people go directly from Mass Transit to the arena and then disappear underground again. It isn't possible for an aena to attract new businesses because there is no new retail or commercial space being built.

If you recall the unveiling of Ratner's vision and the much ballyhooed model of the arena, it was to be a uniquely urban arena. The design built it into a three tower centerpiece of the entire development. So, now we aren't getting that development and we are not even getting the commercial component, meaning that the services for that arena and the infrastructure "improvements" will be made for one reason only - the private profit of Bruce Ratner and the Nets.

When people opposed the huge project, the consistent and frantic argument from FCRC, Marty Markowitz, the Bloomberg Administration and foolish, ignorant organizations like ACORN and BUILD was: "it will bring in jobs" "it will address the dire need for affordable housing" "it creates much needed park and public spaces" "he has agreed to a Community Services Agreement that serves OUR community".

Now, we seem to be getting only an arena, which will have to be vastly redesigned to sstand alone. All of their arguments about why the project was viable and should go forward are D-E-A-D. Not a person who supported the project because of these supposed benefits has spoken out.

Ratner has received funds from NYS for the project. He is receiving funding from the City for portions. What exactly is the public benefit at this point?

Rather than dumping on Dan Goldstein and DDDB, look back at one of their original arguments about the development: If chosen and giving the zoning variance, Ratner could build the arena only and claim he has no funding to complete the housing and public amenities portion of the project.

In the end, this situation proved that Ratner's numbers and projections were a sham. Affordable housing isn't affected by "the market" because it serves an existing segment in need that couldn't pay market rates to from the outset.

Personally, I think Ratner should be shown the door.

ZippyTheChimp

March 26th, 2008, 10:07 AM

Although subtle at first, this project began going downhill waaay in the beginning, when Ratner lowered the ratio of commercial to residential space, a short-term reaction to the then soft office market vs the hot residential market.

The justification for committing public funds was job creation at an ideal place - over a major transit hub.

Not much housing is affordable if you don't have a decent job.

JCMAN320

March 26th, 2008, 04:44 PM

I have been saying for a while that this project was a boondoggle and it is coming to fruition. Ratner stop this foolishness, sell my boys to James Vanderbeek, owner of the New Jersey Devils who said he would buy the Nets if they went up for sale, and bring the Nets to the Rock in Newark where they we're orginally suppose to go and belong.

STEAMWORKSNYC

March 26th, 2008, 05:10 PM

There's still hope even though I don't like the fact that only the arena will be built. But I would not be surprise if the whole project is scrapped altogether.This one reeks even if there is only a arena built by itself.:mad:

MikeW

March 26th, 2008, 06:34 PM

The implosion of the credit markets killed it (if it is indeed dead). Can't build without money. If the crash held out a few years, and the financing was secured, it would have been built.

Although subtle at first, this project began going downhill waaay in the beginning, when Ratner lowered the ratio of commercial to residential space, a short-term reaction to the then soft office market vs the hot residential market.

The justification for committing public funds was job creation at an ideal place - over a major transit hub.

Not much housing is affordable if you don't have a decent job.

BrooklynLove

March 26th, 2008, 09:12 PM

This arena will attract new residents where? It is not like we have large swaths of uninhabited housing crying for tenants.

The arena will attract new businesses where? It might displce existing businesses with chains willing to pay higher rent, but an arena plopped down over a major transit hub - like MSG - sees people go directly from Mass Transit to the arena and then disappear underground again. It isn't possible for an aena to attract new businesses because there is no new retail or commercial space being built.

the new lux housing would attract the ever increasing populus of young professionals with decent money but priced out of manhattan and who want to move to bk b/c their friends have moved to bk, as well as that young newlywed set that can't afford a tony b-stone but can afford a large lux condo while still having convenient access to the primo brooklyn private schools, tony bk nabe amenities and other family friendly advantages of bk to manhattan. there is virtually no supply of new full service lux housing in this immediate area - which is the primary choice for the 20s-30s set these days. i can think of 2 buildings - both condo, both of which will be full by the time the arena gets built.

there will be new retail geared toward the arena crowds (mostly restaurant/bar) as well as everyday retail geared toward the new residential influx - grocery, etc - the everyday type stuff. the commercial component will grow over time - gradually in the way that metrotech has. this location is extremely convenient to long island based businesses that need some city presence as well as city biz that need back office type space in bk. and eventually once things gain momentum you'll have biz putting a major office there. i know that you'll likely poo poo this, and you won't be in the minority b/c people also poo pooed the initial jc and metrotrech initiatives ... i think that you also need to be realisitic about how new commercial hubs progress - they don't catch fire right away - this is planned for in the financing. how long did it take the old wtc to get filled out with real tenants (ie not city agencies)? year, many years.

the msg comparisons don't work in my opinion - msg is in a part of manhattan where people do not really live - they are there for work, for the game, whatever, and then they're out. AY is at the nexus of a multitude of teaming nabes - people will be around there b/c they live there.

it really is a shame that people seem to lump their disdain for ratner together with the merits of this project. forget about ratner's involvement and how this project would be financed and just think about the development itslef for a bit. i think that i would be great for brooklyn.

lofter1

March 26th, 2008, 09:40 PM

BL: You still seem to believe that both the housing and the retail are in the pipeline to be built, despite Ratner's own words that they are off the table.

All he gives us is an arena above a nexus of train tracks.

Sounds like an MSG-type situation to me.

BrooklynLove

March 26th, 2008, 10:16 PM

i think that he said arena, then first resi building several months later, then they'll evaluate.

not really a premise to the points i'm trying to make though - ratner or not, i still think that this will all get built eventually. and frankly, by the time the arena gets built, the credit markets will probably be back to normalcy and financing will again be there for the buildings.

STT757

March 26th, 2008, 10:52 PM

There's no justification for spending $950 Million on an arena for one tenant, not only that but it will struggle to lure acts from competiting venues at the Nassau Coliseum, MSG, Izod Center, Prudential Center etc..

It's too much, better for the NETs to move to Newark where they were originally heading until Ratner threw Newark's redevelopment plans a wrench. MSG or the new MSG if it gets developed at Moynihan serves NYC (Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens), the Prudential center serves New Jersey and Staten Island, and the Nassau Coliseum (which Wang is trying to redevelop) serves Long Island.

Two arenas in Northern New Jersey make no sense, which is why the State should shut the Izod center. And two arenas for NYC make no sense, especially given there's only one tenant for the huge public subsidy.

The Yankees and Mets can justify their own stadiums and not sharing because of the length of the Major League Baseball season, they play so many games it's difficult from a logistics perspective (rain outs, double headers, play offs etc) to share a venue.

The Giants and Jets are better off sharing a venue as they don't have their own facilities competiting against the other, there are not a lot of acts out there can warrant a venue the size of a football stadium. The NFL season is also very short, with only a handful of home games. Two NFL franchises sharing a venue is the only prudent.

The Devils and Nets as the Knicks and Rangers should share a venue, neither the Nets nor Devils alone warrant their own arenas. The Prudential Center is up and operating and the Brooklyn arena is years away, and requires a huge public commitment of money in a time of economic distress especially amongst the City's financial community which means less revenues into the City.

I do not see any way the City can justify a $950 Million dollar handout to an NBA franchise, that money would be much better spent on transportation. Such as adding the planned second station to the 7 line extension, or helping with the Fulton Street complex. Better yet if they want to do something to help Brooklyn put the Billion towards the Lower Manhattan rail link, which would put stations under Downtown Brooklyn and connect directly to JFK's Terminals, Long Island's Suburbs and Lower Manhattan's Financial District.

JCMAN320

March 26th, 2008, 11:15 PM

AMEN STT, my sentiments exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BrooklynRider

March 27th, 2008, 12:21 AM

...I do not see any way the City can justify a $950 Million dollar handout to an NBA franchise, that money would be much better spent on transportation. Such as adding the planned second station to the 7 line extension, or helping with the Fulton Street complex. Better yet if they want to do something to help Brooklyn put the Billion towards the Lower Manhattan rail link, which would put stations under Downtown Brooklyn and connect directly to JFK's Terminals, Long Island's Suburbs and Lower Manhattan's Financial District.

Bravo! My sentiments exactly.

scumonkey

March 27th, 2008, 01:11 AM

you get my vote!

lbjefferies

March 27th, 2008, 09:13 PM

Honest question, is this truly 950 million bucks out of the taxpayers pockets or is it 950 mil in tax breaks as an incentive to build over a railyard and bring a professional franchise from Jersey to NYC. If its the latter, then aren't you arguing to use money for transportation that does not exist? Something is better than nothing, right? Unlesss you really like railyards.

If i am wrong about the hand vs tax break scenario then I apologize.

STT757

March 27th, 2008, 09:27 PM

lbjefferies

March 27th, 2008, 09:53 PM

If it's tax breaks again those tax breaks can be put towards better uses, like attracting bio-medical research firms to the Brooklyn Army terminal. Or to encourage CSX, NS etc to invest in upgrades to freight rail infrastructure in the boroughs.

Anything other than hand outs to an NBA franchise, that no matter how fancy their arena will always be second to the Knicks in the City. And speaking of the Knicks it looks like the Moynihan deal is again in trouble, the $950 Million in tax breaks would be much better spent shoring up the cluster f#CK that is the Moynihan station project. Lets concentrate on that redevelopment which is desparately needed, before sinking money Ratners arena.

If it is in fact tax breaks then your entire argument is deeply flawed. If tax breaks were some type of magic elixer that created biotech comapnies from the soil, then lets go for it. But they aren't. Here is an NBA franchise that actually exists, and wants to relocate fom outside the city (and outside the state!) to Brooklyn. Not only that, they want to use a parcel of land that will cost a small fortune to develop, and that was essentially worthless 20 years ago. So New York has an oppurtunity to create something out of nothingness. Create huge ammounts of revenue (yes, even with the tax breaks) without sacrificing anything but a parcel of land that does nothing but seperate poor Brooklyn from rich brooklyn. There are cities that build arenas for hundred of millions of dollars in the hopes that sometime in the future an NHL or NBA franchise will deem their city worthy of a professional franchise. that is hundreds of millions of dollars out of the taxpayers pockets! Here NYC has an oppurtunity to bring in a farnchise for nothing but some tax breaks on land that will surely stay dormant otherwise, and what do we say? NO THANKS! It is beyond insane.

BrooklynLove

March 27th, 2008, 10:10 PM

thank you lbj.

the better use for city funds argument doesn't really make any sense b/c it's not like funding for ay is coming out of a purse that would have gone elsewhere or would have been used elswhere if not toward the development. the funding exists as a result of the planned development - but for AY there would be no such city funds to talk about.

in other news:
http://www.empire.state.ny.us/AtlanticYards/ConstructionUpdate21.asp

DarrylStrawberry

April 4th, 2008, 01:41 PM

EXCLUSIVE: Gehry to Brooklyn Paper: Miss Brooklyn ain’t dead — in fact, she’s hotter than ever

By Gersh Kuntzman
The Brooklyn Paper

Atlantic Yards architect Frank Gehry told The Brooklyn Paper Thursday night that his “Miss Brooklyn” tower at Atlantic Yards is not dead.

In an exclusive interview, he told The Paper that not only will it be built, but it will “look better than anyone imagines.”

Gehry admitted that developer Bruce Ratner has struggled to find an anchor tenant for the 511-foot iconic, shimmering glass-walled skyscraper.

But Gehry quickly added: “Bruce will have a tenant soon — and then he’ll begin construction.”

The Miss Brooklyn tower, proposed for the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, would be the gateway to Ratner’s ailing Atlantic Yards project, which once called for 16 skyscrapers, a basketball arena and 6,800 units of housing, but has since been trimmed back to two or three buildings, the arena and hundreds of apartments.

Whatever shape Miss Brooklyn finally takes, it will no longer include a hotel component, Gehry said.

Gehry’s comments come two weeks after Ratner admitted that he was having trouble finding an anchor tenant for Miss Brooklyn, telling the New York Times that he “won’t build” the tower without such a tenant.

But if Ratner gets a tenant, Gehry said, his design is “better than ever.”

“We’ve made some adjustments that people will absolutely love,” he said. “This is the part of the process I enjoy — tinkering, making things better.”

Gehry suggested that he was disappointed by Ratner’s comments to the Times two weeks ago, in which the developer admitted that he cannot build the bulk of Atlantic Yards because of the current economic downturn.

“He really does want to build it [all]” Gehry said. “But he can’t get the financing. I don’t know why he would tell the papers that, but it is true.”

Gehry spoke with The Brooklyn Paper during the Brooklyn Museum’s annual gala, where Ratner was given the Augustus Graham Medal, an award that honors a Museum patron.

Outside the Eastern Parkway art institute, hundreds of protestors started gathering at around 6:30 pm to greet more than 1,000 Museum supporters as they entered for cocktails and hors-d’oeuvres of miso-marinated cod and spicy taro with caviar.

Celebrities including designer Marc Jacobs and tennis legend John McEnroe were also on hand.

Protesters condemned the Museum’s decision to honor Ratner, some holding signs reading, “Con Artist” and, in a particularly nifty bit of memory, “Dung Deal,” a reference to the Museum’s 1999 controversy over its “Sensation” exhibition, which featured a painting of the Virgin Mary adorned with elephant dung.

Joining the protesters was former city Department of Environmental Protection commissioner Marilyn Gelber.

Referring to the protesters outside, Borough President Markowitz — a major support of Atlantic Yards — smiled and said, “It shows that this is a great country.”

In his acceptance speech hours later, Ratner did not mention Atlantic Yards, but merely said that he was honored to accept an award that “represents the essence” of what he does as a developer, namely, building with “a social purpose and responsibility.”

By the time he started speaking, at around 10:15 pm, there were no protesters left out front.

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper

BrooklynLove

April 4th, 2008, 02:17 PM

i heart gehry.

antinimby

April 4th, 2008, 03:04 PM

In an exclusive interview, he told The Paper that not only will it be built, but it will “look better than anyone imagines.”That a boy, Frank. Now, that's the right attitude.

Too bad it was cut down in size though. :(

kz1000ps

April 4th, 2008, 05:52 PM

I don't heart Gehry, but I do appreciate his frankness in telling us what's going on right now.

ramvid01

April 4th, 2008, 07:44 PM

Frankness?

Is that suppsed to be a pun? :cool:

kz1000ps

April 4th, 2008, 09:30 PM

Unintended, but apparently so!

ZippyTheChimp

April 16th, 2008, 05:08 PM

the funding exists as a result of the planned development - but for AY there would be no such city funds to talk about.Substitute money for funding. Where does the money come from; is it just there?

What I think you're confusing is the funding itself, which is government revenue diverted from other uses; and the opportunity for a return-on-investment for the AY project, which wouldn't have existed without the project.

But since this project is not the only investment the government can make to increase the economic health of the city, STT757 makes a valid point.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2008/04/atlantic_yards_6.php

Atlantic Yards Subsidies Might Total $2 Billion

Posted by Duncan Meisel at 12:24 PM, April 16, 2008

The NY Post did the math earlier this week on Atlantic Yards subsidies to developer Forest City Ratner and came up with a remarkable result: the company stands to receive $2 billion of your tax dollars in direct and indirect subsidies.

Atlantic Yards Report (http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2008/04/no-risk-arena-ny-post-estimates-net.html) gives the detailed breakdown on the issue, dividing out direct payments for development from the variety of tax breaks and ‘sweetheart deals’ given to the project by the city. The $2 billion figure uses an estimate of long term savings netted by Forest City Ratner from under or non-payment of taxes on projects such as the Nets arena, and would cover about half of the projected cost of the project. (Incidentally, with New York City Public School enrollment hovering around one million students, that could also cover a $2,000 increase in services per student) Prepare for more: according to a conference call transcript, Forest City Ratner President Charles Ratner said that "We need more subsidies" to pay for development of Atlantic Yards.

Also, worth a read is a response about the Atlantic Yards from Diana Lind, an author and architecture critic, who is fielding questions from readers of the Times's CityRoom blog:

Though the [Atlantic Yards] project has promoted the fact that it’s going to create jobs and housing, the scheme of using public money to finance this endeavor sounds like robbing Peter and Paul to pay Mary (sorry, the pope’s coming to town)....

....Gehry is good at what he does, and as others have noted his voluptuous style would nicely contrast with the phallic bank building, but more than seven million square feet of his outlandish style (of any architect’s style) starts to look pretty tacky and boring, no matter the context.

So, if the project goes ahead as it’s planned now, how this will affect life in Brooklyn? A lot. Irreversibly. It will complete Brooklyn’s transformation from a post-industrial residential borough to a city unto itself and will extend Downtown Brooklyn to Fort Greene, Prospect Heights and Boerum Hill.

....Spending time in Brooklyn now, one senses the borough’s promise and mutability. When and if Atlantic Yards is completed, I think many people will feel an enormous opportunity was lost on a not particularly innovative project. If I were in charge of the development site, I’d scrap the plan, build a platform over the railyards, and auction off small parcels of the site to varied developers, cultural organizations and schools. The diversity of approaches to the parcels would mimic the city’s naturally haphazard development process and allow for more community involvement.

The NY Post article:

YOUR 'NET' LOSS

By RICH CALDER

April 14, 2008 --

Developer Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn is boosted by so many sweetheart deals that the public stands to pay for more than half the cost of his controversial $4 billion plan, a Post analysis found.

BREAKDOWN: Ratner's Nets Gain

The project - which would bring an NBA arena and 16 residential and office towers to Prospect Heights - is in line to receive at least $2,157,260,000 worth of government subsidies, according to project records and interviews with past and present state and city officials.

And the developer is gearing up to ask for even more corporate welfare.

The president of Ratner's parent company said in a conference call with investors last week that the project will "still need more" subsidies.

The state and city say Ratner has yet to ask for extra assistance, but the developer last month admitted that a sagging economy is holding up construction of the project's residential and office space.

Among the biggest revelation of the Post analysis is what project skeptics have feared for years - that Ratner can build the planned 18,000-seat arena for his New Jersey Nets to move to with little financial risk.

"The setup is basically like paying taxes on your home and then having the government use that money to help you pay off your mortgage," said Michael D.D. White, a former vice president and top lawyer for the state finance authorities.

White - who provided the newspaper with subsidy projections based on his own review of project documents --estimates that Ratner would save slightly over $1 billion in tax payments through a Payment in Lieu of Taxes deal with the state.

Under the deal, he said these payments would be "intercepted" and go directly towards settling debt service on state bonds to build an $950 million arena that Ratner will "all but own," with remaining cash going towards arena operating costs.

While the state will technically own the arena, Ratner under a cozy $1-a-year lease deal, will control it and all its potential profits.

Anticipated arena financial windfalls include a record $400 million naming-rights deal signed with Barclays Bank and up to $35 million annually through the sale of luxury suites.

Ratner has an option to buy the arena at market value after 30 years, records say. But it doesn't pay because the average life span of an NBA arena is about three decades, and he is eligible to continue the buck-a-year lease arrangement for up to 99 years.

Other benefits for Ratner include:

* Saving $261.25 million in taxes through tax-free bonds that will finance affordable housing, White said.

* $150 million in tax credits through special state legislation set up to benefit Atlantic Yards, officials said.

* Saving $114.5 million buying the Atlantic Rail Yards site for the project at less than the MTA's own appraised price.

Ratner spokesman Loren Riegelhaupt refuted most of the subsidy estimates made by White and the Post, adding "it is too early to know" the exact tally and that the only subsidies currently guaranteed are $305 million coming from the state and city for infrastructure and land-acquisition costs.

"Yes, there's investment from the city and state, but what they get back is even greater," he said.

He added that the entire project will eventually be built and bring in nearly $1 billion in net tax revenues over the first 30 years, create over 21,000 permanent jobs and construction jobs and 2,250 units of affordable housing for low- and middle-income families.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (D-Westchester) warned that Ratner must deliver what was promised when the state approved the project in December 2006.

"All the big projects -- the 7-line, downtown Manhattan, Hudson Yards, Atlantic Yards -- they're all hanging by a tread, and the notion the taxpayers are going to invest money while the developers don't meet their commitments, if that's what people expect, there is going to be a fight about it," said Brodsky, who chairs the Assembly committee that oversees state entities that approved these projects.

Spokespersons for the city and state said it's unclear whether Ratner would receive more subsidies if he asked, adding it would need to be reviewed. But some Brooklyn-based council members have said their dead set against giving Ratner more cash.

While Riegelhaupt said Ratner plans to break ground on the arena and one of the residential towers later this year, construction on other parts of Atlantic Yards is being pushed back because of the downtown in the economy.

Project opponents, however, are still attempting to block the entire project through pending lawsuits.

rich.calder@nypost.com

ablarc

April 16th, 2008, 08:15 PM

Posted by Duncan Meisel from Diana Lind, an author and architecture critic:

If I were in charge of the development site, I’d scrap the plan, build a platform over the railyards, and auction off small parcels of the site to varied developers, cultural organizations and schools. The diversity of approaches to the parcels would mimic the city’s naturally haphazard development process and allow for more community involvement.
What she said! ^

TREPYE

April 16th, 2008, 08:59 PM

^ that would be more adequate for Hudson Yards.

antinimby

April 16th, 2008, 09:04 PM

What she said! ^That's what I've been saying all along, not only here but with other large scale projects across the city (almost like a broken record), but I guess it only gets people's attention if it comes from a "professional's" mouth. :rolleyes:

I feel like a Rodney Dangerfield here...

http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/RodneyDangerfield_Album_no_respect.jpg

BrooklynLove

April 16th, 2008, 09:15 PM

Substitute money for funding. Where does the money come from; is it just there?

What I think you're confusing is the funding itself, which is government revenue diverted from other uses; and the opportunity for a return-on-investment for the AY project, which wouldn't have existed without the project.

no. the govt funding that you're saying would be diverted wouldn't have been there to be diverted. an analogy - you lobby your boss for budget to hire a new person in your group. boss grants budget. later deciding that said new budget would be better spent elsewhere is a non-starter b/c the money was allocated for a specific purpose. if you don't hire that person, the money goes away.

ZippyTheChimp

April 16th, 2008, 10:37 PM

if you don't hire that person, the money goes away.What do you mean "the money goes away"?

The boss still has the money. It can be used elsewhere. Maybe he budgets an upgrade in equipment, and the employees become more productive, and everyone gets a raise.

ZippyTheChimp

April 16th, 2008, 10:42 PM

^ that would be more adequate for Hudson Yards.Although I think segmented development would work at both yards, it seems better suited for AY because it is already surrounded by established neighborhoods, and has good mass transit.

ablarc

April 16th, 2008, 10:56 PM

That's what I've been saying all along...
You're not alone.

BrooklynLove

April 16th, 2008, 11:38 PM

What do you mean "the money goes away"?

The boss still has the money. It can be used elsewhere. Maybe he budgets an upgrade in equipment, and the employees become more productive, and everyone gets a raise.

not how it works - money is made available for a specific cause - use it or lose it for that cause only. this is the construct at play in AY. project gets built, and funds allocated. but no project, no funds to AY or elsewhere.

the key here is that the govt funds exist b/c of the AY ratner deal and for that deal only. w/o the deal they don't exist. this is the fundametal concept that the majority of anti-AY arguments can't grasp.

ZippyTheChimp

April 16th, 2008, 11:50 PM

Two questions:

1. If the state/city decide to fund AY, where is the money allocated from? Only the federal government can print money. The state/city must have the cash on hand, or they have to borrow it, and we pay the interest.

2. If they decide not to fund SY, what happens to the money?

BrooklynLove

April 17th, 2008, 08:32 AM

first off, the majority of "diverted" city funds isn't even really funds, it's revenues not realized - abated, reduced or reinvested tax proceeds. without AY there are no taxes to "divert"

as for up front city funds, would be done via bond issuance solely for the purpose of funding AY. if there is no AY, there are no bonds issued. tax proceeds from AY would be "diverted" into paying expenses relating to the bond issuance.

people aren't paying for this. more accurately, ratner is not paying for this. the anti-AY crowd will have you believe that city not receiving = people paying. this logic is further flawed when you understand that the money not received wouldn't even exist without AY.

ZippyTheChimp

April 17th, 2008, 09:20 AM

"Revenue not realized" would be a component if the city decided to invest elsewhere. It's just another way of saying return on investment. You can't look at AY in a vacuum, comparing it to nothing.

Issuing bonds increases debt. Paying down debt is a component of the budget. The money allocated for these interest payments is not available for other purposes when a budget is drawn up.

this logic is further flawed when you understand that the money not received wouldn't even exist without AY.See the top of the post.

Your flawed viewpoint is always highlighted in unbiased reports on the economics of mega-projects - proponents always compare them to nothing. What if, as an alternative, (as has been suggested) the site was developed as parcels with a much smaller direct investment by the city? Would that project have "revenue not realized"?

BrooklynLove

April 17th, 2008, 02:49 PM

goes both ways zippy - the other viewpoint assumes a viable alternative for worthwhile development here possible without a similar package ...

ZippyTheChimp

April 17th, 2008, 03:25 PM

There's no viable alternative - Ratner or nothing?

If you discount the wish to see a Gehry building there, or see the Nets in Brooklyn; what is so special about Ratner's plan that no alternative can be found?

BrooklynLove

April 17th, 2008, 04:03 PM

the large expense associated with the infrastructural development needed to make the yards a buildable site combined with the lower financial upside (compared to manhattan) of being in inland brooklyn necessitates big time financial incentives and big time cash generating development. otherwise the yards stays barren b/c not financially vialble for a developer. so yes - ratner deal and development (or something/someone insignificantly different) or nada.

ZippyTheChimp

April 17th, 2008, 04:17 PM

^
You realize that it's just your opinion, and is not shared by all.

The same opinion was voiced for the Jets Stadium at Hudson Yards - no one else would be interested in this barren wasteland. That opinion justified what was finally determined to be a grossly undervalued price offered to the MTA (similar to what happened at AY).

And yet HY turned out to be so financially viable that several firms bid for the right to develop. This in spite of the fact that there is only one subway line planned, but not yet built. In contrast AY has fully developed mass transit, the third biggest transit hub in the city.

BrooklynLove

April 17th, 2008, 04:27 PM

of course that's my opinion. just as your counters are yours.

HY is in a few blocks from midtown manhattan - entirely different equation.

ZippyTheChimp

April 17th, 2008, 04:50 PM

HY was not a different equation when it was regarded the same way you are regarding AY.

And what are we getting for the investment? The original project touted by Ratner had a heavy commercial component. It was intended to generate jobs.

Now it seems the major component will be an arena for the Nets. Some economic spark. Look what Yankee Stadium and MSG did for their neighborhoods.

If you like Dolan's tax-break on MSG, you'll love this:

NYS will "own" the arena, but Ratner's lease payments will be $1.00 per year for 30 years. Ratner can opt to buy the arena after 30 years, but he (or his grandchildren) can continue the lease arrangement for 99 years. All profits from the arena will go to Ratner.

lofter1

April 17th, 2008, 04:59 PM

Dump this plan ASAP.

STOP IT with these give-aways already.

It's the 21st Century, for criminy sakes :mad:

BrooklynLove

April 17th, 2008, 11:13 PM

HY was not a different equation when it was regarded the same way you are regarding AY.

And what are we getting for the investment? The original project touted by Ratner had a heavy commercial component. It was intended to generate jobs.

we're talking about my opinion right? re HY, i didn't regard that project the same as i regard AY. nonsensical. entirely different value propositions.

commercial component is not out. project has just been fragmented into phases in light of tight funding climate. arena first, then some resi, then ...

as an aside, i'm really enjoying this back and forth - very refreshing.

ZippyTheChimp

April 18th, 2008, 01:54 AM

I didn't regard that project the same as i regard AY. nonsensical. entirely different value propositions.Value propositions are not the reason I gave for the similarities. Besides, the relative value is a wash. While HY has more potential for total return than AY, the cost is higher.

And to correct you, I didn't state that the two projects were similar, but how the two sites were regarded for development.

HY was thought of as a wasteland that would never be developed unless the "unique opportunity"presented by the Jets was acted upon. Same as AY.

MTA property was severely undervalued. Same for AY

The main component of HY revenue was a sports stadium, which studies have consistently shown is a poor choice for public investment. Same as AY.

commercial component is not out.I never said it was out. Go back to the original project that Ratner proposed and was accepted; it had much more office space. Ratner himself reduced the office space when the commercial market temporarily got soft.

I neglected to clarify earlier that, while I believe that AY would be developed even if Ratner left the scene, your comparison-to- nothing rationale for public funding would still be invalid if Ay was not developed. The city has alternate venues for revenue generation.

Using your example of the greater upside at HY, the funds to Ratner could be used to insure that the #7 subway is funded to completion, maybe including the 2nd station.

On top of all the money being thrown at this arena, Ratner is now saying that there may be a shortfall, and more funding may be needed.

It's funny that when there's an economic downturn, municipal budgets get slashed, people do without services, but developers want to remain fully-funded and take minimal risk.

i think that he said arena, then first resi building several months later, then they'll evaluate.This puts all the risk on public funding of the arena. Rater will be de-facto owner of an arena he didn't pay for, with no pressure to complete the project. The state would be held hostage to give him whatever his "evaluation" decides is necessary, to justify the funding of the arena.

A political trap.

BrooklynLove

April 18th, 2008, 03:03 PM

oy, while sitting at the kitchen table in my skivs this morn, i composed such a lovely response, which apparently was tragically lost in the vastness of the internets. :(

i will summarize - i can't speak for how others regarded HY, i can only speak for how i did, just as i can only speak for my opinion of AY. HY is entierly different value proposition than AY, in my opinion, due to HY's midtown manahattan location. as such, a developer for HY would need less incentives than one would for AY, and a developer for AY would need higher cash gen develpment than one would for HY. in other words the HY location yields more bang for buck. analogy - borrow money from a bank, and invest in 10% return stock or 20% return stock - in order to justify the 10 over the 20 you'll need contribution on the borrowing costs and/or the purchase price of the stock.

re use of ratner funds for 7 train - i view this scenario as unrealistic b/c too large an unknown to assume that an AY development deal would happen without similar % fund diversion than in the present deal (% = % of funds generated by development being abated/put back into the deal). huge initial infrastructural costs at AY necessitate large scale cash gen development to justify initial costs, and shallow return curve on massive investment requires large incentives. you can't escape this framework at AY.

of course plans for a project of this scale and nature will change over time - to expect otherwise would be unrealisitc. and of course a developer wants to have his/her cake and eat it too - this is capitalism.

i'm not trying to argue that ratner's plan/deal is flawless, but i don't think it so flawed that it shouldn't move forward. IMHO this development is a net positive for bk and nyc, and any realistic alternative deal here would raise insignificantly different concerns and objections.

ZippyTheChimp

April 18th, 2008, 03:39 PM

HY is entierly different value proposition than AY, in my opinion, due to HY's midtown manahattan location. as such, a developer for HY would need less incentives than one would for AY, and a developer for AY would need higher cash gen develpment than one would for HY.Again, you're misinterpreting my HY example. The similarity is with [your] impression of the marketability of AY, not a direct comparison of revenue potential.

The HY Jets Stadium plan was "marketed" to the public as a wasteland that, unless the Jets offer was accepted, would never be developed. Under pressure, the MTA changed its position and called for open bidding. That's not my opinion; that's what happened.

The rest of your post is basically a disagreement with me over the potential of AY. So let's boil it down into what AY already has, and what it still needs to be attractive for development.

What I see:

Positives
1. LIRR
2. Subways - D, M, N, R, B, Q, 2, 3, 4, 5. A, C, and G close by.
4. Major thoroughfares - Flatbush, Atlantic, 4th Aves.
5. Short commute to Manhattan.
6. Fully developed neighborhoods surrounding the site, with a resident density second only to Manhattan.
7. Atlantic Terminal mall.
8. Brooklyn's landmark tower across the street.
9. Nearby cultural institutions - Brooklyn Museum, Central Library, BAM, Botanic Garden.
10. Prospect Park.

Negatives
1. No deck

So instead of throwing $1 billion (or $2 billion and climbing) at a developer who's having trouble getting one building going in higher-rate-of-return Manhattan, and in my opinion, has taken on more than he can handle - use the funds to finance the deck, and make the site attractive to development.

Then if Ratner wants to move his Nets into Brooklyn, he can build his arena, own it, and forgo the $1 a year rent.

My opinion has nothing to do with the urban qualities (or lack thereof) of the design.

lofter1

April 18th, 2008, 08:02 PM

Forest City Ratner has 6+ years to build the arena

The six-year arena timetable surfaced in December 2006

Atlantic Yards Report Blogspot (http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2008/04/six-year-arena-timetable-surfaced-in.html)
April 18, 2008

I can't believe I and others missed it, but the news (http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2008/03/read-fine-print-esdc-gives-ratner-6.html) that Forest City Ratner
has 6+ years to build the arena -- six years after the end of litigation
and delivery of the project site via eminent domain -- wasn't exactly new.

http://bp0.blogger.com/_mJPzxRaCL64/SAVbpNzJkVI/AAAAAAAACiw/Ld7AuyvNq-Y/s320/ishot-370.jpg (http://bp0.blogger.com/_mJPzxRaCL64/SAVbpNzJkVI/AAAAAAAACiw/Ld7AuyvNq-Y/s1600-h/ishot-370.jpg)

It was on page 28 of the Modified General Project Plan (http://www.empire.state.ny.us/AtlanticYards/General_Project_Plan.asp) (Part 2), issued and
approved by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) on 12/8/06.
(Click to enlarge.) It was not, however, in the General Project Plan issued in
July 2006, which got a lot more scrutiny.

However, the other parts of the timetable -- that the developer has 12+ years
to build Phase 1 and an unspecified time to build Phase 2 -- were, indeed, first
revealed in the recently-surfaced AY State Funding Agreement (http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2008/03/read-fine-print-esdc-gives-ratner-6.html).

Delays from the start

This much is clear: the ESDC, even while approving a plan "anticipated" to be
completed in ten years, allowed for six years -- including four years of delay
resulting from force majeure events or significant financing snags -- to build
the arena.

So former FCR executive Jim Stuckey's affidavit (http://dddb.net/FEIS/FCR%20RESPONSE/Stuckey%20Affidavit/StuckeyAffidavit.pdf) filed on 4/27/07 in the
environmental lawsuit (http://dddb.net/FEIS/index.php), now on appeal, should be taken with a grain of salt.
The petitioners had challenged the project's ten-year timetable, saying the
state's environmental review lowballed the impacts of a much longer project.

Delays a "theory"?

Stuckey scoffed at the petitioners' argument, saying that they "primarily
base their theory" on a statement (http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2007/03/cleveland-ratner-offers-timeline_08.html) made by Forest City Enterprises CEO
Chuck Ratner, who told investment analysts the project would take 15 years
to build and assented to a statement that the arena would open in 2010.

Stuckey pointed out that Ratner two days later clarified his statement,
insisting that the 15-year timetable referred to the elapsed time between
project conception and project completion, and that the developer was
"committed" (a word with built-in flexibility) to opening the arena in time for
the 2009-10 basketball season.

I found Ratner's clarification not so credible (http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2007/03/fcr-offers-clarification-on-ay.html). A year later, that timetable is
in tatters. Forest City Ratner must be thankful it negotiated some slack.

As the case challenging the environmental review is on appeal, it'll be
interesting to see if the ESDC is challenged on harmonizing its prediction of a
ten-year buildout for 17 buildings with the slack it granted the arena (and, by
implication, the rest of the project). It may be legal. But it certainly wasn't
very transparent.