Proposed: Atlantic Yards Development - Commercial, Residential, Retail, NBA Arena [Archive] - Page 2

BrooklynRider

December 29th, 2004, 03:57 PM

From The Brooklyn Rail....

Ratner Applies Full-Court Press on the Downtown Arena
by Brian J. Carreira
November 2004

In late October, Forest City Ratner mailed Brooklyn residents another of its glossy brochures intended to answer “Frequently asked questions about the Brooklyn Nets and Atlantic Yards.” Within it are the standard best-case scenarios regarding both the jobs potentially created by the project as well as its overall funding. In the spirit of linguistic deceptions such as “collateral damage” and “no child left behind,” Forest City describes the seizure of area homes and businesses for decade-long construction of a blockbusting arena, office towers, and high-rise condominiums as “minimal displacement.” At the same time, residents are also informed that Forest City Ratner will enter into a Community Benefits Agreement, or CBA, to ensure equity in the surrounding neighborhoods. It is this agreement that has critics of the Atlantic Yards crying foul.

Participating in the negotiations for the agreement are Community Boards 2, 6, and 8, and local advocates for the project including Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development (BUILD), ACORN, and the Downtown Brooklyn Advisory and Oversight Committee. Conspicuously excluded are organizations that have come out against the arena, such as the Prospect Heights Action Coalition and Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. Despite these groups’ prominence as critics of the arena proposal, they are not being given a voice in this pact being made supposedly between community and developer. The groups presently involved have endorsed the Atlantic Yards proposal with varying degrees of enthusiasm all along. Breaking with the opposition, Reverend Herbert Daughtry recently resigned as head of another group, the Downtown Brooklyn Leadership Coalition, in order to join Ratner’s CBA fold.

Specifics relating to terms of the agreement are few and far between. Its intention is to bind Forest City to certain standards that would ensure that Brooklyn Atlantic Yards would benefit Prospect Heights and the surrounding areas. At an October 26 BUILD meeting, Darryl Greene, a consultant for Forest City, laid out some of the points to expect. Up to fifty percent of the residential units erected would be conditionally set aside as affordable housing. There is also discussion of hiring floors to ensure minority contractor participation in the construction. And there is talk of job training and graduated lease structures that would allow new businesses to pay less rent in the first few months.

Develop Don’t Destroy’s Robert Puca characterizes the CBA discussions as a “dinner party where everyone at the table agrees with the host.” Even within the community boards, some members find communication between designated representatives to the CBA and the board members as a whole severely lacking. As Bill Batson, a member of Community Board 8, recently told a full meeting of that board, “I don’t know about the entire project, but I’ll tell you this, the process stinks.”

Of course, this exclusion could be due to Forest City Ratner’s continuing refusal to even acknowledge that there is substantial opposition to this project. At the BUILD meeting, Greene characterized the opposition as “diminishing.” But such a position is simply part of Forest City’s strategy, which is to marginalize Atlantic Yards’ critics as it tries to create a veneer of community support.

This past summer, the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development (PICCED), in conjunction with another neighborhood advocacy group, the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council (PHNDC), conducted a survey of Prospect Heights residents about the project. In late October, PICCED published the results. Corresponding with the parade of meetings, rallies, and discussions where residents turned out in force to voice disagreements with the arena, the survey demonstrates strong concern within the community. Of those surveyed, 82% were either very concerned or concerned about Forest City’s proposal. Traffic, the ultimate cost to taxpayers, and the impact of ten-year construction on the neighborhood topped the list of residents’ concerns with Atlantic Yards.

A banner hangs from the back of a residence on Pacific Street – an area that would be destroyed for the Atlantic Yards.

Area residents did think that new construction should speak to the deficiencies they see in the area. Items they found most in need of improvement are public education, safety from crime, and traffic. Residents overwhelmingly agreed that new buildings should be of similar scale and style to those that already exist in the area, that the project should include affordable housing, and that it should include “permanent living wage jobs and meaningful economic opportunities for low-income populations in Brooklyn.” In terms of commercial growth, those surveyed generally see small local restaurants, businesses related to arts and culture, and specialty shops as best serving Prospect Heights in the future.

The Atlantic Yards’ project, however, promises soaring glass towers and considerable potential for traffic gridlock. In addition, Ratner’s propensity for big box retail (witness the Atlantic Center and Atlantic Terminal) threatens the growth of local business. It’s thus quite possible to argue—based on the results of the PICCED survey—that the basic outline of the project fundamentally conflicts with most of local residents’ goals for the neighborhood. While it steers clear of such an overall assessment of the project, the PICCED study asserts that the CBA discussions have not included local residents or groups with significant concerns about it.

At the October 26 BUILD meeting in Crown Heights, however, there was a distinctly different interpretation of both the overall proposal as well as the CBA negotiations. Marie Louis, the 1st Vice President of the group, described the PICCED survey as “skewed,” and said that the assertion that local residents weren’t being engaged in the CBA process is “laughable.”

For Louis and others at the meeting, the Atlantic Yards is an exciting project that will generate much-needed jobs in the area. It is also, in the view of the group’s members, a long-awaited opportunity to be a part of shaping the neighborhood in which they live. James Caldwell, President of BUILD, explains that “In the past, when projects came to the community, we didn’t have an opportunity to participate.” It is with this hope in mind that BUILD has endorsed this project “from day one.” “We believed in the project, [and] we need it,” Caldwell says, and he is pleased that the group is participating in the CBA discussions.

Caldwell further explains that Forest City Ratner initiated the idea of a Community Benefits Agreement. “We certainly didn’t come up with it,” Caldwell says, trying to correct the apparent misconception that this agreement was the result of specific pressure by his and other participating organizations. In so doing, Forest City Ratner is shrewdly attempting to elevate certain organizations friendly to the plan as the “legitimate” voices of the community.

In addition to the process of reaching the agreements, another cause for concern is the enforceability of a CBA once it is in place. At this point, it is unclear who will have the right to bring grievances against Forest City Ratner. For example, will a complaint first have to gain approval of a signatory organization such as BUILD? When asked what would happen if Forest City Ratner should fail to fulfill one clause or another in the contract, Darryl Greene smiled. He suggested that a willingness to enter into the agreement was reason enough to trust that a future violation would not occur. Asked for further reassurance, Mr. Greene concluded that “we are a nation of laws,” which would thus hold the developer to task. While it’s true that this is a nation of laws, it is also a nation of lawyers skilled at creating legal labyrinths that could tie up, turn around, and ultimately weary those looking for a little good faith.

Some residents maintain that BUILD, or at least its leadership, originated as a sort of Ratner-sponsored front to demonstrate neighborhood support for a widely unpopular project. An attendee of one of the group’s meetings can tell pretty quickly that this is not the case. The group is made up of many working people, predominantly of color, who see the opportunity to participate in a project that will, if built, redefine the neighborhood and community for years to come. They see the Atlantic Yards as a gleaming alternative to being slowly priced out of a neighborhood where many of them have lived for a long time.

Unfortunately, the developer cannot guarantee that tenants will flock to his office towers, or that the desire to live next to a basketball arena will be great enough that market-rate condos will fill up—and thus enable him to subsidize the affordable housing he promises. Metrotech took years to reach capacity in terms of leaseholders; the Atlantic Center is still being bailed out with government offices.

For the time being, Bruce Ratner is doing the politically expedient thing and offering grand promises to those who hope to participate in the prosperity blooming all around them. Whether the construction actually will be done by members of the neighborhood, whether the business tenants in those glassy towers will take any substantial portion of their workforce from the community, whether any of the housing built will be genuinely affordable—all are far from certain. But between tax subsidies, rental revenue, and basketball ticket sales, a built Atlantic Yards virtually guarantees that Forest City Ratner will do just fine.

Nearly every resident of Prospect Heights and the surrounding areas wants increased job opportunities, affordable housing, and more businesses in the neighborhood, but there remain legitimate concerns regarding whether Atlantic Yards will become, like Metrotech and Atlantic Center, yet another of Ratner’s taxpayer-financed “blunders,” as Rep. Major Owens predicted earlier this year. As demonstrated by the PICCED survey, as well as by the ongoing work of Develop Don’t Destroy and the Prospect Heights Action Coalition, there remains far more concern and outright opposition to the project than Ratner will ever acknowledge. With so many being shut out of the discussion so early in the game, those who find comfort in being “at the table” should be wary when it comes time to pay the check.

Kris

January 15th, 2005, 09:28 PM

January 16, 2005

Stadium Games: Give and Take and Speculation

By CHARLES V. BAGLI

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/01/16/nyregion/16arena.large1.jpg
A Nets arena would have a public garden on top. The project is also intended to be an anchor for residential and commercial development in Brooklyn.

Just after he was elected, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg told New Yorkers in his first State of the City speech that there was no money in the budget to subsidize two $800 million baseball stadiums for the Yankees and the Mets.

Three years later, the city faces a $2 billion gap in the coming fiscal year's $47 billion budget. Nonetheless, the mayor and Gov. George E. Pataki are on the verge of approving three new sports sites - a football stadium for the Jets, a baseball stadium for the Yankees and a basketball arena for the Nets - that will require a combined public investment of at least $1.1 billion.

It is not easy to assess precisely what the taxpayers will get out of their investment, which is equivalent in cost to a major Manhattan skyscraper or 25 schools with 600 seats each. In part, that is because the economic benefits are based on studies commissioned by the teams themselves, and promoted by the government sponsors of the projects.

Nonetheless, from interviews with public and team officials, it is starting to become clearer how much tax money will be spent on each project, and what city residents are being promised in return.

The Jets stadium will require a combined public investment of $600 million from the state and city. In exchange, New York will get a football team back from New Jersey, and a West Side stadium with a retractable roof that can be used for games, Olympic events and large conventions.

The new Yankee Stadium will require a public investment of about $300 million. New York will get a modernized, more comfortable stadium a block north of the existing stadium in the Bronx; more baseball fields and tennis courts for the public; and new garages and transportation stations.

The Nets arena in Brooklyn will require a public investment of about $200 million and the condemnation of several blocks of housing and stores. New York will get a basketball team back from New Jersey and an arena with a public garden on top that is intended to serve as an anchor for a residential and commercial development. The arena could also be used for high school or college games.

All three projects would be built on public land and use tax-free bonds for financing. All three are also designed to bypass the city's land use review process and a vote by the City Council, thereby avoiding potentially troublesome public hearings.

Beyond the physical improvements, the mayor, the governor and the teams themselves assert that the projects will spark new development and generate far more in state and city tax revenues than government will spend. But many independent critics say these indirect benefits are speculative compared with the cost to the taxpayer.

"Nationally, many of these projects wound up costing more and delivering fewer public benefits than promised by their proponents," said Doug Turetsky, chief of staff for the city's Independent Budget Office.

Sports economists have long said that stadiums and arenas often enrich teams but are relatively poor public investments.

"There's no intrinsic economic benefit from building a sports facility," said Andrew Zimbalist, a leading sports economist who teaches at Smith College. "You have to look at the details of the financing, the facility and the location."

Andrew Alper, president of the city's Economic Development Corporation, said that while each project is different, all went through a rigorous analysis by city officials. He said that for every dollar invested by the city in the three projects, taxpayers would get a return of $3.50 to $4.50 over 30 years.

He said the sports deals were more about direct and indirect taxes, jobs, the vibrancy of neighborhoods and parks than how many games are played.

The Jets are proposing a $1.4 billion stadium that much of the year would be used as an exhibition hall linked to the nearby Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, enabling the city to attract thousands of new visitors to New York. The team is proposing to invest $800 million in the project and to cover any cost overruns, while the state and city would invest $300 million each.

More recently, the team has also agreed to pay for a concourse on 33rd Street in front of the stadium and half the cost of two pedestrian bridges over the West Side Highway, at an estimated cost of $75 million.

The city and state contend that they are only paying for infrastructure, specifically the retractable roof ($225 million) and platform ($375 million) on which the stadium would be built. But infrastructure usually refers to public works like roads, sewers or subways, not to two items without which the stadium could not function or attract a Super Bowl, concerts and basketball games, as the Jets propose.

"None of the money is for a stadium or an arena," said Charles A. Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation. "It's for the economic development portion of the project. The Jets stadium is unique in that it gives us a multi-use facility."

The Bloomberg administration describes the stadium as a key element in plans to redevelop the Far West Side of Manhattan and its bid for the 2012 Olympics.

The Jets estimate that in its first year the stadium would generate $30 million more in tax revenues than it would cost the city and the state, with a net gain over 30 years of $716 million. The team estimates that 75 percent of the revenues would come from trade shows, not football games.

The city's Independent Budget Office, however, did its own study and pared the net gain of the Jets project by two-thirds, to an estimated $200 million.

Betsy Gotbaum, the city's public advocate, and others argue that the true public investment actually exceeds $600 million. The city, for instance, will presumably pay half, about $18 million, toward the cost of the pedestrian bridges and $30 million for the tunnel connecting the stadium and the Javits Center. The Jets say that the $55 million deck over the highway depicted in their stadium renderings is part of the 2012 Olympic budget and not their responsibility.

The Nets' $430 million Brooklyn arena, in the Long Island Rail Road yard at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, is an eye-catching but ultimately modest element of a larger $2.5 billion residential and commercial development next door. Developer Bruce Ratner bought the New Jersey-based team for $300 million last year, intending to use it as a lever to build the arena, 4,500 apartments and 2 million square feet of office space on a 21-acre site in downtown Brooklyn.

The project has won considerable support in Brooklyn, but some local residents and others object to the state's willingness to condemn land on behalf of a private developer, especially in an area that is finally enjoying a revival. They also say that the level of subsidies outweigh the benefits of the project.

Mr. Ratner's initial request for $450 million in subsidies and infrastructure work has been whittled down to $200 million to $215 million in negotiations with the city and the state, according to officials involved in the talks.

A newly revised analysis by Mr. Zimbalist, the sports economist, estimated that the net fiscal impact of the entire project at $1.06 billion over 30 years. Proponents argue that the principal benefit is the housing, about half of which would be for middle-, moderate- and low-income tenants. Of course, those apartments would benefit from an as yet undetermined level of tax breaks and other incentives.

Real estate executives in Brooklyn said that Mr. Ratner was considering a sharp reduction in the amount of office space, and an increase in the number of apartments.

Sifting out the value of the arena alone is difficult, but based on Mr. Zimbalist's original analysis, it would appear to be a modest $107.5 million over 30 years, after deducting the cost of the public investment.

"The arena is an indirect value creator," Mr. Alper said. For the developer, he added, "the economics are really in the commercial space and the housing."

Unlike the projects for the Jets and the Nets, there is little if any opposition to plans by the Yankees, which spent much of the 1990's belittling the Bronx and demanding a stadium in Manhattan. The team ultimately found that abandoning the Bronx was politically untenable.

The Yankees have told public officials that their offer to pay the entire cost of building a new stadium in the Bronx was motivated, in part, by a recognition that they would have to "pay most of the freight" to get the project done under the Bloomberg administration.

New rules in Major League Baseball allow the team to deduct much of the cost of construction from the revenues that the Yankees are required to share with other teams.

The Yankees have agreed to pay the estimated $800 million cost of a new 50,000-seat open air stadium in Macombs Dam Park, across 161st Street from the current stadium, which was built in 1923 and refurbished in the 1970's, according to state and city officials. The team, which does not expect to pay rent for the land, has asked the city and state for about $300 million in "infrastructure work," including about $160 million for new garages, a ferry terminal on the Harlem River, a Metro-North train station and 16.7 acres of new parkland to replace Macombs Dam Park.

As part of the deal, the city would create a park along the Harlem River, south of Macombs Dam Bridge, with Little League ball fields and a softball field. There would also be basketball courts, with tennis courts and possibly a soccer field atop the garages.

The Yankees project dovetails with efforts by the Bloomberg administration and Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion to rejuvenate the surrounding neighborhood. There are plans to turn the dilapidated Bronx Terminal Market into a major retail center, with a waterfront park. Mr. Carrion wants to preserve most of the existing stadium and build a hotel, conference center and Yankee museum and sports-related high school in the area.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

billyblancoNYC

January 16th, 2005, 03:45 AM

This still has to be one of the best projects, possibly, in NYC history. Love it. Hope that the office space isn't cut, though. NYC needs to diversify it's commercial offerings, but I guess the DT rezone might have spooked him a bit. I still say the demand is there and a few hundred thousand sq. ft. won't cause havoc.

Kris

January 16th, 2005, 09:47 AM

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/01/16/nyregion/0116_JETS_GRAPH.gif

billyblancoNYC

January 21st, 2005, 03:17 PM

I guess the DT BK plan ruined his cravings for office space...

http://brooklynpapers.com/html/issues/_vol28/28_04/28_04bp.pdf

By Jess Wisloski
The Brooklyn Papers

The affordable and market-rate housing component
in plans for the Atlantic Yards arena complex
will likely expand by 1,300 units, a Forest City Ratner
executive told The Brooklyn Papers this week.
The development company’s principal owner,
Bruce Ratner, proposes to build a $2.5 billion complex
that would include a basketball arena for his
New Jersey Nets. The original plans also called for 17
buildings including four office skyscrapers and 13
ment high-rises, the official said the company could
realize its goal of increasing the housing stock in
Brooklyn while providing residential buildings in the
first phase of construction and therefore become an
immediately visible presence in the community.
“This is a very revolutionary thing we’re doing,”
the Forest City Ratner executive told The Papers.
The additional housing would eliminate 1,502,889
square feet of office and commercial space from Atlantic
Yards, the executive said, but would help the
company speed up the process of building and occupying
the properties. One of the four towers around
the arena, all of which are being designed by architect
Frank Gehry, would remain for office space.
If the buildings stayed commercial, the source said,
Forest City Ratner would need to wait until substantial
anchor tenants — generally large Manhattan corporations
hoping to move back-offices to Brooklyn —
agreed to lease the space before starting construction.
That, and subsidies from the city and state, are how
Ratner’s Metrotech office buildings were filled.
Acommercial site being switched to residential in
the planning stages shouldn’t be looked on as a surprise
in the still-evolving Downtown Brooklyn area,
said Michael Burke, director of the Downtown
Brooklyn Council.
“It’s not unexpected,” he said, adding that he didn’t
think the shift by Ratner indicated a floundering
market for downtown office space. “Residential development
is an easier thing to do; certainly we’re in
a market right now where residential is booming —
it’s very hot.
“With Atlantic Yards, even if Forest City reduces
the amount of commercial space, it still provides the
business world with more options,” Burke said.

“Even if they have only one tower as opposed to four.”
Over the past several months, Forest City Ratner has been working
in conjunction with the New York City chapter of the Association
of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), to
establish an affordable housing scheme for Atlantic Yards. The developer
initially proposed 4,500 units of housing, all to be built after
the arena and office towers, largely between Carlton and Vanderbilt
avenues, from Atlantic Avenue to Dean Street in Prospect Heights.
In October, following an investigation by The Brooklyn Papers,
ACORN announced that Ratner’s company had agreed to implement
a three-tiered approach to create affordable housing in the
plans, and Forest City Ratner officials assured that 50 percent of all
the new housing units would be devoted to housing for senior citizens
and varying levels of affordable housing, all below market rate.
Bertha Lewis, executive director of New York ACORN, said the
devised scheme covered households making everywhere from 40
percent to 140 percent of the area median income, which translates
to $17,000 to $100,000.
Though the Ratner executive said this week that affordable units
would be interspersed with the luxury and market-rate units, and all
buildings would feature doormen, laundry machines and roof gardens,
Lewis was hesitant to guess what the increased number of housing units
might mean for her organization, which will presumably be the lead
non-profit agency to administer the affordable housing portion of the
development.
“Talk is cheap,” Lewis said of the Ratner executive’s announcement.
“Here’s what we know — right now we know that what’s
guaranteed is 4,500 [units]. That’s what we know, that’s what we’ve
been working on.”
Early talk about negotiations the group had with Forest City Ratner
boasted that the complex would also feature affordable units for
purchase, such as co-ops or condos. Lewis said that so far, she had
not received any promises on that front.
“Anytime we can get a commitment to more housing, that’s
fine,” Lewis clarified. “But right now we’re working on what we
know. I’m not going to speculate on some pie in the sky.”
Said the Forest City Ratner executive, “We like working with
ACORN. They have that radical feeling, they really fight for what
it really represents what we’re working to do here.”
To build Atlantic Yards, Ratner may need the state to condemn 11
acres of private property under eminent domain and to negotiate
with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for air rights to develop
over the 11-acre Long Island Rail Road yards. The potential
condemnations, which affect both residential and commercial tenants
and property owners, have been the major factor in more than a
year of protests against the plan.
Councilwoman Letitia James, a vocal opponent of the project,
whose district includes Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and the part of
Prospect Heights where most of Atlantic Yards would sit, was cynical
when told of the additional housing.
“I mean, obviously, if they’re going to get to the 50 percent [affordable]
they’ve got to do more luxury housing,” she said, referring
to the kind of cross-subsidizing that is common in mixed-income
projects. Still, she said, nothing was finalized.
“I know nothing about the [1,300] new units; it’s just a rumor, it has
nothing verified,” said James. “But obviously I hope we can achieve
the 50-percent affordable housing model — that is absolutely critical.”
The councilwoman added that until she sees a “signed document”
she refuses to call the Atlantic Yards project a done deal, though she
admits to “inquiring every day” to the city’s Department of Housing
Preservation and Development.
“I have spoken with HPD, and I know they are talking,” she
added.
Carol Abrams, an HPD spokeswoman, confirmed talks with Forest
City Ratner.
“We’ve been having discussions with Forest City Ratner Companies
and ACORN, on how to shape an affordable housing program
that makes sense, that meets their needs and operates within the
structure of our current programs,” Abrams said.
She added that it was a general condition among buildings with
part-market, part-subsidized housing that the market units balance
out the costs of providing affordable units.
“Cross-subsidies, where the market-rate units are helping to subsidize
the other, non-market rate units, is the most common,” Abrams
said, but added that “operational responsibility for marketing the lowincome
units was usually delegated to the affiliate non-profit.”

NoyokA

January 21st, 2005, 03:51 PM

The alternative is heartening but not entirely bad news. The residential presence will allow the project to get off the ground quicker, and create a work force for the business district planned to the north. And the architecture of commercial buildings vs. residential buildings isn’t as much of a concern here with Gehry as architect.

Kolbster

January 21st, 2005, 05:29 PM

True, hopefully the buildings wont desize in terms of height

NoyokA

January 21st, 2005, 05:57 PM

True, hopefully the buildings wont desize in terms of height

I think that almost goes without saying. Although I would like to see a luxury condo tower in the mix and at a substancial height.

Gulcrapek

January 21st, 2005, 09:03 PM

Gehry's residential buildings are nasty. I hope the trend of his architecture fitting in a bit more continues here.

Kolbster

January 22nd, 2005, 12:48 AM

True, hopefully the buildings wont desize in terms of height

I think that almost goes without saying. Although I would like to see a luxury condo tower in the mix and at a substancial height.

I know, but it can't hurt to be hopeful........who knows :lol:

billyblancoNYC

January 22nd, 2005, 02:41 AM

Why can't it be 2 office and 2 res? That would be about 1 msf and 900 new apts. I think that's fair.

Oh well, if it gets it done, and quicker, than so be it. Those res units, especially the affordable ones, will go in no time.

Kolbster

January 23rd, 2005, 02:27 AM

I dont know what to make of this....so many reasons why
--maybe need to create more revinue to pay for the project
---maybe are tryin to get this thing built and done with public scrutiny
--or maybe are just tired of the brooklyn nimby bull s**t

ZippyTheChimp

January 23rd, 2005, 02:47 AM

It's spelled out in the last article.

Add to it that he paid a lot for a team that had been losing money, and will probably continue to be negative cash flow at least until he gets them in the new arena.

NoyokA

January 23rd, 2005, 05:15 PM

Gehry's residential buildings are nasty. I hope the trend of his architecture fitting in a bit more continues here.

I don't think there's any prior evidence to make such a comment.

To my knowledge Gehry has never designed a large-scale residential project.

Kolbster

January 24th, 2005, 12:16 PM

I can't wait to see the finalized design or an actual design in the first place....a lot of talk but not a lot of acvtual designs. I mean yea we've all seen the initial design, but the buildings were just boxes ontop of one another and twisted......i'm waiting!!!!

Archit_K

January 24th, 2005, 07:17 PM

Gehry's residential buildings are nasty. I hope the trend of his architecture fitting in a bit more continues here.

Does anybody have renderings of Gehry's residential buildings design?

Gulcrapek

January 24th, 2005, 07:32 PM

Stern took me up on that, there's no significant example.

NoyokA

January 24th, 2005, 07:57 PM

I bet on the whole its not unlike his other buildings, it all depends on budget constraints though, which this project will have with low-income housing.

Kolbster

January 24th, 2005, 08:39 PM

Yea...:(
It's a gift and a curse, because that is what's helping the project progess quickly, but i think it's going to have a lot of budget restraints :(

NYguy

February 1st, 2005, 10:36 AM

DAILY NEWS

Build, and they will vote

http://www.nydailynews.com/images/columnists/louis_e.jpg

For the first time in years, a significant number of local politicians have recognized that economic prosperity isn't necessarily a four-letter word. From the mayor's race to the lowliest City Council contest, politics this year will be dominated by the stance candidates take on large-scale economic development projects.

Longstanding rules of the political road are being rewritten as pro-development Council candidates, concerned about job creation, step forward to demand new thinking on big projects.

Praise the Lord and pass the billions.

For years, development wasn't a divisive issue in economically troubled areas like Harlem and central Brooklyn because there wasn't a sizable level of investor interest to fight about. When the occasional big commercial project did come along, local pols treated it almost as a threat rather than a blessing.

Playing on constituent fears that development might cause rents to go higher, pols could grandstand endlessly with no political repercussions, killing projects outright or jawboning them out of existence with a thousand tiny objections. It was a sure path to reelection in most low-income and working-class districts.

But in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks, as the city's attention turned to rebuilding and Mayor Bloomberg announced an ambitious multiborough development strategy, a new trend began. The knee-jerk urge to oppose development began to seem out of place as ordinary people realized that keeping the neighborhood status quo not only meant low rents, but failing stores and too few jobs.

There is a growing consensus that the mood has shifted, with ordinary people actually making common cause with developers. In this environment, opposing development can be hazardous to one's political health.

In Brooklyn, for instance, City Councilwoman Letitia James, a vocal critic of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards development plan, may have to fight for her political life this summer. James - who first got elected to office on the Working Families Party line in a special election after the assassination of James Davis in 2003 - is ineligible to run as a Dem in an overwhelmingly Democratic district.

That means she could face a tough general election race against a pro-development Democrat this fall, unless the Kings County Democratic organization gives her special permission to run in its primary - a waiver that party insiders say has never been granted.

In the old days, such arcane details of ballot access wouldn't matter. But James' entrenched opposition to Atlantic Yards has strained her ties with the pro-jobs, union-backed Working Families Party, which generally supports Ratner's plan.

"I have yet to hear anyone say, 'We will not support you because of your position on Atlantic Yards,'" James says. But about 20 neighborhood residents, upset about James' opposition, recently picketed the councilwoman's office.

The protest rattled black incumbent pols throughout central Brooklyn, who aren't used to being targeted in street protests and have mostly been riding the fence on the Atlantic Yards project. Her predicament has spurred at least one local leader to consider making a run for her seat.

"My phone has been ringing off the hook. I'm going to take a serious look at it," says Democratic lawyer Hakeem Jeffries, who twice ran for Assembly in the area. Jeffries says he likes that Ratner's plan includes more than 2,000 units of low-cost housing and create construction and retail jobs.

"Local government has to remove barriers to development, and should be very careful not to discourage it," says Kenneth Adams, president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. "We don't get a wave of new investment washing over the boroughs very often."

Adams himself is planning to run for the City Council in 2009 and raised more than $50,000 toward that goal in the past 90 days. That's further proof that new voices, new development and new investment dollars are finally making their way to neighborhoods that desperately need it.

BrooklynRider

February 1st, 2005, 12:13 PM

This is a propaganda piece. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on where you stand on the issue of Ratner's development, the Develop - Don't Destroy folks are waging acredible GRASS ROOTS battle against this plan. A presentation of the "Unity Plan" was made last night in Park Slope.

It isn't a develop vs. don't develop fight going on. It is a matter of whether a single developer should be favored over multiple developers. Why, on public property - not yet out to bid - is Ratner the ONLY developer in the mix?

I like aspects of Ratner's plan - love aspects of it. However, I think the Unity Plan presents a strong alternative to what is being proposed by Ratner, especially as he is morphing more and more residential space into his plan.

I think the biggest problem, again - like WTC - is that Pataki is involved. We have this "authority" - the MTA - and euphemisms for pseudo public/private partnerships like EDC involved.

Why must renters and homebuyers pay "Market Rate" - why are units in these buildings going to be "Market Rate" - when Ratner seems poised to take control of this property, AND the SALES TAXES generated on it, at a song?

FCRC and the Borough President's Office are indistinguishable. Someone needs to rein this guy in. Letitia James has earned morerespect in her district and surrounding districts for her willingness to get out in front of the fight. The real people that people are disgusted with are the Community Board Members - appointed by the Borough President - who are negoitiating CBA's in private without input from the community.

Each week that goes by, I have to give more and more respect to CB1 in Manhattan for their ability to unite and bang out agreements that are in the interests of current residents. It is suddenly making more and more sense. In Brooklyn, we have individuals selling out the interests of the community and B.S. columns like the one above peddling out and out lies. Letitia James will win in a landslide.

alex ballard

February 1st, 2005, 07:42 PM

Sorry if I seem like I'm butting my nose in, but why does the plan have to include the huge housing piece? Maybe if it was simply the arena beign built and some shopping/recreation inside of it then maybe people wouldn't be so opposed.

I suggest saying to Ratner that he can have his stadium but keep the housing off OR if there is available space, he then should consolidate his housing into a couple of towers like a "Time Warner Center" style development. Also, considering this will bring in more traffic, why not have some roads improved or have Ratner invest in some schools in return for public support?

All just suggestions.

NYguy

February 1st, 2005, 08:08 PM

This is a propaganda piece.

Someone has an opinion different from yours, and its a propoganda piece? I suppose if the writer had written against the development, that would suit you just fine.

It is a matter of whether a single developer should be favored over multiple developers.

Who are you kiddin? It wouldn't matter if there were 10 developers on that site. It's what is being built there those who are against it are opposed to. Slice it up how you will.

Why, on public property - not yet out to bid - is Ratner the ONLY developer in the mix?

Think about it. You may have just answered your own question. (And by the way, its not all public property)

Letitia James has earned morerespect in her district and surrounding districts for her willingness to get out in front of the fight. Letitia James will win in a landslide.

And finally, you have failed to grasp the idea of the entire piece. Simply put, the writer is pointing out that where once the grandstanding against development was an easy way for politicians to gain support, now those same politicians are losing support for standing against badly needed development and the jobs it will bring. In other words, NIMBYism isn't what it used to be.

Kolbster

February 2nd, 2005, 12:35 AM

Damn

billyblancoNYC

February 2nd, 2005, 02:28 AM

James is garbage. If you don't like close to 3000 subsidized units of housing, a new arena, parks, retail, jobs, etc., then I don't know what to tell you. Perhaps NYC is not the place for you, then.

This op/ed is dead on. Why is it prop? Should all black people fight progress? Should all people not want change? Should the city continue to drag it's feet for every major development plan? Should the city leave a hole in the ground?

Sure, I agree, people losing their homes sucks. BUT, if they are selling out for BUG dollars and are getting preference on new digs, then it's really not that bad a deal, is it?

JCMAN320

February 4th, 2005, 02:56 AM

Hey not for nothing why is no one thinking about New Jersey in all of this. Listen the Devils will have their arena built in Newark, which will start this summer/fall, long before the Brooklyn arena. The arena in Newark will host Seton Hall basketball games and highschool basketball games. It just makes more sense for the Nets to stay here, regardless of what pigheaded Ratner says. Just think of this, the Devils and Nets in Newark across from Newark Penn Station, the Knicks and Rangers in the Garden above Penn Station. What do both of these sites have in common........there connected by the PATH. You can now have the interstate rivalry both teams deserve. A subway series between New York and New Jersey. I have been a Nets fan since I was 6 and I'm 18 now and I'll be dammed if this team moves before I graduate college in 3 years. Before the Nets move the arena in Newark will be done and the Devils will be playing, and you think the Nets are gonna honsetly be the only team in that "outdated arena", which is only 24 years old and is younger and cleaner than the infamous Garden, and not be enticed to play at the arena in Newark for a while even if they do move. Trust me you New Yorkers better hope this arena in BK gets built before the one in Newark, because I think if ours gets built before yours, your gonna have a tough time getting them out of there and with NY politics that isn't that far fetched of an idea at all. Good Luck

billyblancoNYC

February 4th, 2005, 03:07 AM

JCMAN320

February 4th, 2005, 03:29 AM

How dare you question why I live where I choose to live. Talk about disrespectful. I don't have to explain myself to you. I was born and raised in Jersey City and have lived here my entire life and don't plan on jumping the river ever. This is my hometown!! I love my city and state for reasons that I shouldn't have to explain.

Keeping the Nets in Jersey is pure sports fan love, I dont care about how many office buildings get built and how much retail there is, I just love my team and want it to stay here in NJ no matter where they play in the state. This is a team that I have been a fan of and going to games to since I was in first grade and I'm now a freshman at Saint Peter's College. I stuck by this team when they were bad and I love it that they are better than the Knicks and one of the best teams in the NBA now, and are in the playoffs every year and are the better basketball team, finally showing up the once mighty Knicks.

(Nets have one 17 out of the last 20 games that they have played against the Knicks over the past 4-5 years. This includes the Nets sweeps of them in the playoffs two years in a row)

Oh by the way Newark has a powerful and well known intersection too known as Broad and Market which the arena will be on the corner of.

billyblancoNYC

February 4th, 2005, 02:44 PM

First of all, relax. You're acting childish. I wasn't talking about where you live...I don't care, and neither do most, if not all, of the people here. You live in JC until you're old and gray. Knock yourself out.

Secondly, I'm talking about why the Nets want to move to Brooklyn and not Newark. That's what the thread is about...Ratner, the Nets, and Atlantic Yards. Not your house.

If you think that not having amenities around an arena like workers, residents, parks, and retail stores aren't a plus for that arena, you might want to read up on it. Why do you think the Jets, Nets, and Devils are moving to more urban areas?

Sure, I know you're young and defensive about the prospect of losing 2 of your state's teams, but you need to calm down. Like I said, this forum is Wired NEW YORK and you shouldn't be surprised when people here love NY and not NJ.

As far an the Nets being one of the best in the NBA this season, the jury is still out. Maybe they can pull it together, but their losing Jefferson and lacking a powerful man in the middle does not bode well for them. Next year, they could be great again.

BrooklynRider

February 5th, 2005, 08:48 PM

And finally, you have failed to grasp the idea of the entire piece. Simply put, the writer is pointing out that where once the grandstanding against development was an easy way for politicians to gain support, now those same politicians are losing support for standing against badly needed development and the jobs it will bring. In other words, NIMBYism isn't what it used to be.

James is garbage. If you don't like close to 3000 subsidized units of housing, a new arena, parks, retail, jobs, etc., then I don't know what to tell you. Perhaps NYC is not the place for you, then.

This op/ed is dead on. Why is it prop? Should all black people fight progress? Should all people not want change? Should the city continue to drag it's feet for every major development plan? Should the city leave a hole in the ground?

Sure, I agree, people losing their homes sucks. BUT, if they are selling out for BUG dollars and are getting preference on new digs, then it's really not that bad a deal, is it?

After writing the following, I gave it second thought and decided I should preface it by saying that I live in the area, know people and businesses who would be displaced by the plan, and work for an organization that serves this area of Brooklyn and owns and operates a facility on the edge of the proposed development. It is not just another project to me in the long list we track here at WiredNewYork. It is one I follow very closely and one I get reports on in the course of my professional work. With that said...

Before you resort to calling into question my ability to "grasp the idea of the piece", let me assure you, I get it clearly. The point I am making, that you so clearly fail to even want to consider, because you are so certain of your unassailable knowledge of every council district in this city, is that Letiticia James is, in fact, representing the EXACT feelings and concerns of HER constituency in THAT VERY DISTRICT.

It might not be palatable to you or others in the "build and build big for the sake of building anything at all" group ofthinkers, but IN HER DISTRICT, she is representing fairly and accurately her constituents. We all have seen the political leanings, affiliations and propaganda that the dailies can print. Read a Brooklyn newspaper - there are quite a few - and you will see a different and more local view of what is taking place.

The "op/ed" piece in this case is a smear piece because, if you wished to actually delve into the kind of research that lends one "credibility" in making arguments, you will find that those "picketing" her office and challenging her stand have, for lack of a more clear definition, been on the Ratner payroll. These are people and groups who, believing the project is a "done deal", are trying to grab their bits of payoff via a CBA for their individual support, as representatives of larger groups. And, almost every larger COMMUNITY group has attacked the leaders for their underhanded dealings and failure to bring the negotiations into the public arena for review and input. The fact is - they are negotiating in bad faith on behalf of the COMMUNITY, but most are, unfortunately, appointed by the Borough President.

Projects of this size and scope are not "business as usual" for Brooklyn CBs, as they are for a CB1, with a long history of huge developments in their district. Ratner is exploiting relatively inxperienced Brooklyn groups and is trying to do it quickly before the opposition can organize. Unfortunately, the opposition is not only mounting, but coalescing as well. The rumors he fed the media that he was buying out "a majority" of property owners within the project footprint, have been proven false. Yes, he bought out some, but stopped after an Emminent Domain challenge out of Massachusetts (I believe) was agreed to be heard by the US Supreme Court - challenging the right of using emminent domain to (1) increase tax generation by a property and (2) on behalf of a private developer. By FCRC's own admission, they STOPPED buying property once the court decided to hear that case. The "endless buy-outs" and "few hold outs" was nothing but a PR ploy. He is still seeking the power of emminent domain to attain the property or, in a last resort effecort, have the city codemn the properties as "blighted". So, again, you can depend on your propagandized editorials or you can read statements from FCRC, local reports and attend meetings to get FACTS. I could go on and on calling him unscupulous and every other name, but the reality is - he is a developer.

I imagine we'll agree to disagree. But, as someone living in the midst of this and seeing the grass roots and ground movements around this, Ratner has underestimated the neighborhood, their ability to organize and the counter P.R. campaign he has set in motion. I object to inaccurate reporting and the use of progandized editorials that are blatantly false and misleading to undermine a community and community groups for the benefit of an individuals profit motive.

You and the writer should not refer to a blanket "NIMBY"ism, when "NIMBY"ism is hardly at work. No one is objecting to development, they are objecting to the process of this development, the funding of this development and THE COMPLETE LACK OF DETAILS supporting the community benefit CLAIMS of this development. There's not a person or group in opposition to developing the Atlantic Yards. But you can't call them "idiots", because they demand details.

Let's take a "for instance".... Now Ratner, to win wider support for the flagging proposal, is proposing more housing where commercial space was once planned. So, now the housing numbers go up, but he doesn't adjust his proposal numbers for the amount of jobs created that will certainly collapse as three previously planned commercial towers go residential. His spokespeople refuse to answer questions directly.

You have to go back to the birth of this thing. Originally, it was "build a state-of-the-art arena" to bring the NBA to Brooklyn. In an instant, that arena had 17 other buildings attached to it - no actual designs - just wooden blocks piled in a way that we were supposed to "ooh" and "aah" over. I'll pass on the arena and the over-glorified Starret City is drags in its wake.

The blind allegiance to a plan that has provided NO DETAILS, that will be under written with HUNDREDS OF MILLION OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS, and, specifically, which in its very plans for execution calls on the destruction of a vibrant neighborhood is incredulous, faulted, and shallow.

We can argue the proposal all we want. But my "grasp" of the facts is different from yours, because I live here, see it, get flyers daily, have community groups setting up on street corners in my neighborhood, AND I get Ratner's flyers, like the one asking residents to sign a card stating their "support for the project" in return for a free "gift" (in that case a Brooklyn Nets T-Shirt).

As a former employee of a CM that built the Metrotech Center - I also know how Ratner operates. He's not stupid, but I think he let his arrogance get the better of him on this one. We won;t know what's built until it is done, but I'd put money on the fact that it won't be what he proposed, it won't be 17 towers and it definitely will not encompass the 24 acres he presented to the public. No way - no how.

For another example of how "developers" and "city government" are trying to take advantage of the inexperience of Brooklyn CBs. Look at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Completely secrecey, suddenly huge residential development, no details of park design or details - all they showed us were picture of places like Vancouver, to support private luxury residential development in the park. Look at how Ikea used divide and conquer politics to have a big box /parking lot built on valuable waterfront property. Look at the Ikea construction "error" where an historic civil war error building was ERRONEOUSLY destroyed during demolition.

The fact is, for as political as Manhattan development is, Brooklyn development is downright dirty. I cede a level of expertise and knowledge to forum members in Manhattan with relation to details of projects and plans in their respective neighborhoods. I'll use Zippy & BPC as examples in the CB1 area. But, in return, give me a break and an iota of respect when discussing issues and projects happening in my own neighborhood.

BrooklynRider

February 5th, 2005, 11:43 PM

Sorry if I seem like I'm butting my nose in, but why does the plan have to include the huge housing piece? Maybe if it was simply the arena beign built and some shopping/recreation inside of it then maybe people wouldn't be so opposed.

Alex, this is the point MOST people are missing. Originally, Ratner announced plans to build an "arena" to bring the Nets to Brooklyn. In the blink of an eye, it became 24 acres, 17 towers, sales taxes generated by the arena going in to Ratner's pocket for "reinvestment", calling vibrant neighbrorhoods "blighted", and a HUGE land grab through emminent domain.

Brooklynites really are foolish for not thanking Ratner for his kind-hearted gesture.

Teno

February 6th, 2005, 01:19 AM

ASchwarz

February 6th, 2005, 01:03 PM

I agree with the Brooklyn community on this one.

If the development was only the stadium covering that giant ugly gulch, then I wouldn't see a major problem, I think its logical location. Near downtown Brooklyn, the major bridges to Manhattan, and right across the street from one of the largest and busiest subway stations in New York.

The Stadium would bring jobs, activity, and revenue to downtown Brooklyn, and that benefits all.

But Ratner is getting greedy on this one. He wants to displace people from their homes and business to add high rise luxury housing. New housing which will be inaccessible to most people, at a time when we need more affordable housing.

I can agree with the community for fighting against that.

"The Community" surrounding the Gehry project is completely divided. There is no clear community position. As a nearby resident, I'd guess a slight majority of residents support the general outline of the plan. Businesses overwhelmingly support Ratner. I am always wary of fringe groups which claim to represent the larger community.

Teno

February 7th, 2005, 01:02 AM

alex ballard

February 7th, 2005, 04:35 PM

I wonder if in all this there may be too much confusion, no clear idea of what exactly is being opposed.

As example what if most of the support is for the stadium itself and not so much for the developement over flow.

What if most of the objection is for the over flow of luxury towers and not so much directed at the stadium.

But Ratner has linked it all together which forces people to be for or against the entire project.

Like I said, maybe they could reconfigure the development so the buildings and Arena could fit on the yards. Also, if this is about more people, why are people so against more people, especally wealthy people? Everyone is about "Affordable housing", but the fact is, when newer luxury developments are built, then existing housing can go for affordable housing. Yes, affordable housing should be built, but it shouldn't be forced. The more wealth in the city equals more jobs which means more oppertuniy which takes care of the housing pricing problem.

billyblancoNYC

February 7th, 2005, 05:00 PM

What if most of the objection is for the over flow of luxury towers and not so much directed at the stadium.

It will be 50% affordable...low, moderate, and middle incomes.

billyblancoNYC

February 7th, 2005, 05:01 PM

NewYorkYankee

February 7th, 2005, 05:06 PM

The basics of supply and demand.

BrooklynRider

February 7th, 2005, 06:40 PM

Look, with all due respect, let's stop regurgitating this crap about more luxury housing will result in lower rents and more affordable housing across the board. It is UNPROVEN, UNTRUE and makes seemingly intelligent people look like they have their heads in the sand.

Billy says Downtown Rents are "cheap". Billy, define "cheap". Or, do you mean "cheap" in comparison to other neighborhoods.

This is off topic and a post for another section of the forum, but I'd like to see a roll call of forum members, the neighborhoods they live in, the type of building they live in, the number of units in the building, their current rent and then see if they are living and affording these places alone.

I just can't listen to this unsupported b.s, about more housing driving prices down. Stop with this nonsense.

Kolbster

February 7th, 2005, 09:12 PM

Two Words

Urban Renewal

ryan

February 8th, 2005, 12:50 AM

Like I said, maybe they could reconfigure the development so the buildings and Arena could fit on the yards. Also, if this is about more people, why are people so against more people, especally wealthy people? Everyone is about "Affordable housing", but the fact is, when newer luxury developments are built, then existing housing can go for affordable housing. Yes, affordable housing should be built, but it shouldn't be forced. The more wealth in the city equals more jobs which means more oppertuniy which takes care of the housing pricing problem.

That and the fact that overall if more units are built, typically more supply means lower prices. Look at the office market, DT rents are really cheap b/c there's a lot of vacatn space compared to Midtown. The same should hold true for residential, although prices have been pretty outrageous for a while now. The fact is, development is not meeting demand. When it does, prices will drop.

The basics of supply and demand.

Do you guys have an example of a luxury housing development actually lowering residential rents in a neighborhood? If you do, please post about it in detail to back up your argument.

I really want to agree with this macroeconomic supply/demand argument because it is so logical, but I think it is too simplistic to apply to NYC residential real estate. In my experience a luxury development in the neighborhood actually increases local rents b/c of a halo effect. My landlord specifically told me that he increased my rent because the neighborhood was "turning over" in his words, so the same apartment is worth more. (and he was right - I'm not bitter because it is nicer and I'm paying a fair rent)

I would agree that there is an inherent housing shortage in NYC. It is a built environment and constrained by geography, but I think it would take tens of thousands of units to possibly have the effect you are describing. Even then I would be skeptical that it would satisfy demand enough to lower rents. In Greenpoint/Williamsburg there is talk of building 20,000 units, and rents are only rising - just in anticipation. Regardless of our specific local issues, real estate supply is booming nationwide, but the cost of real estate is skyrocketing. The only areas where real estate costs are not booming are places in the rust belt with declining populations, but even then real estate costs are not declining.

Personally, I'm not informed enough to get into the Atlantic yards debate, but I support most development - I would love to see a beautiful waterfront neighborhood in my neighborhood, North Brooklyn, and I don't think it will destroy what is already here. (though I would like to see a couple blocks of the vinyl sided row-houses landmarked because it's such an intense aesthetic)

billyblancoNYC

February 8th, 2005, 02:36 AM

When I was talking about DT being cheap, I was actually using commercial rents as an example.

But, if you look at the new residential developments downtown, like the conversions on Wall, these buildings might not be ""cheap" but they are reasonably priced for NY, they offer incentives like No broker's fee, 1 or 2 mo free rent, and more amenities like concierges and big screen tv lounges. This is b/c the area has a lot of units coming on board now.

I wasn't saying that prices will be Idaho cheap, but they will be more reasonable with more competition. That's my thoughts. If someone doesn't agree, excellent.

Real Estate, especially NYC real estate, depends on too many factors to boil it down to one idea or theory.

NYC is exepensive and if someone can't afford to live here, maybe they should think about another location. My wife's cousins decided to move to PA from Queens b/c they got more for the money. Some live in studios with a roommate b/c they want to live in prime Manahattan. To each his own.

elfgam

February 8th, 2005, 01:46 PM

New York City can flaunt a lot of the conventional rules that apply to real estate markets because of the shear size of the market and the shear shortfall in the number of units. Right now, even with bloomberg's proposals the virtual net increase (i.e. new units v. those lost/replaced/consolidated) in the number of units in NYC, even back to when our population started to rise again under Guliani has been about 0... zero, zilch. Our population meanwhile has gone up from about 7.6 million to about 8.1. There are also ton's of people who love to move to NYC who don't because it is so expensive, but it won't get cheaper because every time prices may dip a little (i.e. the year after 9/11) they pile in and drive prices up again, at precisely the moment people think they will collapse.

Most cities have an operating vacancy rate (i.e. appartments open do to moving, time before they are rented or sold, or time after completion but before occupancy) of about 7%, counting illegal subdivisions and conversions NYC has an operating vacancy rate of about -2 to -5%.

Basically NYC is short several HUNDRED THOUSAND units, and these are not going to pop up anywhere soon because of the second factor of NYC housing: there are too few areas in the city where people are willing to pay a lot to live (i.e. what ousiders call 'the good parts'). These parts are all so full that it would be impossible for them to add the number of units required to dent the supply/demand ratio.

The only way to really do this, is to open new areas to being (yikes, do i say it) gentrified. As places like Harlem, Redhook, Fort Greene, Prospect Heights, etc. get better, their prices go up, displacing residents there but becoming relatively affordable for the middle-class people forced out of even more expensive areas. This may or may not be a good thing depending on how you look at it, but that's a whole other argument.

While Ratner's new units are a drop in the bucket, his project has the potential to pull the redevelopment of brooklyn's core area (largely confined to the area immediately around DT, the waterfront, and the areas to the south) further east to encompass the now decrepit Atlantic Avenue corridor and the further reaches of prospect heights. If these areas begin to gentrify and receive new construction the sum total of the new units possible in these neighborhoods may cheapen rents just a bit... until another hundred thousand people move into the city.

It has been suggested (though I can't remember for the life of me where) that NYC could easily, now, support a population of closer to 10million. That's ALOT of housing units.

Teno

February 8th, 2005, 04:11 PM

NYC is exepensive and if someone can't afford to live here, maybe they should think about another location.

I don't think that's the answer either.

Their is an article in the Times speaking about prices for general necesities in NY are far more expensive than the rest of the country.

If that trend continues it will negatively affect the over all quality of life in NY and its ability to attract talented people.

billyblancoNYC

February 9th, 2005, 02:04 AM

I agree, but something needs to be done. People don't want development, then they was housing for low-income people. Then they want this and that.

The bottom line is NYC needs more housing. Period. The city needs to plan for and allow for massive growth into the foreseeable future. I think the plans today for the Hudson Yards, Atlantic Yards, and the proposed plan for Williamsburg are more than fair allowing for about 25-50% of the units as affordable. BUT, there needs to be more for middle-income. People love to harp on low income, but it's better for the city to attract middle-income people.

Areas gentrifying is also not such a terrible thing as people like to say it is. That's what happens now. It sucks for people who have to move, but it's better for the city overall...for the most part. It sucked when people had to move b/c of massive crime and filth, too.

There's no easy solution, but the major plans on the board today are a good start. The city really needs to get its shit together and map out a real, thorough plan for adding 250K units over the next 5-10 yrs. 14K on the Hudson Yards is not enough, but it's a good place to start.

alex ballard

February 9th, 2005, 08:47 AM

I agree that the "Low-income" demographic is not what we should be shooting for. We should be building housing for people pulling in 20-80K a year. People like Gov workers, plumbers, mechanics, back-office workers, retail clerks, janitors and the other jobs that form the nation's backbone. Don't get me wrong, the lower end of the pay scale should have a voice in the city too. But they also have Newark, Yonkers, Hempstead and other areas to go to. And I do forsee a NYC with not a single bad neighborhood. And I personally believe that's a good thing. Also, as opposed to popualtion waves past, these people are putting real, permanient investment into these areas.

But the real gold mine is people like me. 17-24 year olds looking for thier first jobs and apartments. NYC would be awesome in attracting these people. Plus, we should make an effort to attract young families and encourage them to stay in the city and not flee when that first bundle of joy arrives. Those are the two greatest demographics we need to attract.

NYguy

February 25th, 2005, 10:14 AM

alex ballard

February 25th, 2005, 05:56 PM

DAILY NEWS

Nets arena foes make case to IOC

BY DEBORAH KOLBEN

They called it a "Trojan Horse."

Foes of developer Bruce Ratner's $2.5 billion bid to build an NBA arena in Prospect Heights this week told the visiting International Olympic Committee they were being duped - just like the Greeks deceived the Trojans.

Members of the group Develop, Don't Destroy Brooklyn were given 15 minutes to present their case to four committee officials at a closed-door meeting Wednesday morning.

"The Olympic bid is a Trojan horse being used to grab 24 acres of prime real estate in Brooklyn," Shabnam Merchant said she told the committee.

"Real estate developers are really using you guys," she said to the four IOC representatives.

The proposed Atlantic Yards project includes an arena and 17 apartment and office towers. The arena would be used for gymnastics during the 2012 Summer Games.

Arena opponents say that Ratner supporters hope that attaching the arena to the Olympics will help garner public support for the project.

"They're co-opting the Olympics for a real estate deal," Merchant said. The anti-arena group insists, however, that it is not opposed to the city's Olympic bid.

The 13-member IOC panel spent four days touring New York as part an evaluation of the city's bid for the 2012 Games.

Committee members could not be reached for comment on the meeting. A Ratner spokesman declined to comment.

Opponents blanketed the neighborhood this week in banners slamming Ratner's planned development, which would stretch above the Long Island Rail Road yards along Atlantic Ave. and Pacific St. between Vanderbilt and Flatbush Aves.

"We want the IOC to know there's enormous controversy over this arena," said Patti Hagan of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition.

Hagan and a handful of neighbors braved the cold yesterday carrying anti-arena placards in hopes of running into the committee, which spent yesterday touring Staten Island, Brooklyn and New Jersey.

"Eminent Domain Abuse," declared one of the banners, alluding to Ratner's attempt to use the government's power to condemn private land for development.

The panel has visited Madrid and London and travels to Paris and Moscow next month before the July vote in Singapore.

"They seemed very engaged and were taking lots of notes," Merchant said about the meeting. "I'm glad they stopped to listen to the community."

It's one thing when thousands of housing units are brough down for an expressway (ala Cross-Bronx in the 1950's). But it's another when small amounts of public land go for MORE housing and community development. I mean, this will infuse more money into small businesses and help spur ongoing development in Central Brooklyn.

Back in 1978 when they close the Jamaica Ave El, the very businesses that called for it eventually went out of business. Macy's left right after the El went down. The moral of the story is things like housing, transit, schools, office buildings, and shopping districts help bring neighborhoods back and thrive. These people have no apprecation for the interest people have in Brooklyn.

At this point, if I we're ratner, I would threaten to take all my offices and housing and move down I-95 to Philly where they would be MORE than apprecated. That will be the next Brooklyn and these NIMBYs will feel very defeated when Philly becomes Manhattan's next sub-urb (along with Queens and the Bronx).

However, I'm sure Brooklyn will move on to be the next Manhattan regardless weither this project gets built or not.

Kris

February 26th, 2005, 10:41 AM

February 27, 2005

HABITATS | BROOKLYN

Battling a Developer's Mammoth Plans

By PENELOPE GREEN

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/02/25/realestate/27habi2.184.jpg
The condominium on Pacific Street near downtown Brooklyn.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/dropcap/d.gifAN GOLDSTEIN loves his new home, a 1,280-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath, roughly finished condominium in a former warehouse building on Pacific Street near downtown Brooklyn. Which is why he does not want to leave, even though he is being pressed to do so.

The approach to the building is not the grandest. Across the street are the dormant subway cars of the Atlantic Avenue rail yards, loosely corralled by a chain-link fence. Beyond the yards lie the dubious aesthetic pleasures of the Atlantic Mall.

But the former warehouse - the Allied Storage Building, designed by the architect George S. Kingsley and built in 1926 - with its blue and white ceramic medallions and florid stone rosettes, presents a noble face (and a singular one) that harks back to a time when even a building made for storage hoped to be beautiful. Besides, Mr. Goldstein's apartment, on the seventh floor, faces Dean Street and Flatbush Avenue, and its views of Brooklyn are glorious.

Mr. Goldstein is the only resident of the condo, now called the Atlantic Art Building, who has not sold his or her apartment to Bruce C. Ratner and his Forest City Ratner company in the last year to make way for a development that is to include a new home for Mr. Ratner's New Jersey Nets.

Atlantic Art was the name given to the 31-unit building by its developer, Marc Freud, who briefly tried to brand its neighborhood NoFA, for, north of Flatbush Avenue, when he converted the building in 2002. It now sits in the middle of a development planned by Mr. Ratner, Forest City Ratner's president. In addition to the new home for his basketball team, Mr. Ratner hopes to put up office and apartment towers designed by Frank Gehry. Company officials say they are poised to sign a memo of understanding with the city in a few weeks.

The 21-acre footprint for the controversial plan, which the company estimates would raze about 140 apartments, stretches from Atlantic Avenue to Dean Street and from Flatbush to Vanderbilt Avenues. It would erase the area's most recent incarnation as a yuppies-on-the-edge outpost of Prospect Heights, one organized by developers like Shaya Boymelgreen, whose conversion of the former Daily News printing plant at 700 Pacific Street into condominiums spurred hasty copycat conversions of other industrial buildings, including Allied Storage.

(That incarnation, of course, rests on the shoulders of more grass-roots conversions made by artist pioneers, who colonized the largely industrial area 15 or so years ago.)

Mr. Goldstein, 35, is a Web designer with a new career - local activist - a switch mostly driven, he said, by the threat to his new community. The fact that he has lived for only a year and a half in a condo building that, according to its president, Matt Klein, has been plagued with construction problems (poorly insulated pipes cracked during the cold snap last month, as did the boiler, leaving the building without heat or water for a week and a half) lends a piquant air to his solo stance.

"I'm a person living in the home I love," he said, "and I intend to stay in it. I haven't had any construction problems. Anyway, I may be the only one in my building opposed to the Ratner plan, but there are thousands living within and without the footprint who are against it."

Indeed, as members of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, Mr. Goldstein and others have collected 12,000 signatures opposing the project. The group, which has the support of many community leaders, offers as an alternative a more organic, home-grown development, the Unity Plan, that calls for keeping, not razing, the existing buildings, and for new construction on the rail yards.

The week before last, Mr. Goldstein's front door was decorated with a red and white poster with the slash-in-a-circle graphic surrounding the words "Eminent Domain Abuse"; a sisal Peter Max "Love" doormat sat below. An old desk topped with a hamper and some glass vases sat outside a neighbor's door, the discards from the neighbor's exodus.

Inside, Mr. Goldstein's apartment was both folksy and industrial, with smoke-colored walls and wood and resin furniture made by his friend Sebastian Hamilton. Jane Jacobs's manifesto on new urbanism, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," lay on a coffee table.

Mr. Goldstein had been renting in Park Slope when he began looking for a place to buy. A regular at open houses, with more than one accepted offer, he looked for four years before he found this apartment. The generous spaces and prewar provenance of the building appealed to him. He saw a sound investment in an area on the upswing. "I was looking for a place that I could live in a long time," he said, "one that the hypothetical kids could be in for a while."

Mr. Goldstein moved here with his fiancée in May 2003. He declined to say what he paid for the apartment, but according to Hal Lehrman, a principal broker with Brooklyn Properties, which sold 70 percent of the units, a similar unit cost just under $600,000. (Prices for the building, he said, ranged from $305,000 for a one-bedroom to $975,000 for a three-bedroom penthouse.)

With new woodworking skills learned at the Crafts Students League in Manhattan, Mr. Goldstein built cupboards and shelves in all the closets, a professional-looking stainless steel shower door and a glass brick and rosewood-veneered bookshelf and planter that fits nicely in a living room window. "I was impressed with myself that I could do these things," he said wryly. His fiancée, a painter, chose the smoky colors throughout.

"It was definitely a place we made together," Mr. Goldstein said. They have since broken up. Her office space is now empty, save for boxes of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn T-shirts, in red, black and pink. A "No Eminent Domain Abuse" banner is jury-rigged to the windows outside, a bit tattered from the wind.

When he read about Mr. Ratner's plan to move the Nets near the mall on Atlantic Avenue, Mr. Goldstein said, he thought, "Well, that's nice, I like sports."

"I didn't think an arena would be built on top of a residential neighborhood," he added.

By December 2003, it was clear that was exactly the Ratner plan, and residents in the Atlantic Arts Building began organizing. Mr. Goldstein had been laid off from a Web job and found himself increasingly involved in the opposition. By last January, he said, it had become a full-time job. (He's not starving, he said, "because I worked for AOL during the go-go 90's.") When his neighbors began negotiating with the company, Mr. Goldstein demurred.

Tenants signed a nondisclosure agreement for the sale of their apartments, which included a provision that they speak favorably about the deal. Mr. Klein, 34, the condo board president, who is a director of a nonprofit foundation, said in a conference call organized by a spokesman for Forest City Ratner that residents were extremely happy with their deals. Sale prices were not disclosed, but the word on the street is that owners got about double what they paid.

"Most of us were first-time homeowners," Mr. Klein said. "We bought into a complete lemon, but it was the best investment we could have made, given what happened."

Despite Mr. Goldstein's rebuff, James P. Stuckey, an executive vice president at Forest City Ratner, said the company's plans for the building are unchanged. "It's now up to Dan," he said. "We would like to come to some sort of understanding, but in any deal you need two people to sit at the table."

Mr. Stuckey said his company's plan included 4,500 units of residential housing. "What I believe is that the public sector will take over," he said, "and then use as one of its tools eminent domain," forcing him out.

Mr. Goldstein, who majored in peace studies and English at Colgate University, said that "the hammer of eminent domain" has dismantled for him the notion that Forest City Ratner is tendering a good-faith offer. He described himself as a political junkie who never imagined engaging in politics at a local level. "Now I think it's the only place where what you do can have an effect," he said.

"I know that I'm doing the right thing," he said. "I never said, 'Should I do this?' If I can't oppose something that threatens my home, my neighbors and my neighborhood, then what am I ever going to fight for?"

Copyright 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

Kris

March 4th, 2005, 07:48 AM

March 4, 2005

Deal Is Signed for Nets Arena in Brooklyn

By CHARLES V. BAGLI

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/dropcap/t.gifhe city and the state have signed an agreement with the developer Bruce C. Ratner to build a new home for the Nets basketball team and at least 4,500 apartments as part of a $2.5 billion project at the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn.

Under the terms of the nonbinding agreement that has been under negotiation for nearly a year, Mr. Ratner, chief executive of Forest City Ratner Companies, would build a $435 million, glass-enclosed arena designed by Frank Gehry on the railyards at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues. The developer would also build more than a dozen residential buildings for mixed-income residents on three blocks to the east.

The 21-acre project, which has come under attack from some local residents, is the largest development in the city outside of Manhattan in the last 25 years. If the project gets all the necessary approvals, the city and the state have agreed to provide about $100 million each for site preparation, new streets and utilities and environmental cleanup.

"This is an historic project that will continue to energize the borough of Brooklyn," Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in a statement issued last night. He had hoped to announce the project on his radio program today, but word leaked out.

In his statement, Gov. George E. Pataki said the city was now "one step closer to bringing professional sports back to Brooklyn."

The agreement, known as a memorandum of understanding, is a milestone for the project. But it still must go through a lengthy environmental review, condemnation proceedings, approval by the state Public Authorities Control Board and possible lawsuits. The Empire State Development Corporation would shepherd the project through the review process and take control of any land the developer has not already acquired.

"This project is too big," said Patti Hagan, a leader of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition. "We don't want to supersize Brooklyn." She said 1,000 people would lose their jobs or homes because of the project.

Mr. Ratner must also contend with a rival developer, Shaya Boymelgreen, who owns property on the development site and, at least for now, opposes Forest City's project. Mr. Boymelgreen's company has said it is moving forward with plans to convert an old bread factory into a hotel. The state would have to condemn Mr. Boymelgreen's property for Mr. Ratner's project to go forward.

Mr. Ratner must also buy or lease the railyard from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority so that he can build the 19,000-seat arena there. In a separate agreement with the authority, he agreed to pay fair market value for the property. But the authority also reserved its right to hold an auction to determine that value and to sell it to another bidder.

Earlier this year, the authority had been ready to sign the agreement with the city, the state and the developer. But that plan went awry after Cablevision offered to buy the development rights over the West Side railyards in Manhattan at a higher price than the Jets, which already had an agreement with the authority to build a football stadium there. The authority ultimately decided to open up the bidding in Manhattan to all potential buyers and to follow a similar process in Brooklyn.

Mr. Ratner led an investment group that bought the Nets a year ago with the intention of moving the team to a new arena in Brooklyn. He used the arena, in turn, as leverage for a large housing development. The project originally called for four office towers. Executives who have talked with the developer say he plans to scale back the office space to add as many as 1,000 apartments.

Copyright 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

NYguy

March 4th, 2005, 08:53 AM

DAILY NEWS

Mike, gov: arena good to go

BY PAUL H.B. SHIN

The controversial plan to build a new arena for the Nets in Brooklyn officially got the green light last night.

The city's Economic Development Corp. and the state's Empire State Development Corp. have inked a memorandum of understanding with developer Forest City Ratner - kicking off the formal public review for the $2.5 billion plan, state and city officials said.

This is an historic project that will continue to energize the borough of Brooklyn," Mayor Bloomberg said in a joint statement with Gov. Pataki.

The memo makes only minor changes to billionaire developer Bruce Ratner's proposal, which calls for a $430 million, Frank Gehry-designed arena at Flatbush and Atlantic Aves., as well as 17 high-rise office and apartment buildings.

The number of apartments has been increased from the originally proposed 4,500 units by reducing some of the 2.4 million square feet of office and retail space, a source said.

Ratner had also asked the city and state for $450 million in infrastructure subsidies to the 21-acre site, but that figure has shrunk to about $100 million apiece from the city and state, officials said.

The memorandum also spells out the state's commitment to use its power of eminent domain to condemn property on the site that has not already been purchased by Forest City Ratner.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the 10-acre Long Island Rail Road yards over which part of the development has been proposed, is expected to send a "letter of support" for the deal.

MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow has vowed to get fair market value for the rights to build over the yards.

Kolbster

March 4th, 2005, 09:46 AM

It felt so good to wake up this morning and read that on the 3rd page of the metro section!!!

NoyokA

March 4th, 2005, 10:28 AM

The memorandum also spells out the state's commitment to use its power of eminent domain to condemn property on the site that has not already been purchased by Forest City Ratner.

Break out the champagne! See ya later, you rotten cry babies.

NoyokA

March 4th, 2005, 03:45 PM

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/03/04/nyregion/arena.span.jpg

NYTIMES:
March 4, 2005
Deal Is Signed for Nets Arena in Brooklyn
By CHARLES V. BAGLI

The city and the state have signed an agreement with the developer Bruce C. Ratner to build a new home for the Nets basketball team and at least 4,500 apartments as part of a $2.5 billion project at the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn.

Under the terms of the nonbinding agreement that has been under negotiation for nearly a year, Mr. Ratner, chief executive of Forest City Ratner Companies, would build a $435 million, glass-enclosed arena designed by Frank Gehry on the railyards at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues. The developer would also build more than a dozen residential buildings for mixed-income residents on three blocks to the east.

The 21-acre project, which has come under attack from some local residents, is the largest development in the city outside of Manhattan in the last 25 years. If the project gets all the necessary approvals, the city and the state have agreed to provide about $100 million each for site preparation, new streets and utilities and environmental cleanup.

"This is an historic project that will continue to energize the borough of Brooklyn," Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in a statement issued last night. He had hoped to announce the project on his radio program today, but word leaked out.

In his statement, Gov. George E. Pataki said the city was now "one step closer to bringing professional sports back to Brooklyn."

The agreement, known as a memorandum of understanding, is a milestone for the project. But it still must go through a lengthy environmental review, condemnation proceedings, approval by the state Public Authorities Control Board and possible lawsuits. The Empire State Development Corporation would shepherd the project through the review process and take control of any land the developer has not already acquired.

"This project is too big," said Patti Hagan, a leader of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition. "We don't want to supersize Brooklyn." She said 1,000 people would lose their jobs or homes because of the project.

Mr. Ratner must also contend with a rival developer, Shaya Boymelgreen, who owns property on the development site and, at least for now, opposes Forest City's project. Mr. Boymelgreen's company has said it is moving forward with plans to convert an old bread factory into a hotel. The state would have to condemn Mr. Boymelgreen's property for Mr. Ratner's project to go forward.

Mr. Ratner must also buy or lease the railyard from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority so that he can build the 19,000-seat arena there. In a separate agreement with the authority, he agreed to pay fair market value for the property. But the authority also reserved its right to hold an auction to determine that value and to sell it to another bidder.

Earlier this year, the authority had been ready to sign the agreement with the city, the state and the developer. But that plan went awry after Cablevision offered to buy the development rights over the West Side railyards in Manhattan at a higher price than the Jets, which already had an agreement with the authority to build a football stadium there. The authority ultimately decided to open up the bidding in Manhattan to all potential buyers and to follow a similar process in Brooklyn.

Mr. Ratner led an investment group that bought the Nets a year ago with the intention of moving the team to a new arena in Brooklyn. He used the arena, in turn, as leverage for a large housing development. The project originally called for four office towers. Executives who have talked with the developer say he plans to scale back the office space to add as many as 1,000 apartments.

alex ballard

March 4th, 2005, 05:32 PM

So, in short, this project is a go?

NewYorkYankee

March 4th, 2005, 07:34 PM

Good news! :)

Kolbster

March 4th, 2005, 08:06 PM

So, in short, this project is a go?

2 and 2 man, 2 and 2

BrooklynRider

March 4th, 2005, 10:38 PM

If emminent domain is the fulcrum to move this project forward, no one is safe from the government's arbitrary application of the law and indiscriminate seizure of property.

I completely disagree with references to those opposed as "cry babies" This action means people are going to be evicted and have the homes they OWN stolen outright by the state of NY. The justification is: So a private developer can build a private development on that stolen land to build a bigger building for his own personal profit - NOTING: the deal let's all sales taxes generated on that now stolen property go directly into the developer's pockets for "redevelopment".

This is will be a text book example of EMMINENT DOMAIN ABUSE!

NOTE ON EDITING: Stern and I had a dialogue outside this thread - we both understand where we were coming from. I respect the rules of the forum and excised some unnecessary comments that were made in anger. He's taking me to dinner tomorrow and we'll be married in Massachusetts next week. <apologies for overreacting>

nybboy

March 4th, 2005, 10:44 PM

How many people are actually going to get evicted against their own will? Or how many buildings are going to get condemned, excluding the ones going to be bought out? I know some are wanting to stay on their property, but I remember one of the articles saying that Ratner has bought out a lot of the residential and commercial owners, but not all of them.

NoyokA

March 4th, 2005, 10:48 PM

To clarify I think the hold-outs are crybabies because residents were promised and many accepted nearly double market value and first offerings in a new Gehry designed condo development.

Hold-outs will now recieve market value.

This will benefit Brooklyn not only in jobs and creating a vibrant neighborhood but will repair a psyche damaged when Ebbets field was destroyed.

NOTE ON EDITING: Stern and I had a dialogue outside this thread - we both understand where we were coming from. I respect the rules of the forum and excised some unnecessary comments that were made in anger. He's taking me to dinner tomorrow and we'll be married in Massachusetts next week. <apologies for overreacting>

That said its out with the old and in with the new and a nouveau dinner in Williamsburg or is it out with the new and in with the old? Ah, hell, dinner’s at Junior’s.

BrooklynRider

March 4th, 2005, 10:57 PM

NoyokA

March 4th, 2005, 11:05 PM

It's not people being evicted from apartments they rent in buildings being sold. The crime is in the eviction of people from homes they own, who do not wish to sell. The crime is in having the state seize private property for the enrichment of a private person or entity. There is no public benefit from the seizure of anyone's home - even if you love the proposed project - because the abuse and arbitrary application of emminent domain threatens everyone going forward. The abuse as demonstrated here is in and of itself fascism.

Fas*cism: n. Oppressive, dictatorial control (Source: The American Heritage Dictionary)

You'll find a good number of people who agree with you and just as many who believe in the need for progress. Unfortunately for you and fortunately for the fate of an ever changing city the council vote for condemnation, which of course is not an easy decision and more often than not goes the other way, but the amount of long-term good this will do for Brooklyn overweighs the social quams.

ZippyTheChimp

March 4th, 2005, 11:28 PM

Justices Consider Homeowner Rights Versus Government 'Eminent Domain'

BY LUIZA Ch. SAVAGE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
February 23, 2005

http://www.nysun.com/article/9585

WASHINGTON - In a case that could affect urban development nationwide, the Supreme Court yesterday considered limiting the power of governments to raze private property to make way for lucrative real estate projects.

A group of families from New London, Conn., asked the court to prevent the forced sale of their longtime homes to enable a large private commercial development.

A victory for the families could stiffen constitutional protections for property owners, and strengthen the hand of opponents of projects such as a planned sports arena at Brooklyn.

At oral argument yesterday, several justices expressed concern that an unchecked power to take land for "public use" hurts some property owners in order to profit others. But the justices were also wary of drawing courts into the details of local decision-making.

Arguing that the development was necessary to turn around a declining tax base and bring in thousands of new jobs, New London was backed by local governments, including New York City, and the National League of Cities.

The case, known as Kelo v. New London, concerns the limits on the government's power of "eminent domain," which allows the government to take private property for "public use" in exchange for compensation.

In its brief, New York officials argued that the power of eminent domain was crucial to the development of the city, including the creation of landmarks such as Lincoln Center, the World Trade Center before its destruction, and the redeveloped Times Square. Economic redevelopment projects allow cities to use corporations to accomplish the public purpose, the brief states.

The lawyer for Susette Kelo and six other homeowners who have battled for five years to keep their homes, argued that without greater limits on government power, any property could be closed to make way for enterprises that pay higher taxes.

"Every home, church, or store would produce more in tax revenues and jobs if it were a Costco or a private office building," the lawyer, Scott Bullock, told the court "You're going to put poor and working-class neighborhoods into jeopardy," he added.

But his arguments also came under aggressive questioning from the judges, who said cities need to find ways to revitalize depressed neighborhoods.

"You're leaving out that New London was in a depressed economic condition," Justice Ginsburg told Mr. Bullock only minutes after he began his argument.

The New London families argued that eminent-domain power does not apply to speculative real estate developments the way it has been found to apply in the past - to land used for public purposes such as railway lines, power plants, and hospitals.

Their argument appeared to find favor with Justice Scalia, who said he did not think public utilities and private real estate ventures "are comparable at all."

But some justices sided with the lawyer for New London, Wesley Horton, who argued that there is no difference between using land for potentially lucrative real estate deals and other public purposes.

"If a person can't find a job or can't get basic services because the town can't afford it, it's just as important as the trains running on time," Mr. Horton told the judges.

Justice Souter agreed. "There isn't another public way to do it, and that ought to qualify as a public use," he said.

The president of the National Leagues of Cities and the mayor of Washington, D.C., Anthony Williams, attended the hearing and said afterward that the power of eminent domain is crucial to cities that want to rejuvenate neighborhoods.

But the lawyer for New London made clear that the cities are claiming a power that is not restricted to poor areas.

When Justice O'Connor asked whether a city has the right to require a Motel 6 to sell its land in order to make way for a Ritz-Carleton Hotel, simply to gain more taxes, Mr. Horton said yes.

Justice O'Connor then asked why the city should not simply have to buy the land at market value, to which Mr. Bullock responded that some owners would not sell for any price. Their rights troubled Justice Scalia.

"You are also taking property from someone who doesn't want to sell it," he said. "That counts for nothing?"

Several justices stressed the difficulty of distinguishing projects that are strictly for private or public benefit. "There is no taking for private use that wouldn't have a public benefit of some kind," Justice Breyer told Mr. Bullock. "That is a fact of the world," he said.

They also expressed concerns that the families' arguments might require the bench to overturn its own precedents.

Mr. Bullock suggested that courts should at the very least require a government to demonstrate that the public benefits of proposed ventures are not merely speculative.

The prospect of such a judicial test raised concerns from Justice Scalia, who asked, "You want us to sit here and evaluate the prospects of every [development project]?"

Justice Breyer suggested that perhaps cities should have to show that a public benefit from the private project was at least "reasonably foreseeable."

The justices also questioned whether homeowners were entitled to a premium based on the expected profits from proposed developments.

The discussion heartened the homeowners, who were joined by groups representing retired people, racial minorities, churches, and community activists opposed to developments, including a group of activists from Brooklyn.

"I am excited, and I believe it was a victory for the little guy," said a Brooklyn member of the New York City Council, Letitia James, who attended the hearing with a group of opponents of a proposed arena and office-building project in Prospect Heights. "Clearly the Supreme Court is troubled by the abuse of eminent domain."

In a separate and potentially far-reaching property rights case heard yesterday, the court considered whether property owners should be compensated for lost revenues due to rent control regulations. The case could affect a broad range of government regulations that affect the value of private property.

The case concerns a Hawaii regulation requiring the oil-company Chevron to reduce the rents charged on gas stations in a state effort to reduce gas prices. The scheme was struck down by the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit because it did not "substantially advance" the goal of lower prices.

Lawyers for Hawaii and the federal government asked the Supreme Court to reverse that decision, arguing that it turns courts into "super-legislatures."

Chevron lawyers said the company should be compensated for lost revenues. The justices appeared reluctant to judge the "goodness or badness" of the regulation.

Chief Justice Rehnquist, who is being treated for thyroid cancer, did not attend the arguments. Justice Stevens also did not attend due to an airline flight cancellation. Justice O'Connor announced that both judges would participate in deciding the case based on written briefs and transcripts of the hearing.

normaldude

March 4th, 2005, 11:59 PM

Crybabies was an attack to the people and their greedy actions who live in the Atlantic Yards footprint.

It's greedy to want to own your own home?

Let's say you worked all your life to pay off your home. You maintained it, and now you supposedly own it debt free. You spent years building your ideal home theater system in the basement. Your wife spent years building & growing a garden in the backyard. You and your wife retire around age 60, and look forward to spending your golden years living out of your nice home that you supposedly own.

But wait. Some guy drives by your house, and decides that he would like to open a McDonalds or a used car dealership on your property. He would generate a lot more tax revenue than retirees like you and your wife. So if you didn't want to sell, would it be fair for the government to use eminent domain to take your property against your will and give it to him? Simply because this new guy would generate more tax revenue than retirees like yourself?

..Justice Antonin Scalia cut to the heart of the case: "So you can always take from A and give to B if B pays more taxes?" Amazingly enough, the answer he got was yes — "if there are significantly more taxes." So Wesley Horton, an attorney for New London, Conn., told the Supreme Court last week..

I definitely support eminent domain for public sector projects like highways, bridges and train lines. But using eminent domain for private sector projects (current Supreme Court case of Kelo vs New London) should face a higher hurdle. When using eminent domain for private sector, for-profit purposes, I'd be more comfortable if it had to pass a 2/3rds vote.. either city council, or referendum, or state legislature. That way, it can be done when the community overwhelmingly needs it done, but it still gives homeowners some level of protection from eminent domain abuse & corruption.

ZippyTheChimp

March 5th, 2005, 12:43 AM

I liked this project from the beginning, but that was when I thought it involved the triangle to 6th Ave (the arena and attached towers) and the land over the railyards. A good case can be made for eminent domain. However, the area to Vanderbilt Ave is another story. This is far from blight, there is no direct public use, so the catch-all increase the tax base is used to justify the public good.

I can use that argument to justify taking any piece of property in America.

I'm surprised the Supreme Court case has not been discussed here - it will certainly affect development nationwide. In truth, the Supreme Court has been AWOL on this issue for decades, and local governments, without any court guidance, have eroded the concept of eminent domain into land grabs by developers.

The issue is not about how many people are involved, or how much they are paid. It's about the basic constitutional right of private property protection - a cornerstone of American society.

The Supreme Court needs to define the boundaries.

BrooklynRider

March 5th, 2005, 12:38 PM

alex ballard

March 5th, 2005, 07:16 PM

Well, this is one of the reasons why the whole thing is so suspect. All sides were supposedly awaiting a Supreme Court decision based on the Connecticut case. This project and the Jets Stadium project, both on State land - circumventing city review, both under the aegis of the MTA, both highly controversial are being shoved through.

It is fair to call Charles Gargano the new Robert Moses, and he's starting to seek out the limelight in the same arrogant way.

Just becasue one thing skirts on being "wrong" doesn't mean the whole thing is terrible. You also need to think about what's replacing the houses. There is a VAST difference between condeming for a highway or for new housing. I know Robert Moses is a name that no NYer will forget and hopefully an era as such he built in will never appear again. However, like terrorism, we can let those fears overtake us. This is good for the city and Brooklyn. Let's all remember that there was a time where a sports team and thousands of residents we're leaving Brooklyn. So this should be welcomed, not feared.

ZippyTheChimp

March 5th, 2005, 08:32 PM

alex ballard

March 5th, 2005, 08:42 PM

^ Just so I'm not misunderstanding you:

You are saying that constructing housing is a better rationale than constructing a highway to seize private property.

That sounds reasonable, but you have it backwards. It relates to the concept of Eminent Domain. Government can overide Constitutional protection of private property for:

Public works projects: Highways, dams, power stations, etc are easy to justify. The original intent of Eminent Domain.

Blight: Urban renewal in areas that are considered unliveable.

The public good: This is the most vague and watered down use of Eminent Domain. The state can force you to sell your house to them, turn it over to a developer who puts up more expensive (or larger) housing which increases tax revenues - the public good.

If you still get to live in your same neighborhood for the same amount of dwelling you had then it's not too bad. It really depends on the project. I mean, I imagine Prospect Heights and Central Brooklyn in general has plenty of space and cheap housing nearby that these people can go to. Highways to me are simply a waste of space. Wide streets like Queens Blvd are the way to go. This project helps the entire community and those people will get compensated and relocated inside the area.

Just curious, did any american city reach levels we're they where considered "unliviable". I really don't think NY (or Philly for that matter) have any areas that are "unliviable"..........Maybe parts of DC or LA, but give me some examples, maybe even pics?

ZippyTheChimp

March 6th, 2005, 02:13 AM

BrooklynRider

March 6th, 2005, 04:03 PM

If you still get to live in your same neighborhood for the same amount of dwelling you had then it's not too bad. It really depends on the project. I mean, I imagine Prospect Heights and Central Brooklyn in general has plenty of space and cheap housing nearby that these people can go to. Highways to me are simply a waste of space. Wide streets like Queens Blvd are the way to go. This project helps the entire community and those people will get compensated and relocated inside the area.

Just curious, did any american city reach levels we're they where considered "unliviable". I really don't think NY (or Philly for that matter) have any areas that are "unliviable"..........Maybe parts of DC or LA, but give me some examples, maybe even pics?

Alex-

Do you own your own home outright in Brooklyn or one of the other boroughs? Do you live with someone else? Who do you live with and do you live with them in order to afford that home (i.e. do they pay a portion of the rent, all of the rent)?

With all due respect for your enthusiatic participation here, I think we deserve to understand from what perspective and well of knowledge you are drawing your easily arguable conclusions.

alex ballard

March 6th, 2005, 06:18 PM

Not to belabor the issue, but you are focusing on an irrelevant point. It does not matter how nice it is, or that you get to stay in the neighborhood, or whatever.

The entire issue is, under what circumstances is it proper for the state to obligate you to sell your property against your will.

I think the case is the reason Ratner started to buy up property rather than rely on condemnation. Remember, Eminent Domain was used at the NYTimes site.

Sorry, I'm just inserting my thoughts here. I really wish I knew where the line is between good developments and bad, but here's a starting point: When a development serves the interest of all residents regardless of their economic or social status, then that's a good place to start. If Ratner is including middle-class and working-Class (personally, I'm getting sick of doing for only the poor) in his plan, then I feel that falls under "Public good". Those developments in places like Cleveland that take middle class areas and replace them with upper-class areas are NOT for everyone's best interest and therefore do not (IMHO) fall under the "public good".

Hey, as long as the area isn't getting torn up and I get a fair deal, it's not too bad. But if it's only serving for displacement, then that is very bad. But the city needs to develop, and sometimes, people will get inconveniced. However, in the long run, is it really horrible?

Also, I'm extremely angry that 50 years ago when it was Blacks and Hispanics getting uprooted for housing projects and highways, no one batted an eye. Now rich white people are being uprooted and it's armageddon. Fair is fair, no matter what you're skin tone is.....

alex ballard

March 6th, 2005, 06:22 PM

Alex-

Do you own your own home outright in Brooklyn or one of the other boroughs? Do you live with someone else? Who do you live with and do you live with them in order to afford that home (i.e. do they pay a portion of the rent, all of the rent)?

With all due respect for your enthusiatic participation here, I think we deserve to understand from what perspective and well of knowledge you are drawing your easily arguable conclusions.

A) I don't give out information over the internet

B) Where do you get off saying my ideas are less valuble due to my living conditions?

Want the truth, i'm a 17 year old guy from right outside Philly. I give everyone on this board respect, so why are you all of the sudden getting on me? If I said "Go NIMBYs", you wouldn't have said anything. So don't be a hypocrite now.

BrooklynRider

March 7th, 2005, 08:39 AM

Alex-

I'm "not getting on you" and saying your "ideas are less valuable" due to your living conditions,but we're talking about a specific project, impacting specific neighborhoods. We have other younger posters here, like you. None of it disqualifies you or them from speaking your mind. Some of the younger posters I know of have a level of knowledge I can't come near in some areas. But when you say...

...I mean, I imagine Prospect Heights and Central Brooklyn in general has plenty of space and cheap housing nearby that these people can go to...

Frankly, I had to question whether you had any idea what you were talking about. The New York housing market is much different that Philly with is high vacancy rate and housing here is tight and at a premium.

It is relevant whether you are living alone or not because and, in my opinion, your age is a factor, because, setting up a home in an apartment, let alone buying a co-op, condo or house - especially one your own, without roommates is a major accomplishment in NYC and it is rarely easy.

I don't want to discourage you, but it was apparent you didn't understand the market. You were making sweeping comments that made no sense.

That was my issue. It would be the same if everyone were talking about a big blue building going up and you kept referring to it as the big red building. At some point, a question needs to be asked.

I had no intention of offending you, but it is absolutelty relevant to your commentary to ask those questions.

NYguy

March 7th, 2005, 08:48 AM

NY POST editorial

BROOKLYN'S NET GAIN

March 7, 2005

When Robert Moses nixed Walter O'Malley's request in the 1950s to build a stadium for the Dodgers at Flatbush and Atlantic avenues in Brooklyn, O'Malley upped and moved the team to Los Angeles.

Many New Yorkers still haven't gotten over it.

Today, officials are intent on not letting that site cost them another professional team — the Nets, now based in the swamps of New Jersey.

On Thursday, Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Pataki announced a deal with developer Bruce Ratner.

Ratner owns the Nets and plans to build a Frank Gehry-designed, 19,000-seat, glass-enclosed arena for them at the site.

If all goes well, pro sports will soon be back in the borough after a decades-long absence.

Hear, hear.

Equally important is Ratner's intention to develop the surrounding area — some 21 acres — as part of the $2.5 billion plan.

He'll build more than 4,000 residential units (including low-cost housing), more than 2 million square feet of office space, some retail sites and six acres of land for public access.

It's a phenomenal boost to an area that, quite honestly, has languished sinfully — seemingly forever.

Indeed, Ratner's project would be the largest development in any borough besides Manhattan in a quarter-century.

"This is an historic project that will continue to energize the borough of Brooklyn," said Mayor Mike.

Aside from the sports team, he said, the jobs and housing brought to the area will have a "lasting impact."

Of course, the plan is not without its critics and caveats.

City Hall and Albany, for example, must each spend $100 million on the project — even as their future-year budgets are in the red and their debt loads are so large, they're prompting questions about their long-term fiscal solvency.

But the public funds will go to prepare the site, construct new streets and infrastructure and perform the requisite environmental cleanup.

This, in our view, is a perfectly legitimate use of public funds.

Property owners and others in the area also may be displaced (though many have taken incredibly generous buyouts from Ratner).

And Thursday's deal was just a first step — a "memorandum of understanding."

Remaining are lengthy environmental hurdles, potential legislative action, formal condemnation proceedings, approval by the state public-authorities board, agreement on a sale price for MTA-owned property . . .

And on and on.

Then will follow — as sure as a Vince Carter swish — the endless lawsuits, meant to delay the project to death.

Similar obstacles are giving Mayor Mike agita regarding his plans for a stadium in Manhattan for the Jets.

But let's be blunt: If Gotham won't allow a blighted swath of land in Brooklyn to be turned into a beautiful, spanking new development that spawns jobs, housing, economic activity and tax revenues — and brings pro sports back to Brooklyn, to boot — then what will it allow?

Ratner is hoping to have the arena finished and the Nets playing in Brooklyn in just a few years.

Just enough time, we hope, for the team to crack .500.

Get moving, guys.

ZippyTheChimp

March 7th, 2005, 10:25 AM

Sorry, I'm just inserting my thoughts here. I really wish I knew where the line is between good developments and bad, but here's a starting point: When a development serves the interest of all residents regardless of their economic or social status, then that's a good place to start. If Ratner is including middle-class and working-Class (personally, I'm getting sick of doing for only the poor) in his plan, then I feel that falls under "Public good". Those developments in places like Cleveland that take middle class areas and replace them with upper-class areas are NOT for everyone's best interest and therefore do not (IMHO) fall under the "public good".

Hey, as long as the area isn't getting torn up and I get a fair deal, it's not too bad. But if it's only serving for displacement, then that is very bad. But the city needs to develop, and sometimes, people will get inconveniced. However, in the long run, is it really horrible?

Also, I'm extremely angry that 50 years ago when it was Blacks and Hispanics getting uprooted for housing projects and highways, no one batted an eye. Now rich white people are being uprooted and it's armageddon. Fair is fair, no matter what you're skin tone is.....
First, your last paragraph: I hope you are not rationalizing that illegal or unethical behavior in the past is justification to continue it in the present.

You are discussing the characteristics of an individual project, but any court ruling will be broad based. Evidently, the NY Post doesn't get it either, but not surprising for the Rag of Rags.

Somewhat related

TonyO

March 7th, 2005, 10:34 AM

Crain's

Ratner considers more housing for Atlantic Yards

Would reduce office space, but not affordable units; primary strategizing

Published on March 07, 2005

Forest City Ratner says it is contemplating increasing the number of housing units at its proposed Atlantic Yards development to 5,800 from 4,500. The company will keep its commitment to make 50% of the units affordable, and of that, 10% would be set aside for senior citizens, a spokesman says.

The change would mean reduced office space for the proposed $2.5 billion complex, which includes a Nets basketball arena.

In the current hot housing market, more condos could mean better profits for Forest City Ratner. Atlantic Yards commercial space would compete for tenants with downtown Brooklyn, where Forest City Ratner is a major landlord.

OGNIBENE CONSULTS A CONSULTANT

Former City Council Minority Leader Tom Ognibene of Queens, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's potential Republican primary opponent, is looking at hiring former state Republican Committee Executive Director Brendan Quinn as a consultant and strategist.

Mr. Quinn says nothing has been finalized, but that he and Mr. Ognibene have discussed strategy and message in a mayoral campaign.

HOTELS WANT TAX SPELLED OUT ON BILLS

The Hotel Association of New York City and Gov. George Pataki's office are working out a way to reflect a $1.50-per-unit daily hotel tax on customer bills, says Peter Piscitelli, legislative representative for the association.

The tax would raise $500 million toward the $1.2 billion expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center beginning April 1. The hotel industry wants the tax specified on the bills to avoid complaints about rising hotel rates.

Meanwhile, Daniel Irvin, managing director at lead underwriter UBS, says the process of selling bonds backed by the hotel tax is moving forward. UBS is also working on a $350 million issue backed by state borrowing.

The industry has been grumbling that the Javits is being given short shrift, but the governor says that expansion is a top priority.

SPEAKER WANNABES CHOOSE THEIR MAYORS

The race for City Council speaker is playing in the background as council members announce their endorsements for mayor.

Brooklyn Democratic Councilman Bill de Blasio's endorsement of Fernando Ferrer last week is a bet that Mr. Ferrer will win and help Mr. de Blasio become the speaker. The problem with that strategy is that Mr. Ferrer is receiving support from other speaker wannabes. Councilman Lew Fidler, D-Brooklyn, has endorsed Mr. Ferrer, and Joel Rivera, D-Bronx, is likely to endorse him soon.

Three Queens Democrats in the running for speaker--Leroy Comrie, David Weprin
and Melinda Katz--haven't tipped their hands yet on mayoral endorsements. Councilwoman
Christine Quinn, D-Manhattan, another speaker contender, is expected to endorse
City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, D-Manhattan, who is a close ally.

ASSEMBLYMAN LAUNCHES REFORM GROUP

Assemblyman Patrick Manning, R-Dutchess, who is eyeing a challenge to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, has launched a nonprofit group to push Albany reform and fiscal conservatism in state government.

Mr. Manning says that the group, StandTallNY.org, is not aimed at boosting his campaign, but acknowledged that the minimum membership fee, $20.06, is an election-year reminder.

Mr. Manning, who is 6 feet 11 inches tall, says the group's goals are to promote nonpartisan legislative redistricting, ease ballot access and urge caps on state budget growth. "We need to talk about issues holding back economic development," he says. "We're in denial."

LABOR PUSHES PAID LEAVE BILL

New York labor leaders are putting increasing effort behind a bill to require paid leave for workers who take time off from their jobs under the federal Family Leave Act.

Earlier this month, the AFL-CIO and other allies met to plan a grassroots campaign. Business groups are likely to oppose the Families in the Workplace Act.

BrooklynRider

March 7th, 2005, 11:01 AM

NoyokA

March 7th, 2005, 12:54 PM

NYPOST:

MTA NO SLAM DUNK FOR NETS

By PATRICK GALLAHUE

One of the most crucial agencies was MIA on an agreement between lawmakers and developer Bruce Ratner on his bid to bring the Nets to Brooklyn.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the land where Ratner wants to build a professional basketball arena, was conspicuously absent from Thursday's agreement, and even said it would accept other bids on the site.

"We would consider anything since all of our options are open," said an MTA spokesman, Tom Kelly. "The MTA obviously wishes everybody luck, but we have to keep our best interests, and that of our customers, first."

MTA executive director, Katherine Lapp, sent a Feb. 24 letter to Ratner's company offering their cooperation on the proposed $2.5 billion housing and office development anchored by a Frank Gehry-designed arena. But even that hardly made it look like a deal written in stone.

"[Nothing shall] preclude MTA from determining in its sole discretion to use a competitive bidding process," the letter warns.

The letter also pledged to get "fair market value" for the Brooklyn rail yards, which Ratner has always said he would pay. Many around the project are concerned the agency will put the site up for auction but Kelly said the MTA hasn't decided and won't until an appraisal of the land is finished. Ratner is still hoping to have the arena built for the 2007-2008 season.

alex ballard

March 7th, 2005, 05:07 PM

First, your last paragraph: I hope you are not rationalizing that illegal or unethical behavior in the past is justification to continue it in the present.

You are discussing the characteristics of an individual project, but any court ruling will be broad based. Evidently, the NY Post doesn't get it either, but not surprising for the Rag of Rags.

Somewhat related

Absolutely not. The public good is the public good no matter who stands in the way. All I'm doing is pointing out facts. I think the Ratner project is good for Brooklyn, and I would have said that weither it was in Bed-stuy or Bensonhurst.

alex ballard

March 7th, 2005, 05:19 PM

normaldude

March 7th, 2005, 08:33 PM

Absolutely not. The public good is the public good no matter who stands in the way.

I disagree. As long as we live in a free & capitalist society, then "public good" has to be balanced with personal property rights. Otherwise, we'd be living in a communist society, and billionaires would have to distribute all their money to everyone else for the "public good".

alex ballard

March 7th, 2005, 10:44 PM

I disagree. As long as we live in a free & capitalist society, then "public good" has to be balanced with personal property rights. Otherwise, we'd be living in a communist society, and billionaires would have to distribute all their money to everyone else for the "public good".

That is very true. I never said this was easy. I mean, if it we're me, they'd better be building something pretty darn good to take my house from me. However, you missed the part about how 50 years ago, the "capitalist" society didn't object to non-whites and poor people being evicted to make way for Robert Moses and the like to create their "City of tomorrow". So as I said before, if you want to stand up for people's rights, stand up for EVERYONE'S rights.

NYguy

March 9th, 2005, 11:33 AM

NY OBSERVER

The Jets vs. Nets: Brooklyn Arena Deal Template for Stadium

by Matthew Schuerman

http://nyobserver.com/images/mainimages/schuerman031405a.jpg

The Mayor’s after-hours announcement on March 3 of a deal on the Brooklyn arena for the Nets basketball team was first seen as a pleasant distraction from his troubled negotiations over the West Side football stadium.

Except the two projects sound remarkably the same.

It’s not just that a sport facility would go over Metropolitan Transportation Authority train yards—one in Brooklyn, the other in Manhattan. It is also that, in each case, the developer gets a nice check from the government, state override of local zoning laws and years of tax-free living.

The announcement came as something of a surprise. Fourteen months ago, Forest City Ratner Companies announced its plan to move the Nets to a Frank Gehry–designed arena at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues in Brooklyn. Plus, in the part of the deal that would make real money, chief executive Bruce Ratner would erect 17 office and residential towers in the rapidly gentrifying Prospect Heights, for a grand total of $2.5 billion.

Since that time, Mr. Ratner has been engaged in a little friendly "Mau-Mauing of the Flak Catchers," as Tom Wolfe would call it: offering jobs, affordable housing and a community center to gain support from community activists. Then, once the brouhaha over the West Side erupted this winter, little was heard about the 21-acre complex. Opponents thought the deal might even have fallen through.

Ka-boom! Out comes the press release from the Mayor’s office proclaiming "an historic project that will continue to energize the borough of Brooklyn" and bring 12,000 construction jobs and 8,500 permanent jobs. The city and state will chip in $200 million "in site preparation and public infrastructure improvements," the press release added.

That didn’t sound too bad compared to the $600 million that the public is supposed to ante up for the West Side stadium. But wait—there’s more!

The actual memorandum of understanding, which has so far escaped the notice of the press, shows that Mr. Ratner will be able to finance the arena through tax-free bonds. While he pays those bonds back, he will not have to pay property taxes or even payments in lieu of taxes. These PILOTS, as they are fashionably known, are what commercial developers of tax-exempt property often have to pay.

The city will even throw in a couple of lots that it owns, along with portions of streets and sidewalks, for $1—the mere price of a watery cup of coffee at a corner deli.

But wait—there’s more!

The state’s Empire State Development Corporation, which will take control of the project, will "consider" exempting Forest City from mortgage-recording taxes and from sales taxes on construction materials that it will use to build the towers and the arena.

"They are getting every tax break known to man," said City Council member Letitia James, whose district includes the proposed project and who has fought it from its inception. Bettina Damiani, project director of the nonprofit watchdog group Good Jobs New York, remarked, "I think the concern here is that sales taxes and other taxes are some of the reasons why we want development, because they are supposed to go back to the city."

Wasn’t it just a few months ago that Mayor Bloomberg called on Madison Square Garden, his enemy in the West Side negotiations, to give up its tax breaks? It was four months ago, in fact. But, City Hall says, the two situations are not the same. "After the bonds are satisfied, the PILOT will return to the city," said Janel Patterson, spokeswoman for the Economic Development Commission. "The Madison Square Garden legislation granted a tax break in perpetuity."

As for how long it will take before Forest City pays off its construction bonds and becomes a responsible, tax-paying citizen, well, no one quite knows.

Nevertheless, it will all be worth it, said Ms. Patterson. "This project will create about a billion in benefits for the city and the state, and it will create 8,500 jobs. It is a reasonable investment on our part."

Just how much of a payback the Brooklyn development will create is up to debate. A study paid for by Forest City put the total at $3.6 billion, while another study commissioned by neighborhood opponents found that the project would end up losing $500 million for the city. The city estimates a $1 billion return—which is good, because a new study by the Pratt Institute (the most objective source to conduct a study to date) finds that all these tax breaks could end up costing the city about $1 billion.

Local opponents, though, have even bigger problems with the notion of the state seizing their property through eminent domain and then turning it over to a private developer—albeit in exchange for fair market value.

The new deal makes clear that the state intends to do just that—and that the city may in fact even use some of its $100 million contribution to buy up properties that reluctant property owners refuse to sell.

The M.T.A., however, hasn’t gotten with the program. Just as on the West Side, it’s the M.T.A. which could end up making the whole project extremely expensive for the developer.

The Feb. 18 agreement stipulates that Forest City Ratner Companies will have to pay market price—whatever that means—for the 10 acres of M.T.A.-owned property on which the towers will be built. The M.T.A., in a separate letter dated Feb. 24, said that it reserves the right to put the railyard out to bid—but that if it agrees to sell to Mr. Ratner, it will charge him for every sixpenny nail it has to use to renovate or relocate because there is something historic going on overhead.

Go, Nets!

NYguy

March 9th, 2005, 11:47 AM

DAILY NEWS

Arena foes: Where do Dem bigs stand?

BY HUGH SON

Mayor Bloomberg's Democratic rivals have come out swinging against the proposed Jets stadium on Manhattan's West Side - but Brooklyn's arena project is another ballgame.

The Atlantic Yards project, also backed by Bloomberg, has prompted none of the outrage of the Manhattan project among the four top Democratic contenders.

"I am generally supportive of what Ratner and the city want to do there," Rep. Anthony Weiner told the Daily News, referring to developer Bruce Ratner's $2.5billion project to build a Nets arena, housing and office towers in Prospect Heights over the train yards.

City Council Speaker Gifford Miller (D-Manhattan) said there were "positive differences" between the two projects and touted the Brooklyn project's affordable housing and smaller price tag, said spokesman Steve Sigmund.

The two other Democratic hopefuls - former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer and Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields - voiced some opposition to the project, but fell short of condemning it.

"There needs to be a full and open public debate before making a judgement," Ferrer's spokesman Chad Clanton said.

A Fields spokesman said the Brooklyn project should go through a rigorous city review process, but refused to say if Fields supported it.

"They all need to get off the fence and take a firm position by looking deeply into the details of this project," said Daniel Goldstein of the anti-arena group Develop - Don't Destroy Brooklyn.

The group sent candidates letters this week demanding they oppose the Ratner project on the same grounds they oppose the West Side development.

"I think every one of their answers are inconsistent to their position on the West Side stadium," Goldstein said.

The four hopefuls have bashed Bloomberg over the Manhattan project - and not Ratner's deal - because the West Side arena "has overshadowed the Brooklyn project," said political expert Hank Sheinkopf.

"The West Side [stadium] has become more of a lightning rod," Sheinkopf said. "There has been much more controversy surrounding it."

Ratner's project would require $200 million from the city and state and would allow the condemnation of homes and businesses on the 21-acre site that have not already been purchased by Forest City Ratner.

fioco

March 9th, 2005, 03:47 PM

Incorrrect metaphor. What politicians have for breakfast:
http://puzzles.ngenres.com/screens/48/waffles.jpg
(needs more syrup)

ZippyTheChimp

March 18th, 2005, 07:05 PM

Budget office greenlights Yards study

By Jess Wisloski
The Brooklyn Papers

A spokesman for the city’s Independent Budget Office told The Brooklyn Papers this week that the agency finally has a starting point to analyze the public benefit of developer Bruce Ratner’s proposed basketball arena, housing and office development in Propsect Heights.

“Now that there’s an MOU we have a good place to start — we know now what the agreed upon parameters of state and city are,” said IBO spokesman Doug Turetsky, referring to the memorandum of understanding signed last week by city, state and Forest City Ratner officials.

He said the study could commence now that the city and state have put in writing their combined $200 million commitment to the project.

City Councilwoman Letitia James and state Senator Velmanette Montgomery, who represent the portions of Prospect Heights where Ratner’s Atlantic Yards would be built, have been urging for the study since last summer.

“There’s still the open question of what the cost of the MTA site will be,” said Turetsky, who said that could not be analyzed yet, “because it wasn’t part of the terms of the deal.”

Ratner needs the development rights over roughly 10 acres of Metropolitan Transportation Authority rail yards in order to build Atlantic Yards. The MTA, bowing to public pressure, has vowed that the site is open to any bidder and that the agency will seek the best value for those development rights.

Turetsky said the difference between IBO studies and the city’s or developers’ reports on the public benefits of large-scale plans often vary greatly, and he used the example of the contentious Jets stadium plan in Manhattan.

“On the West Side stadium project, while we have found that it will generate some positive fiscal returns for the city, our estimates are significantly lower than those of the project proponents,” he said.

The IBO released an addendum to the West Side stadium plans last month, which included recent evaluations made by the MTA for the value of the rail yard property in Manhattan, which marked it at $900 million.

“But the Forest City Ratner proposal is very, very different from the Jets stadium,” he added. “The arena is only a very small part of the plan.”

In the meantime, an alternative study, which was compiled by researchers from the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development (PICCED) was released last Monday at PS 9 in Prospect Heights to give an “independent analysis” of the Atlantic Yards plan.

Brad Lander, PICCED’s executive director, admitted that the study, titled “Slam Dunk or Air Ball? A preliminary planning analysis of the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards Project,” was limited in terms of traffic impact and the amount of public subsidy expected.

Instead, the unknowns of revenue and expense were calculated using two previously released analyses; one by consultant Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College professor hired by Ratner, and one calculated by two economics professors, Gustav Peebles and Jung Kim, who live in the affected communities of Fort Greene and Prospect Heights.

The study also omits the $200 million commitment.

“Much of what we will say, unfortunately, is that we don’t have enough information yet,” announced Lander, which is what IBO officials told The Papers last December.

Lander said they “went ahead and did it anyway. We thought it would be useful to provide some information before the Environmental Impact Statement came out than afterwards.”

“Hopefully the IBO will go ahead and do a study,” he added. “They do excellent studies.”

http://www.brooklynpapers.com/images/640line.gif

NYguy

March 18th, 2005, 07:42 PM

More from the BROOKLYN PAPERS

Ratner begins drilling at Yards

http://brooklynpapers.com/html/issues/_vol28/28_12/28_12drills.jpg

Environmental test-borings began this week on Fifth Avenue at Pacific Street, in the Atlantic Yards site.

By Jess Wisloski

To the surprise of many Prospect Heights residents, enormous drills have begun test borings of the earth below several sites within the 24-acre swath upon which developer Bruce Ratner plans to build his Atlantic Yards arena and high-rise development.

The borings, in preparation of a potential environmental cleanup of portions of the site, began almost concurrently with the announcement last Friday of an agreement signed by Ratner and government officials that commits city and state property and money to the project. That memorandum of understanding also calls for the condemnation of property within the project’s footprint for use by Forest City Ratner — the developer’s company.

With that agreement signed, neighbors of the 24-acre site, most of who are protesting the development, knew to expect signs of the elephant next door soon enough. But when bushes were torn out of backyards and construction cones set out to accommodate equipment the size of a backhoe, the neighborhood alarms — in this case ringing telephones — started sounding.

David Sheets, who lives at 479 Dean St. at Sixth Avenue, where he rents an apartment, said he was awakened by the ruckus on Feb 28.

“People were knocking my fence down and drilling in my backyard at 7:30 am,” he said. Sheets first noticed the massive equipment in the last week of February, and said he only recognized it as a drill “from having watched them put on many drilling attachments.”

Sheets was miffed, he said, because his building had not yet, to his knowledge, been sold to Ratner.

“Shouldn’t he have decided if the land was good before he asked to build the arena?” he asked.

James Stuckey, an executive vice president of Forest City Ratner, said the company wasn’t readying the entire six-square-block site — only properties upon which the company had permission to test or that they had already purchased. That includes 479 Dean, 816 Pacific, and the city-owned streets and sidewalks.

“All that’s being done now is testing that would allow us — in the properties that we either control or in street-beds or in sidewalks — that would allow that information to subsequently be turned over for when the EIS [Environmental Impact Statement] is prepared,” said Stuckey, who confirmed that the company has hired an environmental investigation firm, CMI Investigations, to conduct the ground surveys.

When asked if he had either sold the property or made an agreement with Forest City Ratner to test on his land, the Rev. Paul Hamilton, who owns the building in which Sheets lives, said, “I’m sorry, I have nothing to say.”

A spokesman for the Department of Transportation, Craig Chin, said CMI was issued four permits, valid 7 am to 6 pm on weekdays from Feb. 24 through March 24, and one valid from March 1 to April 5. The permits “allow partial use of sidewalk” but must maintain at all times a 5-foot sidewalk for pedestrians along Fifth and Carlton avenues, between Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Street.

“I think we all have a desire to understand whether there are problems that resulted from the prior use of the buildings that fall within the project area,” Stuckey said, and cited the terms of the agreement with the city and state, in which Ratner agreed to pay up to $20 million in any remediation costs associated with the property without receiving any tax credits.

After that, Stuckey said, the company will consider applying for such tax abatement programs, but either way, the results of the tests will be available to the public.

“The next step is the environmental review process; there’s also some business terms that need to be finalized,” said Deborah Wetzel, a spokeswoman for the Empire State Development Corporation, the lead agency for the Atlantic Yards project.

“If they’re on property that they own already, they can move ahead [with the EIS], if it’s either MTA or city-owned property, they need to get a license or a waiver,” she said.

By the terms of the agreement, the city would sell Forest City Ratner the street beds, two city lots and sidewalks in the project’s footprint for $1.

Any private development company is granted access to work on streets and sidewalks, said a spokesman for the Department of Transportation, as long as they ask for it and provide liability coverage for the property.

“They tell us what work they need done, and they tell us if there’s special traffic detours needed,” said Chin. “If we can accommodate that, we issue the permits.”

According to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, a developer can also begin the EIS process in pieces, which is why the work has commenced despite outstanding negotiations Forest City Ratner will depend on to gain control of the property in the footprint of the site, which is bounded by Pacific Street and Vanderbilt, Flatbush and Atlantic avenues.

“It may be that as parts of this project get done, it could begin that [process],” said DEC spokeswoman Gabrielle Done. “It may [later on] end up being all combined into a single process,” she added.

Done also said she believed that the reported results in the EIS were subject to review prior to any remediation of the property.

Sheets noted that he was surprised to see that the company returned the garden to normal following the tests.

“To my utter surprise, they came the following Monday [March 1] and replanted the bushes and covered the holes,” he said.

Daniel Goldstein, the last holdout who has not sold his condominium apartment in a building on Pacific Street to Ratner, who is a spokesman for the anti-arena group Develop — Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, said he heard the soil testing had been going on for the past month.

“They’ve been doing borings and testings for awhile now,” said Goldstein, who thought starting the EIS was inappropriate when much of the land, including the 10 acres of MTA rail yards, were still privately held.

“I think it’s incredible that an EIS can be done before the rail yards are even determined who gets them,” he said.

The MTA has said it will consider all bids for development rights over the yards, which Ratner needs in order to build a basketball arena for his New Jersey Nets.

“I understand legally that they can do this,” he said. “It is amazing that the city makes it so easy for them.”

NYguy

March 18th, 2005, 07:54 PM

BROOKLYN PAPERS

Shaya defies Ratner, moves ahead with Atlantic Yards hotel

http://brooklynpapers.com/html/issues/_vol28/28_12/28_12_800pacific.jpg

Scaffolding has been put up in front of 800 Pacific St., where developer Shaya Boymelgreen hopes to build a hotel.

By Jess Wisloski

A developer is moving forward with plans to build a hotel smack-dab in the middle of Bruce Ratner’s proposed Atlantic Yards site.

Scaffolding has been erected around the former Pecter’s baked goods factory at 800 Pacific St., which is owned by Shaya Boymelgreen, who has become a major force in Brooklyn real estate development over the past five years. He plans to convert the massive building into a franchise hotel, which current zoning on the site allows.

But this puts Boymelgreen at odds with Ratner, since the hotel would rise where Ratner would put the bulk of the housing in his Atlantic Yards plans. The city Economic Development Corporation and Empire State Development Corporation say they intend to condemn, under the power of eminent domain, up to 10 acres of private property, including the Boymelgreen site, for use under Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. George Pataki last week committed $100 million each in public funding for that proposal.

But that has not dissuaded Boymelgreen and his Israeli partners in the international development company Leviev Boymelgreen, from planning the 150- to 200-room hotel, which was first reported by The Brooklyn Papers, on Nov. 27.

Boymelgreen’s headquarters are just a block away, in 700 Pacific St. That building, the Newswalk condominium conversion, was one of Boymelgreen’s first developments in Brooklyn. The former Daily News plant was purposely drawn out of Ratner’s Atlantic Yards proposal at a time when the two developers may have shared a more cordial business relationship.

“Scaffolding is going up for predevelopment purposes,” said Sara Mirski, development director for Leviev Boymelgreen. She defined the predevelopment phase as “anything that you need to do to prepare a building.”

She avoided elaborating, other than to say, “We have something advertised and we’re working on predevelopment.”

James Dariel, of the commercial real estate firm Kalmon Dolgin, who is handling the marketing for the hotel, said discussions were ongoing.

“We’re talking to public and private institutions,” Dariel said, noting that he was surprised at the “positive response” he had received from area residents and interested parties who had placed calls to his office about 800 Pacific St.

“Word is out that there’s possibly a hotel coming,” he said, “and there seems to be a quite positive response. In a lot of communities it seems like no matter what you put in there, the community disagrees. But this has gotten a really surprising and positive response.”

He added that the developers were still doing feasibility studies to determine the “demographics of the surrounding areas and figure out the needs in this location.”

A notable lack of conference space and business accommodation was prevalent, Dariel said, noting that the hotel’s character “may be a type of fusion between business and boutique.”

A Department of Buildings spokesman said that other than for scaffolding, Leviev Boymelgreen had applied for no other construction or demolition permits for 800 Pacific St.

“That’s it,” said spokesman Kenneth Lazar, leading to suspicions among some area residents that Boymelgreen hopes to get the Board of Standards and Appeals to grant a variance that would allow him to build a housing development rather than a hotel.

As a hotel, however, the development could have the protection of new incentives that may be introduced by one of Atlantic Yards’ political promoters, Bloomberg, who has decried the sudden and rapid conversion of hotel rooms to condos and co-ops in the wake of the current real estate boom.

The New York Times reported on March 6 that although New York City has the highest occupancy rate for hotels in all the major U.S. cities, it is suffering from a high loss of rooms to high-end luxury condo conversions.

In 2004, the city lost 1,093 rooms, while only three new hotels in the city opened, bringing 339 rooms, according to the Times, citing Price Waterhouse Cooper.

With the creation of new tourist destinations, said sources cited in the article, the city will be facing a shortage, and needs to create 5,000 new hotel rooms to match proposals that would bring an influx of tourists, such as the city’s 2012 Olympic bid, and the expansion of the Jacob Javits convention center on Manhattan’s West Side.

Ratner’s plans for Pacific Street, which would be developed in Phase I of his construction, according to plans released with the agreement, would eliminate the Pacific Street street-bed, and erect some residential buildings and ground-level retail, open space and parking.

Because they could not argue that Boymelgrween’s plan falls under the heading of blight, condemning his property under eminent domain could require the Empire State Development Corporation to determine that a greater economic benefit to the public rests in Ratner’s plan over Boymelgreen’s.

Henry Weinstein, who owns the properties from 730 through 752 Pacific St., has told The Brooklyn Papers that he intends to develop office buildings adjacent to Boymelgreen’s hotel. His property would also be condemned if Ratner’s plan succeeds.

“I guess I’d be foolish not to have the concern,” Weinstein said this week, “but now that the MTA is saying they’re going to open up their property for bids, and we’re preparing to bid on these properties, if it’s going to be an open market to bid on those railroad yards, we are going to bid on them.”

Asked if that meant he and Boymelgreen had something in the works, he said, “No comment on the details yet.”

“I don’t know anything about [Boymelgreen’s] plans,” said Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco. “I have no comment.”

Patti Hagan, a Prospect Heights resident and ardent opponent of the Atlantic Yards project, said she doubted Boymelgreen’s hotel development could be condemned.

“I think Shaya Boymelgreen is a formidable developer,” Hagan said. “The state would really think three times before attempting to condemn and seize his land. He’s an equivalent weight, he has the throw-weight, to counteract Ratner, to challenge him.

“I really don’t think the state would dare do it.”.

Archit_K

April 1st, 2005, 04:12 PM

A Preliminary Planning Analysis of the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards Project

PICCED website: http://www.picced.org/publications.php

Archit_K

April 1st, 2005, 04:24 PM

I love this picture; I wonder who is that in the back smiling. (lol just playing)

http://www.pbase.com/archit_kderek2k3/image/41511249.jpg

Archit_K

April 1st, 2005, 04:34 PM

^ I must have been overly excited when they took this picture.

NYguy

April 2nd, 2005, 08:50 AM

Kolbster

April 2nd, 2005, 12:16 PM

Thankyou Mr. Boymelgreen! I think now the home stretch is in sight

NYguy

April 3rd, 2005, 12:51 AM

Thankyou Mr. Boymelgreen! I think now the home stretch is in sight

Especially now that the MTA can turn its eyes to the Atlantic railyards in Brooklyn.

"Maybe some people are not going to be happy, but I'm not the one to block a big project that everybody wants to see going on," said Mr. Boymelgreen

Mr. Boymelgreen knew the handwriting was on the wall. He probably got twice as much from Ratner now as he would have gotten from condemnation proceedings.

NYguy

April 4th, 2005, 09:32 AM

DAILY NEWS

The News Interview: Bruce Ratner

Developer Brucer Ratner, President of Forest City Ratner Companies, is principal owner of the New Jersey Nets, which he plans to relocate to Brooklyn. Ratner met with the Editorial Board.

April 4, 2005

QUESTION: While the Jets were waging a high-profile fight to win approval for a stadium on the West Side of Manhattan, you quietly signed a memorandum of understanding with three government agencies to build a basketball arena for the Nets in downtown Brooklyn with much less controversy. How did that happen?

ANSWER: Our project is a little different from the West Side because 80% of it is housing. We're planning 4,500 units of middle-income, low-income and market-rate housing on a piece of land that for a long time has been almost undevelopable.

What gets built first, the arena or the housing?

Within two years of the time that we start the arena, some of the housing will be ready.

When will all this happen?

Our lease in the New Jersey Meadowlands is up in 2007-2008. There's a small chance we can move by then, but it will more likely happen in 2008 or 2009. It takes two years to actually build the arena, and another year to go through government approvals.

If the Bloomberg administration gets voted out this fall, does your memorandum of understanding vanish?

No. The memo is nonbinding, but in general, administrations tend to honor agreements of the prior administration.

Opponents of your plan complain that you are using the threat of eminent domain - forced acquisition of property by government - to make the project work.

We've already privately acquired a very substantial portion of the site, and given everybody on the site the opportunity either to relocate or make a fair amount of money above what they originally paid. Most people have taken that option, so we don't have to depend to any great extent on eminent domain.

Are you still hoping to build office towers on the site as well?

We're seriously considering making some of the proposed office space residential. The residential market is strong, and we have a tremendous need for housing in the city.

How does the arena project fit into the overall development of the borough?

All the outer boroughs live in the shadow of Manhattan, but Brooklyn has the best chance of escaping that because we have our own brand. Bringing a team to Brooklyn will enhance that brand and give people civic pride, but we have to keep pushing and promoting. Look, I'm not from Brooklyn, I'm from Ohio - but I chose Brooklyn. One of the biggest compliments I was ever paid came when Howard Golden, the former borough president, introduced me to an audience as born and raised in Brooklyn.

NYguy

April 8th, 2005, 05:53 PM

BROOKLYN PAPERS

$24M arena jackpot: Developer sells out to Ratner

By Jess Wisloski
The Brooklyn Papers

Opponents of Bruce Ratner’s basketball arena and high-rise plan were left singing “Heartbreak Hotel” this week as a competing developer sold his interest in the Prospect Heights site to the Atlantic Yards developer.

Shaya Boymelgreen, who had been moving forward recently with plans to develop a hotel that would have potentially thrown a monkey-wrench into Ratner’s plan, abruptly agreed last Thursday to sell his properties at 800 Pacific St. and 546 Vanderbilt Ave. to Ratner for $44 million. Boymelgreen had purchased the property in August for $20 million.

The properties, one a former Pecter’s Bakery plant, fell within the footprint of Ratner’s plans for a massive residential, commercial and sports development, which the city and state have agreed to help finance with $100 million each for development costs.

The two properties were to have been developed by Boymelgreen’s Leviev-Boymelgreen company, into a large-scale hotel. Both parties agreed to the conditions of the sale on March 31.

The move came as a shock to some residents of Prospect Heights, the neighborhood in which Atlantic Yards would be built using the state’s power of eminent domain condemnation of private property. Many anti-arena activists were supportive of Boymelgreen’s hotel plans, which they saw as a stumbling block in Ratner’s efforts to claim the area is blighted, a condition that could trigger such condemnation.

“Maybe some people are not going to be happy, but I’m not the one to block a big project that everybody wants to see going on,’” Boymelgreen told the New York Times for its April 2 edition.

“I’m disappointed,” said Patti Hagan, a 26-year resident who co-founded the Prospect Heights Action Coalition with her sister, Schellie Hagan, to oppose the arena plans.

“I thought that he was a different developer who wanted to develop under his own name,” Hagan said of Boymelgreen. “Twenty-million dollars was a lot to spend on that land, and I was very hopeful that he was going to do another adaptive reuse like he did for the Daily News building, and keep our neighborhood our neighborhood — Prospect Heights.

“I also guess I thought he really cared about the community,” Hagan said.

Forest City Ratner executives say they have made strides to show they do care.

“I don’t think it’s fair that everybody criticizes Bruce [Ratner] just for coming up with an idea,” said Bruce Bender, an executive vice president for Forest City Ratner. Bender pointed out that Ratner “does everything he can to avoid controversy” which is why he was dealing with homeowners one-on-one.

Asked two weeks ago if Boymelgreen’s plans to build a hotel at 800 Pacific St. would affect Ratner’s ability to use eminent domain and complete the arena project as proposed, Bender thought for a moment, and surveyed the building, which at the time had a massive real estate sign across the roof.

“I hope not,” he said during a walking tour of the Atlantic Yards site. “I don’t think so. I think Shaya and Bruce have a very good relationship. They’re both business people. They both have an investment of the community.”

But, he added, “we’re going to improve it either way.”

Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for the anti-Ratner arena group Develop—Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, who lives in a condominium within the footprint of the site, said Boymelgreen’s sale of the property to Ratner would not deter the group’s mission.

“We still intend to show the public that [Ratner’s] got a sweetheart deal from the city and the state,” Goldstein said. “What the sale does go to show is what kind of profit Ratner expects to make.

“Because the value of the land there is worth so much to him,” he said, the eminent domain condemnations might also be difficult.

“It also goes to show the MTA should be an open bidding process,” said Goldstein, referring to the development rights over more than 10 acres of Metropolitan Transportation Authority rail yards that Ratner needs to purchase in order to build Atlantic Yards.

Hagan said she was disappointed nonetheless.

“My ultimate thought is Shaya Boymelgreen is just another greedy developer after all,” she said.

NYguy

April 14th, 2005, 08:57 AM

NY POST

NETS BOSS OK ON JETS PLACE

By JOHN CRUDELE

http://www.nypost.com/photos/biz04142005046.jpg

MR. NETS: Real-estate developer and Nets' owner, Bruce Ratner, with star forward Vince Carter, likes the idea of a Jets stadium in Manhattan.

April 14, 2005 -- YOU'D expect Bruce Ratner to be opposed to the building of a stadium for the Jets on the West Side of Manhattan.
He is, after all, the owner of the New Jersey Nets and is planning an arena of his own in Brooklyn.

But, surprisingly, Ratner thinks the West Side stadium is a good idea — and not only because he's glad that controversy over the Jets' plan has taken some attention off him.

The new team owner also has a few other ideas about the sports business in New York — everything from how it was boneheaded to allow Nets star forward Kenyon Martin to go to another team to why it's a bad idea to give a pep talk in an NBA locker room using bits of Yiddish wisdom.

Ratner looks more like the real estate developer he is than the owner of a professional sports team.

I first caught up with him about 18 months ago as we strolled around the downtown Brooklyn rail yards where he is planning to build an arena for his team.

We got together again last week at the Meadowlands right before the Nets demolished the Knicks, which is owned by Cablevision, a company that had its own ideas about the West Side stadium. Here is some of what Ratner had to say during our lengthy chat.

"I'm in favor of the West Side stadium and development. I really think it will make a difference. You almost can't afford to do just development over there. You need to have some kind of an anchor," he said.

Through good or bad seasons, the Jets would provide just that, Ratner said.

He even thinks that Cablevision's bid for the land — supposedly for development but perhaps only as a nuisance bid — was a smart corporate move even though he believes the company was ultimately hurt when it lost out to pro-stadium movement.

"It was a very good business strategy — from their point of view. The only thing negative that happened was that everyone saw a big hill that the Jets had to go up. They are now over the hill and it's kind of a letdown. And the credibility of Cablevision is hurt a little bit by it," he said.

Ratner swears he isn't concerned about the West Side stadium competing with his place in Brooklyn.

"The Jets stadium is a competitor to us. But, you know, I think there's enough room in a city of this size," he says.

"(Jets stadium) is not going to have basketball, so it's not competitive in that way," Ratner says. "But [for] the other kinds of events, Brooklyn is its own city. It has two and a half million people. It can support an arena itself.

"Where it is competitive is that we are all going after the same sponsorships — the same corporate support. We can live with it. We have to live with it," he said. Ratner admits that the controversy over the Jets stadium has made his job a little easier.

"People ask if it's made us go under the radar. There's no question that we have not been the center headlines, in part, because of the West Side," he says, adding, "I'm never thrilled to see someone suffer."

He laughs at that one. But Ratner claims most of the heat in Brooklyn had died down before the Jets stadium became an issue.

How are his plans going?

Ratner and his partners closed on the Nets purchase last August, so he's still new to the game. He actually sits in either Rows 2 or 18, usually with his girlfriend, shaking hands with anyone who offers.

He recently purchased a major piece of land for the arena, a step toward buying rather than going through the emotionally and politically painful process of condemning property.

And, Ratner claims, there is only one homeowner who is still holding out. People who rent will have to move out of apartments, but Ratner says they will be given help finding temporary places and then moved back to the area once he builds new housing.

Ratner claims there's a simple reason why Manhattan — and not Brooklyn — has become the bigger controversy.

The area for the project on the West Side of Manhattan is much larger than the space he needs in Brooklyn, which is only 200 feet wide.

And he's been buying up Brooklyn property to make it easier for him to build, unlike what's happened in Manhattan.

Ratner says that, if there is no unforeseen delay, ground will be broken at this time next year in Brooklyn. Two years later the place will be finished and the Nets will move in.

Still, the owner says he and Jersey officials are friendly, just in case.

krulltime

April 14th, 2005, 02:16 PM

Go Ratner, Go Ratner, Go Ratner, Go!

NoyokA

April 19th, 2005, 04:15 PM

The New Yorker:
MR. BROOKLYN
by REBECCA MEAD
Marty Markowitz—the man, the plan, the arena.
Issue of 2005-04-25
Posted 2005-04-18

Brooklyn’s Borough Hall, a Greek Revival building with an Ionic colonnade clad in fine Tuckahoe marble and a roof topped, incongruously, with a Victorian cupola, is a monument to diminished expectations. The first plans for a City Hall—Brooklyn still being independent, at the time—were drawn up in 1802, and the imagined building was intended to rival the grander City Hall rising at that moment in downtown Manhattan. The boldness of that gesture was somewhat undermined by the fact that construction didn’t begin for another thirty-four years, and the building was not completed until 1848. When, fifty years later, Brooklyn merged into New York City, the building was downgraded from City Hall to Borough Hall; and this decline in importance has grown more pronounced in the subsequent hundred-odd years—right up to the present, when the building’s highest profile is, arguably, attained by the occasional appearance of its imposing courtroom in the television series “Law & Order.”

The Borough President’s office, in the southeast corner of the building, has recently undergone its own transformation. In the time of Howard Golden, who was Borough President from 1978 to 2002, the desk was positioned at the far end of the room, so that visitors were obliged to make a processional approach to the seat of influence. Under occupation by the incumbent, Marty Markowitz, the office looks less like a sober place of government than like Santa’s workshop. On every surface—shelves, tables, window ledges, and cluttering the desk—there are Teddy bears and toy trucks, balls and bats, dolls dressed in the regalia of the Caribbean parade that takes place on Eastern Parkway every Labor Day. The room has been painted a vivid teal; and at the many windows hang curtains of satiny teal fabric, printed with the seal of the borough of Brooklyn. There are enough logo-bearing baseball caps to outfit both major leagues, including a vintage Brooklyn Dodgers cap. Above one doorway hangs a plastic basketball hoop, and a store-window mannequin in a corner wears a basketball jersey bearing the numeral 1 and a name: the Brooklyn Nets. These last are testament to Markowitz’s enthusiastic embrace of the developer Bruce Ratner’s plan to build a $2.5-billion arena and housing- and-commercial-development complex, known as Atlantic Yards, in downtown Brooklyn, and to move the New Jersey Nets, which Ratner bought last year, to Brooklyn. Markowitz’s support of the Ratner project has been his most visible act as Borough President; depending on your political outlook, the plan is either a thrilling instance of Brooklyn’s economic and cultural resurgence or a shocking capitulation to the interests of Ratner’s multibillion-dollar development company, Forest City Ratner.

Markowitz was elected to the office of Borough President in 2001, after spending twenty-three years as a state senator representing first Flatbush and then Crown Heights and Midwood. (He is up for reëlection later this year but seems unlikely to face serious competition.) In the past three years, he has become Brooklyn’s most indefatigable promoter. One of Markowitz’s earliest stunts was the installation of signs at entry points to the borough saying “How Sweet It Is!” and “Believe the Hype!” and, on the Gowanus Expressway, approaching the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, another sign, reading “Leaving Brooklyn—Fuhgeddaboudit!” (A subsequent attempt to install signs on the Manhattan-bound side of the Williamsburg Bridge reading “Leaving Brooklyn—Oy Vey!” was rejected by the city’s Department of Transportation as distracting and uninformative.) Markowitz has also attracted attention less by design than by blunder. After his election, he announced his intention to take down some of the portraits of “old white guys”—former mayors and such—that hung in Borough Hall and replace them with portraits of blacks or women. One of the old white guys was George Washington, and Markowitz’s gesture was taken by some to be unpatriotic; others thought it was merely silly, particularly since he had not felt obliged to surrender his own Caucasian electoral ambitions to Jeannette Gadson, the black, female runner-up in the primary for Borough President.

Markowitz has made an art of trading in a familiar nostalgia for better times as a means of promoting the future of what he usually refers to as “the city of Brooklyn.” Ken Fisher, a former City Council member who was another of Markowitz’s opponents, says, “Marty can make people nostalgic for the Dodgers who weren’t even born when they left Brooklyn.” Since his election, Markowitz has attained a degree of omnipresence in the seventy-two-and-a-half-square-mile borough: if there’s a parade, he’ll be marching in it; if there’s a street fair, he’ll be eating at it. If there are Brooklynites to be honored—such as Cake Man Raven, a Fort Greene confectioner who replicated Borough Hall in sponge cake and frosting for Markowitz’s inauguration—Markowitz will be there, issuing a proclamation or a citation printed with gilded, archaic lettering. Markowitz, who is sixty and short and portly, can barely make a public appearance without cracking mournful jokes about his personal failings: his weakness in the face of Brooklyn’s multiplicity of ethnic restaurants and his inability to con-trol his weight; his remaining single until the age of fifty-four, when he married Jamie Snow, a graphic designer about a dozen years his junior, whom he met at a beach while handing out leaflets for a concert series (the Markowitzes have no children); his incapacity, on a salary of a hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars a year, to enter the Brooklyn real-estate marketplace. (“Blessed are they who bought early,” he told participants at one street fair in Park Slope.) It is possible that he makes an occasional public appearance without mentioning Junior’s cheesecake, but very infrequently; and his references to a desire for Brooklyn’s secession are legion, if unsupported by any policy papers or economic analyses.

“An elected official, in my opinion, has to serve in several different capacities,” Markowitz said one morning not long ago in his office, sitting in a leather armchair in the half-cross-legged position he favors, with one foot balanced high on his opposite thigh. “Policy is very important; issues are very important, of course. But there is a spirit—making people feel good about themselves and where they live.” Markowitz’s commitment to keeping his constituents amused was illustrated by his launching of an annual “Lighten Up, Brooklyn” weight-loss campaign, for which he stripped to his shorts at Borough Hall for a weigh-in. He has since more than regained the eleven pounds he lost, perhaps in part because that fervent health-care initiative was followed, in subsequent months, by an official “How Sweet It Is! Sweet Potato Pie Scholarship Contest,” a bake-off among forty-nine groups.

Markowitz’s office, like that of New York’s other borough presidents, combines a grand governmental title with a slight portfolio and a very modest budget. (This year, Markowitz has an operating budget of five million dollars; the city’s over-all budget was fifty-one billion dollars.) The five borough presidents were not always the neutered beasts that they are now: for decades after Brooklyn became part of New York City, the occupants of Borough Hall, at 209 Joralemon Street, retained considerable political clout. They had the power of patronage; and, along with the presidents of the other boroughs, they sat on the eight-member Board of Estimate, which exercised oversight of city budgets, land use, and zoning. But in 1989 the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Board of Estimate was unconstitutional; the board was abolished after a new city charter was adopted. The Times, in endorsing Markowitz against his two primary contestants in August, 2001, acknowledged the comparative impotence of the office that he was seeking. Indeed, that was what made Markowitz, whom the paper described as “an ebullient public servant who could provide a refreshing boosterism for the sometimes beleaguered borough,” the right man for the job.

Markowitz’s ebullience is such that, among other city officials, he tends to be treated less as a political peer than as a cheery mascot for his borough. In mid-December, Markowitz shared a platform with Mayor Bloomberg at an event announcing an investment in the neglected Restoration Plaza, on Fulton Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, and the Mayor introduced him with an air of amused condescension.

“When they write the book on city government and say, ‘What does a borough president look like?’ I’m going to show you Marty Markowitz,” Bloomberg said. Markowitz bounded to the podium to announce the addition of five hundred thousand dollars for Restoration Plaza from his own office’s capital budget to the Mayor’s pledge of seven hundred thousand. “Only in Brooklyn, and only in New York, can two Jewish boys make this Christmas present to you tonight,” Markowitz bellowed, while Bloomberg stood to the side wearing a well-worn grimace, as if he were an audience member at a borscht-belt comedy show who had been dragged onstage and obliged to endure a few humiliating moments of audience participation.

While the borough is still beleaguered in many ways—more than twenty per cent of its two and a half million residents live below the poverty line—Brooklyn has also begun to serve as an overspill for Manhattan wealth, with development proposed for many formerly neglected stretches of territory, from the old Brooklyn Navy Yard, which now houses movie studios, to the industrial waterfront between Williamsburg and Greenpoint, where the city would like to see luxury apartment towers rise, to the piers below the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway just south of the Brooklyn Bridge, where new parkland has been proposed. Markowitz revels in a borough-based chauvinism: he claims not to see the point of leaving Brooklyn and has no interest in travel, although his wife insists on a cruise to the Caribbean once a year. “I never get off the ship,” he says. “I appoint myself Homeland Security chief, and watch to make sure all the food comes out on time.” But his self-appointment as Brooklyn’s chief nostalgist deflects attention from the surprising fact that, if the Atlantic Yards development gets built, he will have wielded far more influence over the shaping of Brooklyn’s future than anyone expected of him.

Markowitz was one of those Brooklyn children who rarely went to Manhattan: he grew up in Crown Heights, where his father worked as a waiter in a kosher delicatessen; his main entertainment was hanging out on the streets with other kids. His father died when he was nine, and several years later Markowitz’s widowed mother moved to public housing in Sheepshead Bay with Marty and his two younger sisters. He was educated in the borough, too, taking night classes for nine years at Brooklyn College. Markowitz got his start in politics by organizing tenants’ and senior citizens’ groups in Flatbush in the early seventies. He was elected to the State Senate in 1978, and held on to his seat through two redistricting processes, during which his constituency went from being fifty-five per cent white to ninety-two per cent black and Latino. He first ran for Borough President in 1985, against the incumbent, Howard Golden, who, he contended, was more beholden to Democratic Party powers than to Brooklyn at large. (“How long will the future of our neighborhoods be sliced up like a Junior’s cheesecake?” Markowitz said on the stump.) That bid for office resulted in Markowitz’s being charged with failing to disclose a campaign contribution from a local businessman: he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, paid a nearly eight-thousand-dollar fine, and performed seventy-five hours of community service.

Markowitz has always used his office in unusual ways: as a state senator, he organized free summer concerts featuring mostly crowd-pleasing, B-list bands and performers, at which he would appear as the m.c., dressed in a white tuxedo. (When in 1991 riots broke out in Crown Heights, part of Markowitz’s district, Markowitz was hosting B. B. King at a concert a few blocks away.) In Albany, he was better known for bringing bagels, dyed green for St. Patrick’s Day, to the Senate chamber than for any legislative innovations. In some respects, though, Markowitz’s actions as Borough President have revealed the reflexes of a parochial politician. To the New York City Panel for Education Policy, formerly the Board of Education, Markowitz named Donald Weber, a longtime schools superintendent, a decision that drew controversy on two counts: the position on the board, which had been newly restructured, was intended for a representative of Brooklyn parents, rather than for an education bureaucrat; and Weber’s school district had been investigated in the late eighties and mid-nineties by the Brooklyn D.A.’s office for cronyism. (Weber later resigned anyway, citing the panel’s impotence.) Another embarrassment occurred when it emerged that Dolly Williams, a co-founder of a construction company in Brooklyn, and Markowitz’s appointee to the New York City Planning Commission, had also invested a million dollars in Bruce Ratner’s Nets.

Markowitz’s public image of well-meaning haplessness is so refined that what might be seen as a calculated step by another politician is, in his case, taken to be misguided folly. Markowitz shrugs off some of his errors of judgment, such as backing Brooklyn’s candidate for leader of the City Council, Angel Rodriguez, who was defeated by Gifford Miller and some months later found guilty of bribery and extortion charges. “If anyone knew he was a crook, they wouldn’t have supported him,” Markowitz says.

When it comes to Democratic Party influence, Markowitz could not have ascended to the borough presidency at a worse time. “The peak of Brooklyn’s power was in the mid-nineteen-seventies,” says Markowitz’s electoral rival, Ken Fisher, whose father, Harold Fisher, was the chairman of the M.T.A. in the seventies. “Mayor Beame was from Brooklyn. Governor Carey was from Brooklyn. Tom Cuite, the head of the City Council, was from Brooklyn.” So, in Albany, were Mel Miller, Stanley Steingut, and Stanley Fink, all onetime speakers of the State Assembly; and all looked out for their home borough. The once-famed Brooklyn Democratic machine may be in abeyance; Markowitz has responded by turning his office into a public-relations machine instead.

On a bitterly cold Tuesday in December, Markowitz’s schedule took him to Kings Highway, where he attended a party hosted by an organization called the Federation of Employment and Guidance Services, which provides support to recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Sixty partygoers crowded into a conference room. Markowitz showed up just fifteen minutes behind schedule. Many in the audience, mostly elderly, appeared not to know who he was. He told the crowd that it was important to learn English and to stay young; and that he loved Georgian food, because it had a little spice; and that Brooklyn has always welcomed immigrants. He hoped that tourists would discover the variety and ethnic wealth that the borough had to offer. “Only in Brooklyn can you go from China to Russia in fifteen minutes,” he said, his enthusiasm overruling any memory of geography class, where he might have been taught that those two countries share a border for more than twenty-two hundred miles.

Markowitz’s car was waiting for him on Kings Highway, and he leaped in. (Having a driver is one of the perks of the job, and Markowitz uses his a lot; last year, one of his three drivers earned thirty-four thousand dollars in overtime pay, on a base salary of forty thousand dollars, while another driver was on a lengthy medical leave.) He met next with a group from Boerum Hill, the residential district of brownstones and town houses near downtown Brooklyn. The residents were campaigning for street plantings at the site of a recently restored subway kiosk dating from 1908, at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues. Markowitz’s driver approached the intersection from Fourth Avenue, heading down what was formerly an industrial strip that was recently rezoned to permit the construction of apartment buildings.

The gilded cupola of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank was gleaming in the late-afternoon sun. The tower, built two years before the Empire State Building, is Brooklyn’s most magnificent skyscraper from New York’s golden age of construction and, at the time it was erected, the tallest four-sided clock tower in the nation. Just south of the tower lies the proposed site of Atlantic Yards. The project, designed by Frank Gehry, is slated to include several towers, the tallest of which, at six hundred and twenty feet, will loom more than a hundred feet above the golden cupola. Markowitz claims to be confident that the older building will not be overshadowed—“From what I understand, there are ways in architecture to design a building in a way that enhances the view of the Williamsburgh building,” he says. (Forest City Ratner has provided few details of what the larger housing development will look like, though an architect’s model of the arena displays Gehry’s signature wavy metallic walls and a roof garden overlooking Flatbush Avenue.)

In the car, Markowitz’s cell phone rang, and the voice of a female assistant announced that “Bruce” was on the line.

“Yes, sir, how are you doing, Bruce?” Markowitz said, picking up the handset and falling silent as he listened. Bruce Ratner, it appeared from Markowitz’s responses, had some urgent questions about the way discussions concerning waterfront development in Williamsburg and Greenpoint might affect his own project. Markowitz, whenever he could get a word in, tried to be both conciliatory and upbeat. “I understand,” he said; and then, “I wish I knew, but I don’t know”; and “It’s hard for me”; and “That’s absolutely right.” Finally, he told Ratner to call someone in his office—better yet, he would have that someone call Ratner.

Across the street, a small huddle of Boerum Hill residents handed Markowitz a sheaf of plans showing an arrangement of planters and greenery they would like to see in front of the restored subway kiosk. Perhaps, a resident suggested, Forest City Ratner might be persuaded to contribute the funds.

“Does Ratner want to prove he cares?” someone asked.

“I haven’t asked him,” Markowitz replied testily. Then he went to look at the other side of the kiosk, which, another member of the group was telling him, would be a perfect place for a Christmas tree next year.

Last year, Markowitz went to a basketball game for the first time in his life, at the Meadowlands, with Ratner. “He bought his own ticket, as he is required to do,” Ratner says. “He might even have nodded off now and then. But he does call me when the Nets win. He is very encouraging.” When he was campaigning for the borough presidency, Markowitz said that he wanted to bring an N.B.A. team to Brooklyn, and the idea was taken about as seriously as his appeals for Brooklyn’s secession. But in the fall of 2002, when it became clear that the New Jersey Nets were likely to come on the market, Markowitz picked up the phone. He had done that before: during his first few weeks in office, he called Peter O’Malley, the son of Walter O’Malley, who had moved the Dodgers to California in the nineteen-fifties. “I heard that the team was up for sale, and I said, ‘Mr. O’Malley, it would be great for your family name and everything if you would consider moving the L.A. Dodgers back to Brooklyn,’ ” Markowitz says. “I must tell you, that conversation was very brief.”

Markowitz said of his Nets-related scheming, “I thought to myself, Who can I call who has a dedication to Brooklyn, and that has got the economic ability, because, let’s face it, someone who builds two-family homes is not going to be in a position to buy a team and to build an arena.” He considered Donald Trump, but feared that Trump might move the team closer to Atlantic City and his casino investments. Markowitz did, however, call Bruce Ratner, whose company, over the past two decades, has built the massive Metro Tech development—more than two million square feet of office space—not far from the proposed site of the arena. “Bruce had no interest, absolutely no interest,” Markowitz said. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at this fella and know that he’s not a jock.” (Ratner, who is sixty, looks more like the Consumer Affairs Commissioner he was during the Koch administration.) “But I was very persistent with him, and didn’t take no for an answer.”

“He called every two to three weeks,” Ratner says. “I would make up little white lies, and I would wait a day or two to call him back. I am sure I said to my assistant, ‘Oh, my God, it’s Marty.’ ” Eventually, Ratner was convinced of the wisdom of the notion, but not before augmenting the Borough President’s ambitions with his own calculations—“the recognition that there is an opportunity to do what my business is, which is real estate and large-scale economic development.”

Thus the arena imagined by Markowitz became only part of a much larger development, which will stretch six blocks along the border of Prospect Heights. Ratner says that he had looked at the site years ago, but dismissed the idea as unworkable. In the past five to seven years, however, the neighborhood’s profile changed, as the handsome brownstones attracted new residents. “A lot of it stems from the safety, and security, and resurgence of Brooklyn,” Ratner said.

Markowitz believes that the Atlantic Yards development will provide jobs for thousands of Brooklyn residents, particularly those for whom the much discussed rebirth of the borough has meant little more than being priced out of apartments they once could afford. But the proposal has strong opponents, too, including Letitia James, the council member whose district encompasses Prospect Heights, and who, while commending Markowitz for his general efforts on behalf of the borough—“If I had a party, the first person I would invite is Marty,” she says—is skeptical that Ratner’s project is in the borough’s best interests. “This arena is really for the executives who are employed at Metro Tech, and it is across the street from the largest transportation hub for Long Island in the borough,” she says, referring to the L.I.R.R. station at Atlantic Avenue. “It has nothing to do with Brooklynites.”

Neighborhood opposition to the project has ranged from anger at the suggestion that the state may invoke powers of eminent domain to the argument that a privately owned real-estate development is not the best use of the land, a large chunk of which is owned by the M.T.A., and will alter the character of the neighborhood. But the right of the gentrifying class to preserve its property values in blocks close to the arena is not one around which much mass support can be rallied in Brooklyn; and, meanwhile, Forest City Ratner has demonstrated a keen understanding of community politics in lining up support among representatives of the neighborhood’s less affluent populations. While fifty per cent of the housing will be for the luxury market, Ratner says, the rest will be set aside for residents whose incomes are between eighteen thousand and a hundred thousand dollars a year. (There have been similar promises that minority-owned and women-owned businesses will get priority when it comes to applying for construction contracts.) “I never want to see a time in Brooklyn when there are multimillionaires and there are those who live in public housing, and nothing in between,” Markowitz says. He does not mention that the wealthiest new property owner in the neighborhood will be Bruce Ratner.

One Saturday morning not long ago, Markowitz attended a coffee-and-dog-biscuits gathering, held by a group called fido, which stands for Fellowship for the Interests of Dogs and their Owners and meets once a month in Prospect Park. Later that day, he was due at the Christian Cultural Center, a mega-church in southern Brooklyn, where the houses are faced with plain brick or vinyl siding rather than with brownstone. After dropping in at a few community-group meetings on the way, he’d be rounding out his evening with dinner in Bay Ridge, courtesy of the Borough President of Staten Island, James Molinaro, to celebrate a victory over the Staten Island Yankees by the Brooklyn Cyclones, the immensely popular Mets farm team for which a stadium opened at Coney Island in 2001, and which regularly sells out its sixty-five hundred seats.

I joined Markowitz and his driver during a break between these appearances. We started out on Fulton Street, which, like so many stretches in Brooklyn, offers a patchwork of commercial activity: a pizzeria; a Chinese take-out; a row of Afrocentric stores and boutiques that have grown up over the past decade; and signs of more recent arrivals, such as a wine store and a bistro with windows that open to the street in summer.

Next, we drove a couple of blocks over to Forest City Ratner’s newest development, the Atlantic Terminal shopping mall, which is adjacent to the proposed site of Atlantic Yards. The mall is an unlovely green-and-brown hulk bordering streets of brownstones, the shape of whose sloped roofs its own much taller roof grotesquely mimics. It houses gleaming national franchises like Target, Starbucks, and Chuck E. Cheese. Shoppers scurried by.

The car looped west and turned up Pacific Street, into the footprint of the proposed arena. “Just take a look at what’s coming down,” Markowitz said. “I want you to look at this and tell me in any manner, shape, or form that this has historical significance.” On the block where we were, there were a few warehouses and row houses looking shabby and forlorn, as if they had resigned themselves to their fate. “You can see this is gorgeous—just a beautiful, beautiful sight,” Markowitz said, with undisguised sarcasm.

The car proceeded up Pacific Street, alongside the rail yards, and Markowitz said, “When you take a look and you close your eyes you can envision beautiful housing, and retail, and some commercial space, and an arena, and activity, and people here, and people excited about living here. . . . ” He trailed off into urban reverie. Developers like Bruce Ratner, he said, were necessary to bridge the housing gap, given that the government wasn’t going to do it. “The developers, unlike me, are not in the business of being public servants or social workers or do-gooders,” he said. “I hate to say it, but they are businesspeople, and they should be businesspeople.”

We drove up to Prospect Park, and continued into Crown Heights, where Markowitz grew up. “Good Shabbos!” he called out the car window to a passing Hasidic family, and muttered, “I’m not supposed to be in the car. But they’ll forgive me, they know I’m not religious.” Soon we were heading up Empire Boulevard, and at the intersection with Rogers Avenue Markowitz asked his driver to stop. He pointed to a small restaurant, Toomey’s Diner, on the corner of the block.

“It’s hard to believe that there used to be lines to get into this place,” he said, and he gestured in the other direction, toward a series of apartment towers a block or two away. “This place is also hard to envision,” he said. “This was our beloved Ebbets Field,” where the Dodgers once played, and where the Ebbets Field Apartments now stand. His father, he said, used to take him down Empire Boulevard to see games, and as a boy he and his friends would sneak into the grandstands.

“This had more seats, and played more games, than our proposed indoor arena,” he said. “It is in the middle of an urban area, and it worked. And there was less public transportation here than there is at Atlantic and Flatbush.” I asked Markowitz if the Ebbets Field Apartments—characterless postwar tower blocks that rose bleak against the cold sky—were public housing, and he explained that they had been built under the Mitchell-Lama program, launched in 1955, and named for a state senator, MacNeill Mitchell, and an assemblyman, Alfred Lama. Mitchell-Lama was the state’s effort to create housing specifically for low- and middle-income residents, and more than a hundred and five thousand apartments were built before construction under the program ended in the late nineteen-seventies. A nostalgia for that aspect of Brooklyn’s past was not, though, one in which Marty Markowitz, for all his egg-cream soliloquizing, could afford to indulge, and the car drove on.

NoyokA

April 21st, 2005, 01:02 PM

Newsday:
Community in the crosshair
Some residents say redevelopment plans in Downtown Brooklyn have soured them on current administration
BY LUIS PEREZ
STAFF WRITER

April 21, 2005

The signposts are everywhere for David Sheets. Some tell him he very well may lose his home. Others imply to him that his elected officials don't care.

This stretch of Pacific Street has turned into a ghost town, with most of his neighbors picking up and moving elsewhere. Developer Bruce Ratner is now his landlord. And a month ago, Sheets, who has lived in Prospect Heights for 20 years and has no plans of moving, spotted a small tank drilling into the ground apparently taking soil samples.

Around the corner and north of Sheets' Prospect Heights building sit the Atlantic Rail Yards, the planned site of a future Nets basketball arena and massive housing development. Sheets and other residents all the way around the corner to Pacific Street and back would lose their homes to make way for the project. It is a project that has soured them on the current administration.

"Elected officials are supposed to be custodial over the communities that elect them," said Sheets, who did not vote for Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2001 and does not plan to vote for him this fall. "They are not supposed to be marauding all over town harassing people and telling them basically, 'You don't provide enough tax revenue, so you're not good enough to live here.'"

Bloomberg spokesman Ed Skyler said that redeveloping the area is central to the administration's five-borough economic strategy. "It's aimed at creating jobs, building housing and making neighborhoods more livable," he said.

As the mayoral election nears, those living in the shadow of one of the city's largest planned development projects have seen scores of their neighbors move. For those who stand to lose their homes, most other issues in the neighborhood - like the presence of a 100-bed homeless shelter - fade to the background.

Perhaps no other part of the city has seen such an aggressive redevelopment plan as Downtown Brooklyn. From parkland and housing beneath the Brooklyn Bridge to the $435-million arena project and a slew of other projects in the middle, north and south, the city has proposed to redefine a vast stretch of land encompassing a handful of neighborhoods in 10 years' time. The Atlantic Terminal shopping center, which includes a sprawling two-story Target store, is already open for business, drawing shoppers by the thousands.

They are plans that many on this gentrified stretch say are ruining the lives of a community caught in its crosshair.

In giving Ratner their blessing for the project, city officials say the arena would anchor the Downtown Brooklyn projects. And they say the area immediately around the rail yards is in dire need of a face-lift.

A spokeswoman for Ratner did not return a call for comment yesterday, but his company has said in the past that it has a history of providing help to people forced to move.

The project does have its supporters, including those in nearby housing projects who welcome the promise of hundreds of jobs, and those who want the area's resurgence to continue.

Pat O'Connor, whose family has owned O'Connor's Bar at Fifth Avenue and Dean Street, on the other side of Flatbush Avenue, since 1935, said he's seen the area surrounding the proposed stadium change from "atrocious" to clean in the past few decades. He also watched as City Hall administrations going back to Mayor Robert Wagner made failed promises for the Atlantic Yards.

"I'm afraid that if you pass up this opportunity, this neighborhood could go back to what it was," said O'Connor, who is 72 and lives in Bay Ridge.

Still, O'Connor noted, past mayors were more wary of working closely with private developers, something Bloomberg seems comfortable doing.

That is a gripe often cited by many of those who would lose their homes or otherwise oppose the arena project.

"I think that obviously the mayor is extremely pro-business," said Leigh Anderson, 31, a writer whose home on Pacific Street faces the rail yards. "His business decisions regarding the city have been extremely beneficial to wealthy real estate developers and fairly unhelpful to the average citizen who is perhaps just getting by."

Anderson's landlord is among those who have not sold to Ratner, but may be forced out by eminent domain laws through the city Economic Development Corp.

Come May 1, Craig Sterritt, 34, will leave his Pacific Street rental loft of 13 years, which Ratner now owns, for a higher-priced rental in Harlem.

"The whole thing was put together in backroom deals, treating the neighborhood as if it was the South Bronx in the late '70s," Sterritt, a medical writer and editor who is a lifelong Brooklynite, said of the arena project.

He scoffs at the thought that his neighborhood, which sits in the crossroads of Park Slope, Boerum Hill, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, needs revamping.

"These mega-developments strike me as a bad idea for the city," he said. "Particularly this one here, because of the way it literally puts up a wall dividing neighborhoods."

For Daniel Goldstein, the sole tenant left in his Pacific Street luxury co-op, one sign of change in his neighborhood is loneliness.

"The process is basically over. The idea of the city overseeing this is long past," said Goldstein, a graphic designer who a year ago founded Develop Don't Destroy, a key opposition group to the arena project.

"He stands by and puts too much power in other people's hands," said Goldstein, noting that Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff is widely viewed as the city's development draftsman. "At other times he is simply disingenuous. You think an MTA [board] vote means the people have spoken?"

"He's going after grand schemes," including the West Side stadium project in Manhattan, said Will Lashley, 51, a film editor who rents on Pacific Street - in a building also bought by the developer. "They are the kinds of things that get a lot of publicity."

Lashley, who noted that Bloomberg took office during a period in which the economy stalled, said, "I think that Bloomberg has made some tough decisions and has done well for himself. I wish he would worry more about the living conditions of working class people."

Skyler disagreed, saying, "If the mayor didn't care about working class New Yorkers he wouldn't be trying to fix the schools, build nearly 70,000 units of affordable housing and reduce crime."

Losing your home and neighborhood to a wealthy developer has a way of drowning out all other issues. But sometimes, other concerns can resurface.

On a recent afternoon, Lee Houston, 58, a retired schoolteacher, was talking about the mayor's development plans while bending an elbow at Freddy's Bar, at the corner of Dean Street and Sixth Avenue.

Houston has lived in Prospect Heights for 38 years, atop the pub and performance space for two. His landlord hasn't sold, but it is yet another building facing the wrecking ball.

"Come outside with me," Houston said. "I can't smoke in here anymore, and I have our mayor to thank for that."

1) 'I do fault him [the mayor] for defending the needs of wealthy developers as opposed to the needs of low-income people.' - Leigh Anderson, 31, writer

2) 'He [Bloomberg] wants to have his legacy with the greatest city in the world. But I think he has no connection with the majority of the city.' - Lee Houston, 58, retired schoolteacher, jazz musician

3) 'The fact that [the mayor] supports these projects without engaging with the larger community out here tells me that he's pretty cavalier about all this. - Daniel Goldstein, 35, graphic designer

SPOTLIGHT ON

Downtown Brooklyn / Fort Greene

Population

98,620 were counted for the 2000 census, up 4% from 1990

Crime

88th Precinct

Down 19% from last year

Down 20% since 2003

Down 22% from 2001

Down 71% from 1993

Places of note

Brooklyn Academy of Music, Pratt Institute, Williamsburgh Savings Bank, Atlantic Terminal shopping center

[b]Supporters Say

Nets stadium development will bring 10,000 permanent jobs, 16,500 construction jobs, 4,500 units of housing

Opponents Say

Nets stadium development will displace, 334 residents 162 dwellings, 33 businesses employing 235 people

billyblancoNYC

April 21st, 2005, 03:49 PM

This about says it all:

Newsday:
Supporters Say

Nets stadium development will bring 10,000 permanent jobs, 16,500 construction jobs, 4,500 units of housing

Opponents Say

Nets stadium development will displace, 334 residents 162 dwellings, 33 businesses employing 235 people

alex ballard

April 21st, 2005, 04:39 PM

This about says it all:

Doesn't it...

Makes you yearn for the days when Robert Moses was around...

macreator

April 21st, 2005, 05:14 PM

Doesn't it...

Makes you yearn for the days when Robert Moses was around...

Not if you live in the South Bronx.

BrooklynRider

April 21st, 2005, 05:44 PM

Doesn't it...

Makes you yearn for the days when Robert Moses was around...

Uh, right, all our waterfront access blocked by highways.

alex ballard

April 21st, 2005, 06:12 PM

Uh, right, all our waterfront access blocked by highways.

I was being sarcastic...

The point of that is back in the day, this crap would never have happened. Wagner/Lindsay, Rockeffler and Moses would say what would go there and that was that.

True, that was an awlful time and I hope it never comes back. But I still yearn for some decisvieness and spinal tissue in planning in this city. The fact is, a few well connected people stop progress for the whole city. I saw on a website of signs in Bay Ridge that says "Yuppies keep out". This is the exact same thing.

Also, I STILL can't get over the fact that the protestors for the stadium and arena are white, and they get the world to bend for them, while no one ever thinks twice about putting a garbage station in the "minority" South Bronx. Ahh, yes, America is equal for all...

ZippyTheChimp

April 22nd, 2005, 12:52 PM

Also, I STILL can't get over the fact that the protestors for the stadium and arena are white, and they get the world to bend for them, while no one ever thinks twice about putting a garbage station in the "minority" South Bronx. Ahh, yes, America is equal for all...
A valid point...but inconsistent with your proposal to convert public housing to condos.

alex ballard

April 22nd, 2005, 04:10 PM

A valid point...but inconsistent with your proposal to convert public housing to condos.

...Condos for poor, you mean...

While there is two sides to this argument, the fact is people who own often have more stability and more reason to take care of things. So ownership makes sense...

BrooklynRider

April 22nd, 2005, 04:38 PM

...The point of that is back in the day, this crap would never have happened. Wagner/Lindsay, Rockeffler and Moses would say what would go there and that was that.

I understand that. But, this world is occupied by people who have a right to an inclusive conversation about what happens to it and in it. We all breath the same air and the water we drink comes from rivers and oceans that all connect.

The world is more populous and if people do not assert their right to inclusionary planning, they, by default, endorse a dictatorship or dictatorial policies that are influenced purely by monetary considerations.

I rent my apartment in Park Slope. If the city wanted to put an Ikea across the street from me, you bet I'd be out there fighting it tooth and nail. Inclusionary planning is a right, but also a responsibility. Like an election, if you don't vote, don't complain about the state of public policy.

It is frustrating when we want to see an exciting building be built and it gets stalled. It seems the frustration is always strongest when the building is being stalled in someone else's zip code. When it is being stalled within our own neighborhood, we seem to be more considerate of the circumstances and pay more attention to the pro's and con's.

ZippyTheChimp

April 22nd, 2005, 05:02 PM

...Condos for poor, you mean...

While there is two sides to this argument, the fact is people who own often have more stability and more reason to take care of things. So ownership makes sense...
The reason I quoted a particular passage you made was to respond to that passage, not the aspect of ownership vs renting.

Also, I STILL can't get over the fact that the protestors for the stadium and arena are white, and they get the world to bend for them, while no one ever thinks twice about putting a garbage station in the "minority" South Bronx. Ahh, yes, America is equal for all... Your implication is that racism is the basis for the garbage station ending up in a minority neighborhood.

I could draw the same conclusion from your plan to turn city housing into condos. Regardless of your intentions, the result of your plan would drastically change the racial character of housing projects. Is it racism, or is some other mechanism at work?

Clarknt67

April 22nd, 2005, 05:19 PM

BrooklynRider

April 22nd, 2005, 05:27 PM

This Sheets charactor ticks me off. He's a renter, he's rented for 20 years. Just because Ratner has millions doesn't make him a brave little David going up against Goliath. He's just some whiner who refuses to accept the harsh reality of life: if you don't own your home, you can get kicked out at any time. I rent. I accept that. If my landlord sold my building and they knocked it down to build a Walmart, I would think, "that sucks. I guess it's time to move."

But this guy thinks he's special and he can hold up something that many people want just because he thinks living somewhere for 20 years entitles him to live there forever.

Say what you will, but he is getting lots of press. He'll definitely move with a nice resettlement package from Ratner.

Clarknt67

April 22nd, 2005, 05:59 PM

Say what you will, but he is getting lots of press. He'll definitely move with a nice resettlement package from Ratner.

Yeah, it's the press casting him in this "oh, the poor guy," light that gets on my nerves.

A friend of mine had a beautiful garden apartment in Cobble Hill, the landlord decided not to renew his lease as he wanted to rent the place to his niece. Since it wasn't rent stabilized or anything, that was the landlords right. My friend found another apartment. That's life.

But you're right, he's milking it, and well he should.

billyblancoNYC

April 22nd, 2005, 10:03 PM

I hope he doesn't get more than a kick in the ass and a hefty good-bye. Screw him. He should have bought when brownstones could be had for $25K. His shortsightedness and inability to accept change (and reality) should not be rewarded.

alex ballard

April 22nd, 2005, 11:25 PM

The reason I quoted a particular passage you made was to respond to that passage, not the aspect of ownership vs renting.

Your implication is that racism is the basis for the garbage station ending up in a minority neighborhood.

I could draw the same conclusion from your plan to turn city housing into condos. Regardless of your intentions, the result of your plan would drastically change the racial character of housing projects. Is it racism, or is some other mechanism at work?

I understand why you might think that. However, the whole goal is minority homeownership. It's not an impossible dream.

Condo doesn't equal rich. I simply meant "ownership". That's better for all of us.

ZippyTheChimp

April 23rd, 2005, 11:06 AM

alex ballard

April 23rd, 2005, 06:56 PM

Clarknt67

April 25th, 2005, 02:47 PM

Alex, you're tapdancing around the point. Your statement implied racism. My example of the result of your plan implied racism. In both, minorities would be displaced.

In truth, neither is racism. It is economics, and the power of money. I'm not saying it's fair - but unfairness is a general aspect of life.

Forgive me if I inflame this argument, but it seems, at times, it's difficult to separate the discussion of socio-econonics from race. There is an unfortunate correalation between race and poverty, which means social policies that disfavor the poor disproportionately affect them and hence, may seem "racist."

ryan

April 25th, 2005, 05:43 PM

Condo doesn't equal rich. I simply meant "ownership". That's better for all of us.

Ever heard of co-op city? I wouldn't exactly call it a success (http://gothamgazette.com/community/12/news/693)

However, the whole goal is minority homeownership. It's not an impossible dream.

Condo doesn't equal rich. I simply meant "ownership". That's better for all of us.

I don't think the effect of homeownership would have the same impact in a NYC neighborhood as in, say an inner-city rust belt city. There is something to be said for the slumlord effect, but I don't even think I could identify any neighborhood as being predominately owner-occupied vs. rentals in NYC. I can't imagine what benefit the community would gain from converting existing public housing to condos - it's not like they would remodel, or undo the damage of superblocks.

As for condo not equaling rich - I don't think it's realistic for lower-income families to own a home in a major urban area. A Wall Street Journal article from last month (below) figures that it costs 70 cents on the dollar to rent as opposed to own in NYC. Seems like quite a burden to bear for a the questionable benefits (to the community) of homeownership. Individuals would of course do well to build up equity, but the city would have to subsidize a program like this, and wouldn't that just be a handout like the welfare you keep complaining about?

http://online.wsj.com/img/b.gif http://online.wsj.com/img/printformat_logo.gif (http://online.wsj.com/home)

March 22, 2005

In the Hottest Markets,
Renting Is the Real Bargain
Cost Gap of Being a Tenant
Vs. Owning Hits Widest Level
In More Than a Decade
By RUTH SIMON and RAY A. SMITH
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 22, 2005; Page D1

Potential home buyers increasingly are facing a difficult economic and emotional quandary: Soaring housing prices in many parts of the country have made renting a bargain.

In the past, home prices and rents tended to move in alignment. But the relationship between the cost of renting and owning has broken down as low interest rates and an array of new mortgage products have helped turn many renters into homeowners. That has helped propel home prices upward -- and, in turn, has weakened the rental market, prompting landlords to cut rents or at least raise them less aggressively.

THE GAP WIDENS
http://online.wsj.com/img/g.gif
http://online.wsj.com/img/b.gif
The monthly cost of renting an apartment and the monthly cost of buying a home has widened nationally since 2001. See a chart of how the ratio between the two has changed (http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/0,,SB111145101361185668-F6FVKn5edxZ1y_bXvj_p6rnk22o_20050420,00.html#A) from 2001 to 2004, in 21 major markets. RENT OR BUY?
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The result is a widening of the gap between the cost of renting and the cost of buying in some of the nation's hottest housing markets -- a gap now at its biggest since at least 1994, according to Torto Wheaton Research in Boston, and by some accounts at its biggest since the 1970s. The data suggest the economic case for renting, at least in the short term, has grown significantly in these markets.

Since 1999 and 2000, the relationship between rents and home prices has "broken down," says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Economy.com. With interest rates falling, it's "not surprising that the relationship has changed," Mr. Zandi adds. "What is surprising is that it has changed so much."

In San Francisco, the monthly cost of renting an apartment is just 45% of the monthly cost of buying a home, down from 67% in 2001, according to an analysis of 21 key markets prepared for The Wall Street Journal by Torto Wheaton. In Washington, D.C., rental costs are now just 59% of the cost of owning, down from 82% in 2001. In Miami, rental costs are 63% of the cost of homeownership, down from 89% in 2001.

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In San Francisco, the monthly cost of renting is just 45% of the cost of buying.

The potential cost savings for renters could well be even larger, given that the analysis doesn't factor in property taxes and other expenses associated with homeownership. Mitigating that is the fact that mortgage interest and property taxes typically are deductible from federal income taxes. Homeowners often can deduct interest and real-estate taxes on their state and local tax returns, too. And many borrowers have opted to lower their current monthly payments by using an adjustable-rate or interest-only mortgage. (The 21-city analysis compared average-price apartments and median-price homes and assumes that a home buyer takes out a 30-year mortgage. Those properties may not be directly comparable, but the analysis shows how the relationship between renting and owning has changed over time.)

Despite the lower comparative cost of renting, the enduring tug toward homeownership -- coupled with the fear of missing out on further price appreciation and even being shut out of the market for good -- still is driving many people to buy. The rate of homeownership in the U.S. was 69.2% in the fourth quarter of 2004, compared with 67.5% in 2000.

Many buyers who have done the math are betting that rents eventually will rise and that any savings from renting will be more than offset by rapid gains in home prices -- a pattern that has been true in recent years as prices have moved up at above-average rates. Still, many economists say those outsize gains are likely to become a thing of the past as interest rates move higher.

"People have formed expectations for future price increases based on past price increases," says Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. "Their expectations may not play out the way they thought they would....They may in fact find that they are buying in at the top of the market."

Some would-be buyers are having second thoughts. Tanvir Mangat, a management consultant in Washington, D.C., has been looking for a condominium or a townhouse off and on for the past year. "Unless we can get a good price for what we want, we're going to continue to rent," says Mr. Mangat, who has had trouble finding something in the $600,000 to $750,000 price range that meets his needs. "The only thing we're losing is we're not building equity right now."

The fact that the cost advantage of renting has widened in many areas is even more remarkable given that apartment rents have begun to edge upward. Those modest rent increases were more than offset by strong gains in home prices in many parts of the country.

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Average home prices climbed 8.3% last year and 7.5% in 2003, according to data compiled by M/PF YieldStar, with many markets posting double-digit gains. Rents, meanwhile, inched up 1.7% last year, after falling 1.6% in 2003.

Because housing and rental markets depend on local circumstances, the relationship between home prices and rentals varies significantly around the country. The median home price in metropolitan Las Vegas is $266,400, which works out to $1,274 a month, assuming a buyer puts 20% down and takes out a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, according to HSH Associates. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment there is $860. In the San Diego metro area, the median home price is $551,600, which works out to about $2,686 a month, while the rent on a two-bedroom apartment is $1,625.

The national apartment market was hurt severely by the economic downturn. In Phoenix, a one-bedroom apartment that fetched $700 a month a year or two ago now can be had for $550, says Lisa Sampson, a broker with All Star Apartment Rentals. Meanwhile, "the same house you could have bought for $150,000 last year is now $250,000."

Whether renting or buying is the best move depends on a variety of factors, of course. These include how long you expect to stay in the home and whether what is on the market to buy or rent meets your needs. Michael Dubis, a financial planner in Madison, Wis., says he also advises clients to consider what their money could earn elsewhere.

The longstanding rule of thumb has been that buyers need to stay put for five to seven years to justify the closing costs and other outlays involved. But in the hottest markets, says Raphael Bostic, director of the real-estate development program at the University of Southern California, that length of time has shrunk, in part because home prices have moved up so rapidly.

"I see a lot of people who are choosing not to stay very long and are still buying," says Lauren Goloboy, a sales associate with Coldwell Banker in Brookline, Mass., a suburb of Boston. Ms. Goloboy says she is frequently asked how long you have to own a home to receive favorable tax treatment on capital gains. (The answer: more than one year to qualify for the 15% rate.)

Mara Schonberg, an attending physician, bought a two-bedroom condo in the Boston area last summer for about $295,000, even though she may move in three to five years. "I would probably spend less per month on a rental," she says. But, she adds, "I'd rather take a risk on the real-estate market. I'm tired of having landlords."

The rental bargains aren't limited to the nation's hottest housing markets. Steve Hendry of Re/Max Associates of Dallas says he recently found a tenant for a home in Plano that had been vacant for four months by agreeing to a lease that runs for six months instead of a year. "I've reduced the price on probably all of the listings I have at least once to create more activity," adds Mr. Hendry, who recently dropped the price on a home in Allen to $1,200 a month from $1,295.

"For the near term, it's pretty clear that rents are a bargain in many places relative to the cost of buying the same unit," says Eric Belsky, executive director of Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

[b]Write to Ruth Simon at ruth.simon@wsj.com2 and Ray A. Smith at ray.smith@wsj.com3

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NYguy

April 27th, 2005, 07:41 AM

DAILY NEWS

Ratner's generous to a fault
And some wonder: Just buying support?

BY DEBORAH KOLBEN

Call him the Bill Gates of Brooklyn.

As developer Bruce Ratner plows ahead with plans to build a controversial $2.5 billion arena and residential complex in Prospect Heights, he's also doling out checks to local groups.

"That's what we are, a helping hand," Ratner said yesterday as he gave $50,000 to the Brooklyn Perinatal Network, which works to combat baby deaths in Fort Greene, the neighborhood with the highest infant mortality rate in the city.

"I think it's a good thing, but I also note the difference between what they're doing and public relations; they're trying to get public support by any means necessary," said Clinton Miller, pastor of Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Fort Greene.

"There's a difference between public relations and [Ratner] really wanting to have a sincere impact on the infant mortality rate," Miller said.

Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco said the developer gives money to many Brooklyn institutions, including the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, the New York Aquarium in Coney Island and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

"Forest City Ratner [Ratner's development company] believes that it has an obligation to support important community programs," DePlasco said. "Are they committed to even more programs because of the Atlantic Yards development? Fortunately, yes."

Ngozi Moses, director of Brooklyn Perinatal Network, said she reached out to Ratner in the hopes that he would donate to her organization, which has lost federal funding.

Ratner "benefits from our community and needs to give back," said Moses, who is not taking a stand on the arena project proposed for neighboring Prospect Heights.

Ratner also recently footed the bill for a children's basketball camp run by former Knicks star Bernard King, who was a consultant for the project until he was arrested on spousal abuse charges.

Last month, Ratner opened a $1 million account with Carver Federal Savings Bank, the nation's largest African- and Caribbean-American bank.

The bank has a branch in Ratner's new Atlantic Terminal Mall. The mall abuts the Atlantic Yards site, where Ratner envisions building an arena that would house the NBA's New Jersey Nets, which he recently purchased and wants to move to Brooklyn.

The proposed Atlantic Yards project includes 17 office and residential towers and would require the state to condemn nearby private residences. Ratner also would have to purchase 10 acres of Metropolitan Transportation Authority-owned land.

"I'm happy for Brooklyn Perinatal, but he certainly can do better," said City Councilwoman Letitia James (WFP-Fort Greene) of Ratner's $50,000 donation. "That's pocket change."

NYguy

May 6th, 2005, 06:57 PM

BROOLYN PAPERS

Tish to Gif: Look here!
Says Speaker too fixated on Jets at expense of B’klyn, Nets plan

By Jess Wisloski
The Brooklyn Papers

Prospect Heights Councilwoman Letitia James wants Speaker Gifford Miller to stop paying so much attention to the New York Jets stadium plan championed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and get serious about the Atlantic Yards basketball arena, office skyscraper and housing development being planned in her district.

“This project is the largest that this borough has seen in over three decades,” said James, “a project that is going to fundamentally reshape the borough of Brooklyn and its landscape.”

James said she fears that the mayoral candidate from Manhattan’s Upper East Side, who has led council opposition to the Jets stadium much as she has spearheaded the airing of doubts among Brooklyn council members about developer Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards plan, is hedging on where he stands on Brooklyn.

“It was announced [in committee] that the hearing was going to take place in the first part of May,” contends James, which she pointed out, is now here. James is one of several council members who have called for the Brooklyn arena plan to go through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), from which it is currently exempt as a state-sponsored project.

Miller’s failure to schedule a hearing about the arena, to which Ratner plans on moving his New Jersey Nets as soon as 2008, leaves the rest of the city in the dark about what she often calls “selling Brooklyn at bargain-basement prices.”

In trying to get a date for a hearing on the Atlantic Yards plan specified and have a sit-down with Miller, James said she’s been referred to his staff only.

“I’m getting the runaround,” she lamented.

Miller spokeswoman Leticia Theodore agreed with James’ claim that a meeting was planned for “early May,” adding, “As soon as the speaker works it out with his legislative director, we’ll know when that is.”

She said any claims made by James that a scheduled hearing was canceled were either incorrect or misunderstood.

“That being said, there will be a hearing on the Atlantic Yards — it is an item that will be heard during the budget hearings,” Theodore added.

“We didn’t have a date set,” she said, “and today’s, what, the 3rd? That’s not to make light of it, but we have how many days in May?

“It’s on the legislative director’s radar, and we do fully intend to be scheduling a meeting in May,” Theodore promised. “The speaker respects the project and the effect on her community, so we fully expect to work with [James] in the future.”

James said the pressure is on to make sure the issues are heard before the council approves next year’s fiscal budget, the draft of which allocates $50 million to the Atlantic Yards project.

The council has only May to draft any changes to Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed budget before voting on June 5.

While Miller has not weighed in directly on the plan to build a 19,000-seat arena and 17 high-rises with office space and 4,500 units of housing units, he said at an economic development committee hearing in May 2004: “Together, we will find a way to bring professional sports home to Brooklyn and ensure a vibrant and strong community at the same time.”

Atlantic Yards also relies on the state’s power of eminent domain to condemn private property. In addition, like in the West Side stadium plan, it relies on the purchase of development rights over Metropolitan Transportation Authority rail yards.

Miller has raised the sale of the MTA property to the Jets as one of many points of contention he has with the developments on the West Side, and has criticized the stadium as being a “misuse of public money, without any public approval” that “will be funded on the backs of subway and bus riders.”

Opportunities, whether they be a spontaneous subway fire on the A-train line in early March that warranted a Miller press release decrying the stadium, or the $1.3 billion dollar proposed cut to the city’s education budget that inspired his “Schools, not a West Side Stadium” drive in April, seem to constantly present themselves for Miller’s outspoken press releases against the stadium.

Miller even launched a “Subways, not Stadiums” campaign this week, announcing on Tuesday that the $60 million cut to the MTA’s subway repair and rehabilitation budget could be saved by dumping plans for the West Side stadium.

But not once has he mentioned the Brooklyn stadium plan in a release.

Miller’s words, said James, ring true for both projects.

At a speech delivered to students at Columbia University in February, he bashed the mayor’s support of the Jets stadium, much as James is known for criticizing Borough President Marty Markowitz for proudly championing the Nets arena plan at the cost of residents in its footprint.

“How are we to tell our residents that they will have to do without, or will have to wait, as a number of more important projects go ignored or delayed?” fumed Miller. “Throwing away billions of dollars on the mayor’s pet project is wrong, and we must put an end to this wasteful spending of taxpayers’ valuable dollars.”

Gulcrapek

May 6th, 2005, 11:37 PM

Miller needs to shut up. I can't stand his whining anymore.

NYguy

May 8th, 2005, 04:13 AM

Miller needs to shut up. I can't stand his whining anymore.

Miller and James should run for something together. But its not surprising to me that the one Democratic candidate for mayor who seems to be moving up the most in the polls is the one that seems to keep quiet (Fields). The more those other candidates speak, the more they seem to bury themselves. (are you listening Freddy?)

NoyokA

May 8th, 2005, 10:01 AM

Bloomberg’s a great mayor, he really needs to be reelected a second term so that his big plans come to fruition and the city benefits.

MidtownGuy

May 8th, 2005, 12:01 PM

Though this is not a political forum, when a statement is made about a politician, especially one up for re-election, it is only fair that a dissenting opinion be tolerated. Bloomberg is NOT a great mayor. He is a bum. His attempts to privatize all remaining NYC public space is a disgrace. And please spare me from covering every last inch of this town with advertising. He is an enemy of free speech and journalism, vis a vis his street furniture plan ( a corporate giveaway to behemoths like Clear Channel, and a death knoll for small newspapers and publications trying to disseminate information that some in power may find unflattering). There are acceptable ways to tidy up the streets and newspaper boxes- limiting possibilities for First Amendment expression is not one of them. Further denunciations of this jerk will be reserved for political forums, but I will suffer no political endorsements here without equal time.

ASchwarz

May 8th, 2005, 12:17 PM

MidtownGuy

May 8th, 2005, 06:14 PM

Most New Yorkers don't share your opinion. He is leading in all polls against all opponents.

Every other major city on the planet has a street furnture contract. I suppose you think Paris, Berlin and San Francisco are "enemies of free speech" because they have such a street furniture program.

I am well aware of the contracts in cities like San Francisco and Boston. I don't have a problem with toilets and benches that match each other.

The problem arises when one corporation has control over every publication that is available on our public sidewalks. There are good contracts and bad contracts. I don't know enough about the SPECIFICS of the Paris or Berlin deals to make educated appraisals of the arrangements there, but I do know that the European media is very different from it's American counterpart of the last 10 years. (Ah, but you might be one of those flat-earthers who thinks the press here is liberal.) What I am trying to say is that I just don't think this is a good moment in American democracy to give to one media corporation, Clear Channel, the sole discretion over which independent publications may remain in newspaper boxes.

This particular contract, IMO, is a bad one as it stands. And, in my opinion, Clear Channel, the beneficiary of this deal, has indeed proven itself through actions in recent years to be an "enemy of democracy"(he-he :-). We can debate on that all you like in a separate thread at the politics forum. (Just title it "How Clear Channel is Married to the Republican Party.") If a provision can be made that a certain amount of space will remain available to newspapers like The New York Press, and I don't mean making people search for 5 blocks to find one, then I would not have a problem.

If contracts to lease advertising space are necessary to provide public amenities like decent street furniture and toilets, and I'm not convinced they are, then so be it. Just don't F**K with journalists, artists, and citizens in general that don't have the millions required to get a spot with Clear Channel.

As for the polls on Doomsberg, it's WWWAAAAAYYYYY to early to even go there, buddy. You should know New York politics.

NoyokA

May 8th, 2005, 06:56 PM

Bloomberg supporting Atlantic Yards is on topic. Bloomberg supporting advertisers is off topic. Move off topic discussions elsewhere.

alex ballard

May 8th, 2005, 08:34 PM

NoyokA

May 8th, 2005, 08:55 PM

BrooklynRider

May 8th, 2005, 09:21 PM

NoyokA

May 8th, 2005, 09:32 PM

Yes. Let's get back on topic.

Clarknt67

May 10th, 2005, 06:53 PM

Getting back on topic:

Is there a risk that if one of the democratic nominees wins the mayoral race, that they'll trash Atlantic Yards and basically give the entire area back to the tenants?

Which at that point, they midas well put a hammer and sickle on the city seal.

Democratic Borough Prez Marty Markowitz is the project's biggest cheerleader, so the Mayor's party affliation garantees nothing. With the exception of Leticia James, most of the local politicians have not stated a position on the project (which is a little shameful).

Regardless, it's pretty far along in the approval process. It's my impression that the only real danger--or hope given your perspective--of derailing (sorry!) the project is one of the court challenges succeeding. (Although I don't think there are any lawsuits filed yet, but if the State steps in with eminent domain, there will surely be.)

alex ballard

May 10th, 2005, 07:10 PM

Democratic Borough Prez Marty Markowitz is the project's biggest cheerleader, so the Mayor's party affliation garantees nothing. With the exception of Leticia James, most of the local politicians have not stated a position on the project (which is a little shameful).

Regardless, it's pretty far along in the approval process. It's my impression that the only real danger--or hope given your perspective--of derailing (sorry!) the project is one of the court challenges succeeding. (Although I don't think there are any lawsuits filed yet, but if the State steps in with eminent domain, there will surely be.)

No. I want this and the WSS to proceed. My referance to the Soviet "Sickle and Hammer" is the fact that the Democrats would like to have the ghetto control everything. At least that's what's happening in Philly.

The fact is, I wish NYC would trash all building limits. If someone wants to build 20 story condos in the South Bronx, then he should have every right to buy the buildings, knock them down, and get crackin! More housing lowers the price for ALL of us.

In fact, part of me thinks that if NYC's housing prices we're to fall, that we would see NY's health and growth skyrocket, due to the fact that the city will be in more people's range.

Clarknt67

May 10th, 2005, 07:17 PM

The fact is, I wish NYC would trash all building limits. If someone wants to build 20 story condos in the South Bronx, then he should have every right to buy the buildings, knock them down, and get crackin! More housing lowers the price for ALL of us.

In fact, part of me thinks that if NYC's housing prices we're to fall, that we would see NY's health and growth skyrocket, due to the fact that the city will be in more people's range.

I can't really agree with no limited building. I'm all in favor of towers in certain places, but when you get down to wall st and you can never see the sun or the sky, it's kind of ugly and depressing. I'd hate to see the whole city like that.

Besides, there's a lot of great architecture in this city that needs protecting.

BrooklynRider

May 10th, 2005, 07:22 PM

No. I want this and the WSS to proceed. My referance to the Soviet "Sickle and Hammer" is the fact that the Democrats would like to have the ghetto control everything. At least that's what's happening in Philly.

Your hyperbole runneth over.

alex ballard

May 10th, 2005, 07:41 PM

I can't really agree with no limited building. I'm all in favor of towers in certain places, but when you get down to wall st and you can never see the sun or the sky, it's kind of ugly and depressing. I'd hate to see the whole city like that.

Besides, there's a lot of great architecture in this city that needs protecting.
That's not what I meant. I absolutley don't want all of NY to look like Wall st. I mean, 6-8 story townhouses aren't that bad. I would like to see a mix of housing. High Density towers and apartment buildings in some areas to hold a lot of people. Then some middle density to hold many people, and homes for some people.

And I'm all for preservation, as long as it makes sense. Preserving Brooklyn Heights was an excellent move, becasue it rasied the area up. Putting a stranglehold on the Far West Side and Clinton makes no sense. If Midtown has got to exapnd at the cost of some old-style walk-ups, then sometimes that painful chioce has to be made. No one here is saying to knock anything down for a highway or power plant. But for dozens of new life giving skyscrapers pumping vitality and commerce into the five boroughs, then that's a given. Besudes, the more people you have, the more demand for those historic walk-ups. Which then saves whatever is left from the wrecking ball.

NYguy

May 20th, 2005, 08:45 AM

NY TIMES

Brooklyn Arena Plan Calls for Many Subsidized Units

By MICHAEL BRICK
May 20, 2005

Trying to build political support for his proposed $2.5 billion sports and housing complex at the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, Bruce C. Ratner, the developer, signed an agreement yesterday to reserve about half of the rental apartments for tenants who make less than $100,000 a year.

The agreement, signed with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, publicly aligns Mr. Ratner with a group known for tenacious advocacy of the poor, and it publicly commits him to an unusually large allotment of subsidized housing for a private development project. It also serves to marginalize his remaining political opponents, residents of the area who say they will be displaced by his project.

At a news conference announcing the agreement at Brooklyn Borough Hall yesterday morning, a row of elected officials including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the borough president, Marty Markowitz, joined Mr. Ratner and Bertha Lewis, the executive director of Acorn, to praise one another in a celebration that included kisses, hugs and some dancing.

"Don't think of these as subsidies; this is an investment," Mr. Bloomberg said. "I think it's the greatest example yet of Brooklyn's cultural and economic renaissance."

The agreement concerns 4,500 rental apartments, half of them studios and one-bedrooms and half of them two- and three-bedrooms, in the 13 residential buildings of the 17 proposed for the project.

Under the terms of the agreement, 30 percent of the apartments, 1,350 units, would be reserved for families with incomes from $37,680 to $100,480 for a four-person household paying 30 percent of its income in rent. An additional 20 percent of the apartments, 900 units, would be reserved for families making less than $31,400 a year. Of that group, 136 units would be reserved for families making less than $25,120 a year. The other half of the units could be rented at market rate.

Tenants in the reserved units would have their rent payments subsidized by the New York City Housing Development Corporation, a state public-benefit corporation that has the authority to issue tax-exempt bonds.

The corporation plans to use a combination of bonds and reserves from investments to finance the subsidies, said Carol Abrams, a spokeswoman for the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The funds will not be committed until the developer closes on the project, Ms. Abrams said.

Mr. Ratner's company, Forest City Ratner, is the development partner of The New York Times for its new headquarters on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. The 21-acre project Mr. Ratner has proposed for Brooklyn, to which he intends to bring the Nets basketball team, faces condemnation proceedings and several reviews, including a lengthy environmental one. The city and state have each pledged $100 million to the project, contingent on the approvals.

Mr. Ratner still needs to buy the land, which sits atop railyards at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

At the news conference yesterday, Mr. Ratner said each building in the project would have the so-called 50-30-20 mix. He said that he hoped to complete the first housing units by 2008.

Letitia James, a city councilwoman who represents Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, tempered her praise for the agreement with Acorn with concerns that the project was too large to be placed "in the middle of a low-rise, brownstone community."

Brad Lander, director of the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development, said the agreement was a shrewd political move for Mr. Ratner and a substantive accomplishment for Acorn.

"They're looking to build a broader base of support, in many ways, from a wider geographic area of Brooklyn, in part to counter opposition from other folks," Mr. Lander said. "It's a fairly transparent strategy, but it's also something real. Acorn gets a significant amount of subsidized housing."

krulltime

May 23rd, 2005, 05:08 PM

May 23, 2005

Ratner hires development director for arena

Forest City Ratner Cos. named designer Michael Hallmark as director of arena development for the company’s proposed Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn.

Mr. Hallmark, a former stadium designer, has focused in recent years on planning commercial developments in the neighborhoods around sports venues. He has consulted on such projects as the Phoenix Suns’ America West Arena, which he also designed.

In an effort to win community support for the project, Mr. Ratner announced last week that he would set aside about half of the 4,500 rental apartments in the Atlantic Yards sports and housing complex for tenants earning less than $100,000 a year; more than 1,000 units would be reserved for families earning below $31,400 annually.

Mr. Ratner has yet to buy the land for Atlantic Yards, which would include a stadium for the New Jersey Nets. Its critics say the publicly funded project would displace residents and snarl traffic.

COPYRIGHT 2005 CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC.

kliq6

May 23rd, 2005, 06:01 PM

this one will happen, since it needs no state approval, unlike the Jets, this is a city/ ratner deal

alex ballard

May 23rd, 2005, 06:41 PM

Wow. This really is going to happen. I can't really believe it.

This should be a huge boost for Brooklyn.

Is there any chance that more than 5 Million sq ft could fit downtown? If you got 40 sites together, then you could assemble 100 million sq ft.

NoyokA

May 23rd, 2005, 10:03 PM

Apparently its a pretty big news story:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&ncl=http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi%3Ff%3D/n/a/2005/05/23/sports/s125131D07.DTL&filter=0&sa=N&start=0

NYguy

May 24th, 2005, 09:15 AM

Wow. This really is going to happen. I can't really believe it.

Believe it. Its coming.

kliq6

May 24th, 2005, 10:28 AM

NYguy

May 25th, 2005, 08:56 AM

the plan is as it is, Most of the land is not even his yet, the stadium site is owned by the MTA, but rtaner has done good for Brooklyn, so it may become a bigger plan if its successful like metrotech, but if its like Atlantic terminal, it wont be

If you don't count the railyards, most of the land is already Ratner's. If you go on the arena footprint alone, its all Ratner's.

NYguy

May 25th, 2005, 08:57 AM

NY POST

NETS MUST GO THROUGH HOOPS IN BROOKLYN

By PATRICK GALLAHUE

May 25, 2005 -- A plan to bring the Nets to Brooklyn will have to go through a competitive bidding process — much like the Jets stadium deal — before the MTA grants its air rights to developer Bruce Ratner, officials said yesterday.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the Atlantic Avenue Long Island Rail Road Yards where Ratner wants to build a $2.5 billion arena and residential complex, released a 24-page document inviting developers to bid on the land.

"Obviously, our purpose is to get the most money for the system we can," said MTA spokesman Tom Kelly.

All bids are due July 6.

"We welcome the request for proposals and look forward to a successful completion of this stage of the project," said Ratner spokesman Bruce Bender.

The process also requires bidders to include details of their proposals and set up a $500,000 fund within five days of being selected to cover the MTA's anticipated contractual costs.

The MTA did not say when it would announce a winning bid for the three-block stretch of land.

The bid represents the latest roadblock that Ratner will have to pass in order to build the much-hyped Frank Gehry-designed venue.

For Ratner, a failed bid would be a disaster since he only purchased the Nets in order to make the team the centerpiece of his massive development project in Brooklyn.

"Let the best plan win," said Councilwoman Letitia James (D-Brooklyn), one of the most vocal critics of the Nets arena project.

Real-estate experts doubt any serious rivals would make a play for the Atlantic Yards, because Ratner has already cut deals with many of the private homeowners near the site.

macreator

May 25th, 2005, 10:06 AM

So if the land is already Ratner's, what is this bidding about?

ZippyTheChimp

May 25th, 2005, 10:46 AM

The bidding is strictly for the railyards.

Clarknt67

May 25th, 2005, 03:03 PM

So if the land is already Ratner's, what is this bidding about?

the land over the railyards isn't ratners, it's still the MTAs. Six months ago it seemed like a done deal that it was to be handed over to Ratner. But the open bidding on the Hudson Yards (however fixed it was) threw a wrench into that and they opened the process up.

kliq6

May 25th, 2005, 03:10 PM

alex ballard

May 25th, 2005, 04:03 PM

Please this is as fixed as the Jets, no other bidders will be invovled. Atleast the city and State are going to get a good use out of this area. With Metrotech being a failure you might as well use DT Brooklyn as a place to build housing like they will in Greenpoint/Williamsburg

Metrotech is not a failure. And with each passing "NYC sucks for buisness" post your also losing creditiblity with me. If NYC is such a hellhole, why are there still 50 Fortune 500 headquarters (10%, considering NYC only has 2% of the nation's jobs) and the other 450 have major offices here?

They could all move, but they don't. The fact is, the city can do a lot more to make itself a better place for buisness, but it's far from hell for most companies. Maybe everything you say is true, which is not what I'm saying, but words are not being backed by action. There must be something the American CEO likes in NY, so that's why there here.

NYC will become better as time goes on, history has backed that up for 400 years.

And DTB and LIC could become Jersey City's if the costs reductions we're there. That's the truth.

kliq6

May 25th, 2005, 04:13 PM

alex ballard

May 25th, 2005, 04:45 PM

Alex relax, im just making statements, fact is that even though there are still 50 there use to be many more, I can send you a list. I work for a LARGE real estate firnm, i know what firms and companies are thinking and am in a better position to talk about it, i dont have to share this info but i do to make it know to a board and community group here that wants info, i can stop if your upset about the truth

LIC and Brooklyn would be massaive right now if the states tax code was on par with Jersey and CT. Fact is Metro is no bigger today then it was 10 years ago, in terms fof jobs and office space. Firms have no choosen that after 9/11 as a back up and it really has not lived up to its expectations.

NYC is the greatest place in the world to do businees, however our government in albany think that firms will just pay and price to do business here, because NY is NY, and that my friend is just wrong.

The above was not meant to be an attack or personal. But you've come close to saying "NYC sucks of biz". On tax aspects, that is very true. But we're the tops in everything else. So you saying "NYC is the greatest place to do buisness" is a little confusing.

Also, maybe you should be "proactive" with you're knowledge and power. Why can't these companies say: "Look Pataki, we love your state, but if you don't get your shit together, we're gonna love Jersey".

I have severe concerns about Spitzer as well. He's all but declared war on the free market system since he's been AG. I sincerely hope he doesn't take this attitude to the Governer's office. I hope.

BrooklynRider

May 25th, 2005, 05:35 PM

It's probably worth noting that real estate firms, particularly the "large" real estate firms in NYC, are inclined to exaggerate and skewer figures to boast whatever argument they are trying to make. The last figures on vacancies in Downtown Manhattan comes immediately to mind. No sooner had they been released, than the firm was back peddling and lines were being connected all over the place to show the manipulation. I'm not saying all real estate industry employees are liars, but every statement they make is measured because of the ripple effect it can have, impacting leasing, sales and deals. Also, if a major firm was looking to reposition to Brooklyn, Queens or the Bronx - they wouldn't go and talk directly to a broker first. They would talk to the city's EDC. Also, they wouldn't diddle around with small players but rather go straight to a Mary Ann Tighe level industry person.

Gulcrapek

May 25th, 2005, 06:38 PM

Um, yeah... why is Metrotech a failure? Its occupancy rate is something like 97%.

billyblancoNYC

May 25th, 2005, 06:46 PM

Agreed. The only thing it lacks in openness. It's kind of off by itself, with not much retail to speak of. The rest of it is a great success and hopefully will be inspiration for more companies to come to BK.

alex ballard

May 25th, 2005, 07:09 PM

Kolbster

May 26th, 2005, 12:47 PM

Me thinks that maybe the "real estate" brokers get a much fatter commish of selling in Manhattan than Brooklyn. 'Casue after all, if a 6 Billion sale in Brooklyn is 600 Million, Kliq's firm loses 90% of revenue.

Maybe that's why Metrotech is a failure...

Metro Tech isn't a failure. It brings great revenue to Brooklyn and has a high occupancy rate, as NY Guy said (97%). The only problem that i see with it is that it's gated. If you have ever gone into the complex, it's like a maze! There are about four (i may be forgetting some) police boths in the complex and another four check points. It's good for business, but aura wise, i agree with BillyBlancoNYC, it fails.

Derek2k3

May 26th, 2005, 01:19 PM

Metrotech didn't benefit its neighboring communities anywhere near as promised. It's like some gated suburban office park in the middle of downtown. Because of this layout it also failed to produce any substantial development near it and it's just as much of a failure as the Citigroup building in Queens. Leticia James uses this as a good argument against Ratner on the Atlantic Yards project.

NYguy

May 26th, 2005, 10:21 PM

NEWSDAY

Developers to expand Nets arena project

BY PRADNYA JOSHI
May 26, 2005

Forest City Ratner Cos. is considering building more housing and less commercial space as part of its multibilliondollar Nets arena project in Downtown Brooklyn, a company official said Thursday.

Speaking at a City Council hearing, executive vice president James Stuckey said the company may add 1,300 more housing units to the proposed development, while decreasing commercial space from 1.9 million square feet to 428,800.

The company would also reserve space for a 187,000 square foot hotel as part of the 21-acre project, Stuckey said. The initial plan called for 4,500 rental units and 1,500 condominiums.

"There's such a dramatic need for housing right now that we've modified the plan to basically include more housing," he said after the hearing. "I don't think we as a developer have necessarily a preference."

In December 2003, the company announced plans to build an arena to bring the New Jersey Nets basketball team to Brooklyn. As part of those plans, the company hopes to develop 17 buildings ranging from 11 to 49 stories for housing, retail and commercial space.

The project, which is now expected to cost as much as $3.5 billion, stretches along Atlantic Avenue and is bordered by Vanderbilt and Flatbush avenues.

The decision to add more housing units comes a week after the company agreed to set aside 50 percent of the rental units for low- and middle-income people.

Even with that agreement, the proposal has continued to draw significant neighborhood opposition because of its size, as well as questions about how much public financing will be involved.

The project would largely use the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Atlantic Yards.

Stuckey told the council yesterday that the city and state would realize $5 billion in new tax revenue over 30 years. He also said the company hopes to avoid using eminent domain to obtain the property in the development area, preferring to buy out current owners.

The company is also offering to provide housing in the new development at current rents to displaced residents, he said.

The city and state have each pledged $100 million in financing for the development, but members of Develop -- Don't Destroy Brooklyn, a neighborhood group, testified yesterday that direct and indirect subsidies for the project total at least $1.6 billion.

A representative of the city's Independent Budget Office said it has not completed a new analysis on the project given the proposed additional residential space, but he believed that the city will see a net surplus from the deal.

NYguy

May 26th, 2005, 10:49 PM

7online.com

http://a.abclocal.go.com/images/wabc/2005/wabc_052605_brk2.jpg

So many people showed up for today's hearing that at one point police refused to let anybody else inside.

http://a.abclocal.go.com/images/wabc/2005/wabc_052605_brk3.jpg

They were here to weigh in on developer Bruce Ratner's plan to transform 21 acres near downtown Brooklyn into a basketball arena for the Nets and at least 15 high rise towers - 11 to 49 stories tall.

http://a.abclocal.go.com/images/wabc/2005/wabc_052605_brk4.jpg

The development company has slowly bought up the needed property. They now own 91 percent of all the apartments and condos and more than 50 percent of the commercial property.

Controversial Brooklyn Development Spurs Debate

By Eyewitness News' Dave Evans
(New York -WABC, May 26, 2005)

The West Side Stadium has become a huge issue in the mayor's race. But there's another controversial sports development that hasn't drawn as much attention - until today.

Hundreds of people were at a hearing to debate the new home for the Nets - a home that would radically transform a part of Brooklyn known as the Atlantic Yards.

The developer here - Forest City Ratner - owned by Bruce Ratner, today released new figures showing a lot of owners are selling fairly quickly and perhaps condemnation won't be needed for the arena project.

If the company is successful a big part of Brooklyn will soon look dramatically different.

So many people showed up for today's hearing that at one point police refused to let anybody else inside. They were here to weigh in on developer Bruce Ratner's plan to transform 21 acres near downtown Brooklyn into a basketball arena for the Nets and at least 15 high rise towers - 11 to 49 stories tall.

Jim Stuckey, Forest City Ratner Development: "There is such a dire need for jobs, there is such a dire need for housing. If housing and jobs aren't appropriate for Brooklyn I don't know what is."

The development company has slowly bought up the needed property. They now own 91 percent of all the apartments and condos and more than 50 percent of the commercial property.

But now, just like they did on their land for a West Side Stadium, the MTA is demanding bids for the old Atlantic Railyards - right where Ratner wants to build his 20,000 seat arena.

Charles Barron, (D) City Council: "You were fine giving this to him with a little sweetheart deal and no competitive bidding process, the same thing they tried to do with the Jets."

While the developer has found success in buying up property, there are a number of hold-outs, like Daniel Goldstein who was at today's hearing. He's refusing to sell.

Daniel Goldstein, Brooklyn Resident: "This is not a done deal. Forest City Ratner certainly wants people to think it is and they've spent millions of dollars to put forth that perception. This is not a done deal. This community is opposed to it."

But there's also support for a plan to build 6,000 new apartments and condos - half of them for low to moderate income families. And all that construction means jobs.

Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn Borough President: "And yes I am enthusiastically a supporter of this and yes it will provide the jobs. It will. There's no question about it."

Besides 4,500 rental apartments, Ratner's project also now calls for 1,500 condominiums. All these buidlings and the arena will take about 10 years to complete.

Couple this with the zoning change in Williamsburg and Greenpoint a couple of weeks ago and Brooklyn is going to look a lot different.

Teno

May 26th, 2005, 11:48 PM

Ratner shoudl be thankful. This project is actually getting a somewhat easy ride in the shadow of the Jets stadium.

If it weren't for the West Side stadium, I'm sure this project would be taking far more heat.

People would declare this project will cause too much traffic, waste tax payer money, cause schools to be underfunded, put fire fighters out of work, and over all destroy quality of life in downtown Brooklyn.

Teno

May 26th, 2005, 11:54 PM

7online.com[size=3]
But now, just like they did on their land for a West Side Stadium, the MTA is demanding bids for the old Atlantic Railyards - right where Ratner wants to build his 20,000 seat arena.

Charles Barron, (D) City Council: "You were fine giving this to him with a little sweetheart deal and no competitive bidding process, the same thing they tried to do with the Jets."

If I remember correctly Ratner said he would pay whatever the MTA deemed true market value for the Atlantic railyards.

Of course he'll be asking the city for deep long term tax cuts, so it all balances itself out.

krulltime

May 27th, 2005, 02:01 PM

Ratner quietly moves in

http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/328-stuckey.JPG
James Stuckey

BY DEBORAH KOLBEN
DAILY NEWS WRITER

Real estate developer Bruce Ratner now owns a huge swath of land in Prospect Heights where he hopes to build the Atlantic Yards complex, officials said yesterday at a City Council hearing.

Ratner, who has been quietly buying up property where he will put the Nets arena, also is considering adding a hotel and up to 2,800 apartments to the plan.

He now owns 91% of the condos and co-ops and 63% of rental units on the 21-acre site. He also owns 23 of the 43 commercial properties and is negotiating to buy the rest.

Owning all that property is a coup for Ratner - who originally faced opposition from community advocates who charged he would have to use eminent domain to take the privately-owned land.

"We said we are going to do every single thing we could to reduce the need for eminent domain and condemnation," Ratner executive James Stuckey said.

Council members generally supported the plan, but said they were concerned about traffic, sanitation, schools and displacing residents.

Things got heated when Councilman Charles Barron (D-East New York) took on Borough President Marty Markowitz - one of the plan's loudest cheerleaders.

"This is going to lead to instant gentrification," Barron charged. "But you don't care about that because the Nets are coming.

"Holding eminent domain over people's head and then negotiating is not fair," he added.

Barron said using the threat of eminent domain - the power of the state to seize private land - pressured homeowners to sell.

The revised plan will cost $3.5 billion - $1 billion more than originally announced - and now includes cutting back on office space and building as many as 7,300 rental apartments and condos.

Another building also is being proposed across Flatbush Ave.

The developer has vowed that half of the 4,500 apartments originally proposed will be set aside for low- and middle-income tenants.

"There is a dire need for residential development," Stuckey said.

Many residents who initially opposed the plan sold their apartments when Ratner approached with lucrative offers.

Half of the proposed project would be built over MTA-owned land - which Ratner is still trying to buy.

The MTA is now seeking competing bids for the railyards and proposals are due by July 6.

The city and state have each pledged $100 million toward the project.

Markowitz said he was glad too see something finally happen over the "abandoned, ugly tracks."

"The Atlantic Yards have been available to any developer in America for the past 100 years," Markowitz said.

Originally published on May 27, 2005

All contents © 2005 Daily News, L.P.

'NET' GAIN IN B'KLYN CONDOS

May 27, 2005 -- The developer who hopes to bring the Nets to Brooklyn has proposed adding another 1,500 condominiums to the already-planned 4,500 apartment rentals on the 21-acre Atlantic yards site.

"We have been out and we have met with the community extensively. One of the things we have heard and been educated about . . . is, in fact, there is a dire need for residential development in our plan," Jim Stuckey a vice-president of developer Bruce Ratner's company, told the City Council yesterday.

The 19,000-seat Nets arena which anchors the project, will cost $3.5 billion. Frankie Edozien

Copyright 2005 NYP Holdings, Inc.

NoyokA

May 27th, 2005, 11:21 PM

Looking at the models and all the open space I've thought that the site was underzoned, much like Atlantic Mall is, density is good news!

NYguy

June 3rd, 2005, 07:10 PM

BROOKLYN PAPERS

Ratner site expands — into Park Slope

By Jess Wisloski
The Brooklyn Papers

Atlantic Yards is stretching out — and into Park Slope.

The massive high-rise development has until now been described as stretching east into Prospect Heights from the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues.

But at a City Council hearing last Thursday, a presentation by Forest City Ratner said the developer was considering plans to greatly increase the amount of housing on the site, both by scaling back the amount of office and retail space and by expanding the site westward — jumping over Flatbush Avenue to include plots now occupied by Modell’s and PC Richard & Son.

The presentation, shown at the May 26 hearing, indicated that the developer might increase the number of housing units from 4,500 to at least 6,000 or possibly 7,300, and include a 187,000-square-foot hotel in a 620-foot tower at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues.

Two-million one-hundred-thousand square feet of office space in three of four towers originally planned in the project’s design would be replaced with housing, reducing to 428,000 square feet the amount of office space. Street-level retail, originally projected for 307,000 square feet, would be reduced to 227,000, according to the plan.

The presentation was made by Forest City Ratner Executive Vice President James Stuckey and ACORN Executive Director Bertha Lewis. In a deal “sealed with a kiss,” ACORN was designated last week to process applications for the project’s low-, moderate- and middle-income units.

Ratner-booster Marie Louis, first vice-president of BUILD (Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development), said after the hearing that she was not concerned that a reduction in office space could reduce employment opportunities for area residents.
“Our contentions continue to be that whatever is going there, there have to be opportunities for the community to take advantage of it,” she said.

________________________________________

COUNCIL WON’T LISTEN
Public barred from hearing on Ratner plan

http://brooklynpapers.com/html/issues/_vol28/28_23/28_23councilmeeting.jpg

City Council member David Yassky during testimony by ACORN Executive Director Bertha Lewis at the Atlantic Yards hearing on May 26. In a deal that was “sealed with a kiss,” Lewis last week accepted the role of Ratner’s community advocate.

By Jess Wisloski
The Brooklyn Papers

The only public hearing before a committee of the City Council on the Atlantic Yards project was held in a room so small that dozens of people — including, for a time, Borough President Marty Markowitz — were barred by police from entering.

Even for those who did get into the May 26 hearing, there was little time for public input, although the committee allowed pro-development testimonials by elected officials and representatives of the developer, Forest City Ratner, to go on for more than two hours.

“The general public didn’t get to speak,” said Daniel Goldstein, a persistent critic of the plan to build high-rise housing and office buildings as well as an arena for the New Jersey Nets.

“[Committee Chairman James] Sanders cut it off at five [o’clock] for no apparent reason other than he just felt like leaving,” said Goldstein, who owns a home inside the project’s footprint.

The room designated for the hearing, at 250 Broadway, one block from City Hall, had only 50 chairs, but at least 100 people showed up.

The room was crowded early by organized proponents of the Ratner project, including trade union members and members of BUILD (Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development).

But even BUILD’s president, James Caldwell, a staunch Ratner ally, expressed annoyance.

“A regular person that’s not involved in the project didn’t come close to getting a chance to speak,” Caldwell said. “They should’ve cut back on some of the politicians that were speaking, and given an opportunity to have some of the public speak.”

Reporters without Police Department credentials who arrived after the room was filled were prevented from entering the building, and reporters with credentials had to seek special permission to enter.

Several reporters were personally ushered upstairs to the hearing by Forest City staff.

Markowitz, a champion of the project, who arrived at the building a few minutes after the hearing’s 1 pm scheduled start, was stopped at a revolving door by three police officers who blocked his passage, saying they couldn’t let him in.

Markowitz found himself on the same side of the glass doors as about 50 of the plan’s opponents, some of whom shouted, “We’re getting locked out!” and “They’re trying to silence us!”

“I’m supposed to be in there,” Markowitz yelled at the officers. Gesturing to the officials inside, he asked an aide, “Do they know who I am?”

To project opponents, who gravitated towards him as he was let in, he said, “Nobody’s getting locked out. Everybody’s going to be heard.”

Inside the hearing, Markowitz touted the plan, saying, “This is a cause for celebration.”

Two hours after the hearing began, a steadfast group of project opponents continued to wait, hoping to get inside.

A guard working at the security desk, Elias Cabrera, explained that to enter, people had to be pre-registered as speakers, and pointed to a printed list prepared in advance.

Ken Diamondstone, a Community Board 2 member waiting in the lobby, said, “So many people are engaged at this point, they should’ve known there would be a massive turnout.”

City Council spokeswoman Leticia Theodore said the policy of the council is to provide a forum to anyone who chooses to speak, but the room did not have enough space.

“I don’t think they knew how many people were going to be here,” she said.

The hearing was moderated by Councilman Sanders, who on May 19 attended an event to promote a memorandum of understanding agreed to by Ratner, the city, and the housing group ACORN, at which ACORN Executive Director Bertha Lewis kissed Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Bruce Ratner.

Also attending the hearing were Council Speaker Gifford Miller and Councilmembers Eric Gioia, Lewis Fidler, Charles Barron, Yvette Clarke, Bill deBlasio, Erik Martin Dilan, Letitia James, Domenic Recchia, Jr., Diana Reyna and David Yassky.

Most of the council members left by the time the public had an opportunity to speak.

“Marty didn’t come to listen, he just came to say his thing and then left,” said Goldstein, whose prepared testimony was interrupted repeatedly by the Chair and then cut short.

“[Speaker] Giff Miller came for five minutes, said his thing and left — it’s hard to get an elected to listen to anything,” he said, “and we need a lot of listening right now.”

“The [committee] should’ve been asking tough questions about the economics of it, and none of them did,” said Goldstein.

“There’s a lot of anger on both sides, but particularly on this side of the issue,” he added.

“The community groups, the citizen groups of both sides, were not given the respect of having a larger committee there to listen,” he said.

“Absolutely, that is so true,” said Caldwell, who was initially told by Sanders he would not be allowed to speak. “The only two councilpersons out there were the Chair [Sanders] and Councilwoman James, and he’s the Chair so he had to be there.”

“I think the general public should’ve been given more of an opportunity to speak. I think in the future that’s something they should consider,” Caldwell said, adding that he didn’t think another hearing was merited.

“I wouldn’t advocate for another meeting, because this project needs to get done,” he said.

Gulcrapek

June 3rd, 2005, 11:00 PM

Good or bad? I don't know. It might be better to have separate developers do their thing on those two sites. But both sites are severely, almost criminally underutilized. I forgot the exact zoning but both are one floor and they could be at least 30 floors.

NYguy

June 4th, 2005, 08:29 AM

DAILY NEWS

Ratner lands Giff's backing

BY DEBORAH KOLBEN

City Council Speaker Gifford Miller - a vocal foe of the Jets' proposed West Side stadium - is coming out in favor today of developer Bruce Ratner's $3.5 billion Nets arena complex in downtown Brooklyn.

"The difference is that the Atlantic Yards project has less public investment," said a source close to Miller. "and there's a substantial affordable housing component."

Miller, a Manhattan Democrat running for mayor, has said there were "positive differences" between the Jets' and Nets' projects, but never fully endorsed Ratner's development.

The Brooklyn project would include a new arena for the New Jersey Nets, who would leave their Meadowlands home, high-rise office towers and up to 7,300 apartments.

Ratner's development calls for $100 million each from the city and state, and would allow the condemnation of homes and businesses on the 21-acre site.

Half of the project would be built over MTA-owned railyards that Ratner hopes to purchase.

The Jets stadium proposal, the centerpiece of Bloomberg's push to bring the 2012 Summer Olympics to the city, would require $300 million each from the city and state.

Some analysts say this could be a good political move for Miller, who is lagging in the polls.

"Miller needs to get out of Manhattan," said political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, "and Brooklyn's a good place to start."

NYguy

June 6th, 2005, 07:17 PM

DAILY NEWS

It's a whole new ballgame
Foes of Jets stadium back Nets arena

BY DEBORAH KOLBEN

Mayoral candidates who oppose the Bloomberg-backed Jets stadium on Manhattan's West Side are now falling in line to support developer Bruce Ratner's multibillion-dollar Nets arena project in downtown Brooklyn.

After City Council Speaker Gifford Miller announced his support this weekend of the massive housing and commercial development, Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields also pledged her approval.

"She supports the [arena]," said Fields spokesman Nick Charles. "She thinks Mr. Ratner has done a really good thing. The issue she had in the beginning was the process."

In the past, Fields, who strongly opposes the Jets stadium, had refused to say whether she supported the Brooklyn project.

The two other Democratic hopefuls, former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer and Congressman Anthony Weiner, are sticking to their original views.

"We support the project but we think the process should have been more transparent," said Weiner spokesman Anson Kaye.

Ferrer has questions about the Brooklyn project but called the affordable-housing component "powerful."

"Until we have answers, how can anybody say if they're in favor of the project?" Ferrer said.

Miller, an ardent opponent of the proposed $1.9 billion Jets stadium, came out this weekend in favor of developer Bruce Ratner's bid to build an arena complex over the railyards in Prospect Heights.

Ratner bought the New Jersey Nets last year and hopes to move them to a 19,000-seat arena at Flatbush and Atlantic Aves.

The controversial development also includes soaring office towers and up to 7,300 apartments in more than a dozen high-rise buildings stretching over to Vanderbilt Ave.

The developer has vowed that 2,250 rental apartments will be set aside for low- and middle-income tenants.

The city and state have agreed to put $200 million in public money toward the project.

Half of the project would be built over MTA-owned railyards that Ratner is still trying to buy. The cash-strapped agency put the 10-acre site up for bid last month.

Proposals are due by July 6.

"Any of these candidates who oppose the West Side development and give their full endorsement to the Brooklyn project are inconsistent hypocrites," said Daniel Goldstein of the anti-arena group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn.

Prospect Heights City Councilwoman Letitia James, a vocal opponent of the arena project, criticized Miller for his stance.

"His policy is inconsistent with the West Side, where the issues are similar," James said. "He's putting politics over people."

But Miller claims the Brooklyn proposal is better.

"There are serious substantive differences that make the Atlantic Yards project the right investment for Brooklyn and the city's future," said Miller spokesman Steve Sigmund.

He cited less public investment, better subway access and city oversight.

"Speaker Miller wants to see MTA get a good price for its [land] but at the end of the day he is putting what he thinks is the right choice above politics," Sigmund said.

kliq6

June 7th, 2005, 04:02 PM

watch out cause if ratner tries to get office tenants for this place, Silver will say he is trying to steal from LM and block this project as well

NoyokA

June 7th, 2005, 04:29 PM

ADWEEK:

N.J. Nets Hire BrandBuzz Before Bklyn Move
June 06, 2005
By Andrew McMains

NEW YORK The New Jersey Nets have hired BrandBuzz to handle creative and media duties on its ad account, the client confirmed. Billings are estimated at $3-4 million.

BrandBuzz, a unit of WPP Group's Young & Rubicam, bested two other finalists to land the business: Omnicom Group's Zimmerman & Partners in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and the creative incumbent, Kerwin Communications in West Caldwell, N.J., according to sources.

The review was triggered by the installation of new CEO Brett Yormark [Adweek Online, Jan. 26] and came as the team layed the groundwork for a move to Brooklyn, in time for the 2008-9 NBA season. Yormark, who started in January, is a former top marketing executive at Nascar.

"He was challenged by [Nets owner] Bruce Ratner to be the best organization in sports," said Leo Ehrline, an svp at Nets Sports & Entertainment in Rutherford, N.J. "We just needed to step up our marketing strategy."

In addition to traditional advertising, the New York-based BrandBuzz will create Web ads, direct mail and specialized marketing pieces such as recruitment kits designed to lure players to the team, said agency CEO Rick Eiserman. The shop's first campaign is expected in September.

During its daylong kickoff meeting with the client last week, Eiserman and other BrandBuzz personnel met everyone from coach Lawrence Frank to the group sales chief and the executive who manages the Nets dancers.

"We're essentially starting from scratch," said Eiserman, who added that the shop has an "incredible opportunity to help transform the Nets organization into a world-class brand."

The Nets are looking to build its fan base in advance of its move to Brooklyn, where it plans to build a new arena designed by architect Frank Gehry.

NYguy

June 7th, 2005, 05:01 PM

The Nets are looking to build its fan base in advance of its move to Brooklyn, where it plans to build a new arena designed by architect Frank Gehry.

Once in Brooklyn, the fan base will really start to grow there...

pianoman11686

June 7th, 2005, 06:37 PM

NYguy

June 8th, 2005, 09:40 AM

DAILY NEWS

Ratner sweetens the deal

BY DEBORAH KOLBEN

Developer Bruce Ratner is about to offer tenants living in the footprint of his $3.5 billion Nets arena complex a deal they can't refuse, the Daily News has learned.

Ratner will offer all displaced tenants new apartments in one of his soaring Frank Gehry-designed towers for the same rent they now pay. Ratner also will pay for tenants to move to a new apartment nearby and subsidize their rent until they move back.

"I haven't heard of anybody offering any deal like that," said attorney M. Robert Goldstein, a condemnation expert. "And I've only been doing this for 55 years."

Ratner will announce the deal in upcoming weeks when he finalizes a community-benefits agreement with neighborhood groups.

Ratner foes demonstrated against the Prospect Heights project yesterday, charging public money should not be used to build it and that it was out of scale with the neighborhood.

Undeterred by the probable death of the Jets stadium on Manhattan's West Side, Ratner is plowing ahead with plans to build a 19,000-seat arena and up to 7,300 apartments.

He now owns 60 of the 97 rental apartments on the site along with more than 90% of the condos and coops.

Ratner is negotiating with tenants in 22 apartments of the 60 he owns; 25 of the 60 are empty. Residents not interested in moving into the new high-rise complex will be offered cash. A Ratner spokesman declined to say how much.

But many renters - including some who have lived in the area for decades and pay very little rent - complain they still have not heard from Ratner.

"They don't know anything," said tenant organizer Artemio Guerra of the Fifth Avenue Committee, which is representing low-income renters at 810 and 812 Pacific St.

"There's a perception that upper-middle-income white people are being displaced," Guerra said. "But these folks are almost entirely working-class Latinos that I don't think have had a loud voice in this project."

Ratner executive James Stuckey insisted the developer is "not interested in displacing tenants," and that the deal will be offered to renters who have been living in the building for at least a year.

"I don't need a doorman or valet parking. I just want space to do my films," said moviemaker Karl Nussbaum, 46, who has lived and worked in his Dean St. apartment for 18 years.

Nussbaum was set to begin meeting with Ratner yesterday.

"It's not beautiful, but it's large and reasonably priced," Nussbaum said of his apartment, which would be razed to make way for the arena.

billyblancoNYC

June 8th, 2005, 12:23 PM

I feel like the Nets already have a much bigger fanbase than they had a few years ago. Not only are more New Jerseyites excited by the team, which has made four straight playoff appearances, but I know a lot of former Knicks fans who follow the team equally because, frankly, the Knicks have sucked for a while now. By the way, kilq6: Ratner has already drastically reduced the proportion of office space in his development and made it a predominantly residential development. Do you think this has anything to do with the quest to lure more tenants to Lower Manhattan recently?

I think it has to do with his no-tenant NY Times 1/2 building, his no-tenant Gehry building, the fact that he needs immediate cash to pay for the Nets, and the fact that any residential buildings built right now in the 5 boroughs of NYC either rent or sell at astronomical values in a heartbeat's time.

kliq6

June 8th, 2005, 12:45 PM

Piano i agree with Billy on the ratner office space, its got nothing to do with Dowtwon, it has to do more with him trying to fill up the NY Times building and the fact that firms arent really considering Brooklyn now as much as in the past when Lower manhattan was stronger and they moved there.

With Midtown filling up, i think LIC really has a chance to take off as a commercial sectors

alex ballard

June 8th, 2005, 12:58 PM

/\ Now you've got me spinning in cricles.

You first said "companies would rather go bankrput than move to BK or QNS". Now you're saying "LIC is the future". Which is it?

As for Lower Manhattan, I still stand by the belief that a economic boom will do more good for Lower Manhattan than anything Silver/Bloomie/Pataki can do...

kliq6

June 8th, 2005, 02:41 PM

back office not headquaters, LIC and its closeness to Midtown are favorable, an example being citigroup with 399 park and Citigroup Center in Manhattan and two subway stops away, there major back-office.

alex ballard

June 8th, 2005, 02:46 PM

/\ I'm cool with back office.

On the other hand, why is everyone deadset against a Lower Manhattan, DTB, LIC headquarters? It's not like people respect your letterhead saying "Purchase, NY", "White Plains, NY" or "Bounding Brook, NJ" any better.

NYguy

June 8th, 2005, 07:59 PM

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/writers/matthew_waxman/06/07/daily.blog/

Naming the Nets
What's the perfect moniker for Brooklyn-bound team?

Tuesday June 7, 2005

http://i.a.cnn.net/si/2005/writers/matthew_waxman/06/07/daily.blog/p1_kidd.jpg

What word will be on the front of Jason Kidd's jersey when the team moves to Brooklyn?

The announcement that the New Jersey Nets were moving to Brooklyn was similar to Jay Leno saying he was handing the reins of The Tonight Show to Conan O'Brien. If you hold your breath for either to happen, you'll be blue in the face 'til 2009. And while we know the name of Conan's next show, it's not too early to speculate on what Brooklyn's basketball team will be called.

I've heard rumors that "Nets" might survive the move. While that handle aligns nicely with the New York Mets and the New York Jets, and the PR guy is likely salivating at a "Meet the Nets" campaign, the reality is "The Brooklyn Nets" is a terrible choice. Also, if you've cruised Brooklyn recently, you know you'd be hard pressed to find any nets on the playground-court baskets. And doesn't "The Brooklyn Nets" sound like a dance squad? I'm hearing "ladies and gentleman, let me introduce your halftime entertainment -- The Brooklynettes.

Everyone knows there are certain attributes to look for when choosing a team name.

Historical Significance -- Good: Pittsburgh Steelers; Bad: Utah Jazz.

Originality -- Good: Baltimore Ravens; Bad: Carolina Panthers.

Mascot Considerations -- Good: New Jersey Devils; Bad: Miami Heat.

Bonus points for Alliteration (Seattle SuperSonics), Word Play (Buffalo Bills) and A Name Lacking Native American Connotations (Pittsburgh Penguins).

Double bonus points if Emilio Estevez starred in the movie (The Mighty Ducks).

Unfortunately, the perfect name for a Brooklyn team, The Brooklyn Cyclones, was recently nabbed by the Mets Class A affiliate that plays one derailed roller coaster away from the famous Cyclone on Coney Island. Brooklyn's choices are limited because animal names are virtually extinct, and the denizens know that the only living things that thrive in the borough are cockroaches, pigeons, eels, and rats (though the latter might garner support from those being domained eminently by Bruce Ratner).

Since the team will reside in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Prospect Heights, "The Prospectors" might endear the squad to the locals. I'd also volunteer "The Gentrificators," even if it's not a word. The Renaissance worked for Harlem, but there's no way to shorten it into a fun nickname. "The Hipsters" fits the neighborhood like a tight, black ironic T-shirt, but at this point, I don't think even hipsters like hipsters.

I considered "The Cosmos" -- short for Cosmopolitans -- but you can't be named for a Sex in the City gal-pal rallying cry. Also "The Cosmos" sounds like a WNBA team -- like Destiny or Self-Esteem -- a major no-no. I suspect minority owner Jay-Z might make a push for "The Rocafellas," which would certainly cement the team's street cred, though it might intimidate most luxury box owners. There've even been nostalgic cries to reclaim the Dodgers name, which sounds like more legal trouble than it's worth. Along the same lines, how about "The Bums" as in "dem bums"? Memorable, yet not likely.

How about "The Brooklyn Bridge?" Singular names are always fun because you get to listen to announcers bungle the verb conjugations. The Bridge offers ripe possibilities for newspaper headlines such as "Kidd Votes 'No' on Bridge Rebuilding" or a James Brown allusion such as "Celtics Take it to The Bridge".

What's in a name? Everything. Tap the name "Brewers" and fans across the country will be toasting your ingenuity and applauding your squad from afar. Pick "Blue Jackets" and everyone will assume you're a minor league hockey team.

Choose carefully, Brooklyn. Luckily, you have a few years to decide.

muscle1313

June 8th, 2005, 09:13 PM

Brooklyn Attitudes is my first choice.

czsz

June 8th, 2005, 09:19 PM

Why not Brooklyn Ballers?

alex ballard

June 8th, 2005, 09:50 PM

/\ I like that one.

Brooklyn Bums

Brooklyn Headbangers

Brooklyn Wiseguys

Brooklyn Punks

Brooklyn Bashers

Brooklyn Busters

Brooklyn Wazz-ups

Brooklyn Baysiders

Brooklyn Bridgetons

Brooklyn Longshores

Brooklyn Beans

Brooklyn Bar Mitzhavs

Brooklyn Bakers

I think that's it...

Jasonik

June 8th, 2005, 10:20 PM

Brooklyn Kings

ZippyTheChimp

June 8th, 2005, 10:26 PM

It covers the entire borough,

but it's already taken.

NewYorkYankee

June 8th, 2005, 11:18 PM

There are already Kings, Sacramento.

Jasonik

June 9th, 2005, 12:26 AM

Switch 'em back to the Royals.

Ummmm...

Brooklyn Five

Brooklyn Hoods

Brooklyn Bombs

Brooklyn Power

NYguy

June 9th, 2005, 09:47 AM

Why not Brooklyn Ballers?

I like that also. (3 votes for the Ballers).

I suspect minority owner Jay-Z might make a push for "The Rocafellas," which would certainly cement the team's street cred, though it might intimidate most luxury box owners.

I wonder if Jay-Z will help decide a name. This one is hard for me...

the BROOKLYN BOROUGHS

the BROOKLYN BRIDGES (corny, I know)

the BROOKLYN BROWNSTONES

NYguy

June 9th, 2005, 09:55 AM

NY TIMES

Unlike Stadium on West Side, an Arena in Brooklyn Is Still a Go

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/08/nyregion/stadium.583.jpg

Opponents helped stop a football stadium on the Far West Side of Manhattan. But so far, those against a new basketball arena in Brooklyn, like protesters on Tuesday fighting the plan and high-rises in Prospect Heights, have not derailed the project.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/09/nyregion/stadium.184..2.650.jpg

The proposed 20,000-seat basketball arena for the Nets' move to Brooklyn.

By JIM RUTENBERG and MICHAEL BRICK
June 9, 2005

As Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's plan for a Far West Side stadium was going down to defeat this spring, another major plan for a sports arena was quietly coming to fruition in Brooklyn.

Like the ill-fated football stadium plan for the Jets, the Brooklyn basketball arena, planned for the Nets by its team owner, the developer Bruce Ratner, would be subsidized by hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars and include ambitious redevelopment projects in the surrounding area. It would also be an imposing presence near neighborhoods known for their political activism. And the arena, though strongly backed by the mayor, would most likely require approval of the same obscure state group, the Public Authorities Control Board, which voted to kill the West Side stadium proposal on Monday.

Yet, in a reflection of the relatively smooth sailing the Brooklyn project has enjoyed, one of two men on that board who scuttled the West Side plan this week, Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, indicated yesterday that he would support the new arena for the Nets, who would move to Brooklyn from New Jersey. The other, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, said yesterday that he would be far less likely to stand in its way, since it would not hurt business in his Lower Manhattan district.

While the Brooklyn plan still has hurdles, its progress so far is providing an object lesson in how to navigate big projects through the often treacherous and choppy waters of New York state and city politics. In the Brooklyn project, backers have aggressively courted the local community since the project's inception, trying to placate those who could be its most aggressive foes. Perhaps most important, they have reached out to Mr. Silver.

"They worked more cooperatively and openly with elected officials and community leaders," said City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, a mayoral candidate who supports the Brooklyn plan and had become an ardent critic of the West Side stadium plan. "Rather than just saying, look, here it is, now we're going to bring everything we can to bear on you to agree," Mr. Miller said, "I think there was more of a give and take."

In the post-mortems of the failed West Side stadium plan, critics asserted this week that the Jets and the city's point man on the project, Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff, had erred by first trying to sidestep state legislators, then building a coalition of supporters too late - most notably failing to court Mr. Silver early enough to win his backing and allay his concerns that the West Side redevelopment plan would hurt efforts to revive Lower Manhattan.

Mr. Bloomberg's aides asserted that Mr. Silver was going to vote against the plan no matter when they began courting him. And even stadium opponents credited the Jets with ultimately building a broad coalition that included both the Rev. Al Sharpton and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. But that coalition did not come together until quite recently, long after a key opponent, Cablevision, had begun running advertisements against the West Side stadium.

In contrast, the company building the Brooklyn arena and a large adjoining residential complex, Forest City Ratner - which is also the development partner of The New York Times for its new headquarters in Midtown - took early pains to keep similar opposition from building. As soon as it set about devising its plan in early 2002, it brought aboard a seasoned team of lobbyists who immediately went to work building support among political leaders, especially Mr. Silver.

The developers went public with their plan in December 2003. In announcing the plan, Mr. Ratner described a $2.5 billion project designed by Frank Gehry atop the Atlantic Terminal railway hub.

Opposition to Mr. Ratner's plan emerged quickly, with preservationists and neighborhood groups forming organizations including the Prospect Heights Action Coalition and Develop Don't Destroy. They called rallies, they covered brownstone Brooklyn with fliers and they drafted alternate development plans, arguing the Ratner plan would flood the neighborhood with traffic and overwhelm a low-density area.

But the Ratner group was courting a different constituency. Bruce Bender and James P. Stuckey, executive vice presidents of the development company, studied the opposition, sending assistants to take notes at public meetings or doing it themselves. Mr. Bender has decades of experience as a City Council aide, notably as chief of staff to the former speaker, Peter F. Vallone. Mr. Stuckey is a former president of the Public Development Corporation and a longtime adviser to Mr. Giuliani. They also hired Joe DePlasco of Dan Klores Communications, a former top aide to Mark Green, to handle public relations.

Using jealousy as a wedge, the developers enlisted the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that has fought for low-cost housing. They also courted groups like Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development, an employment advocacy group formed by James E. Caldwell, the president of the 77th Precinct Community Council, with promises of community involvement in the planning and a sizable share of the jobs.

They drafted an agreement covering minority contracting, job training and community use of the arena, negotiating with the Rev. Dr. Herbert Daughtry, an influential pastor of the House of the Lord Pentecostal Church, and Mr. Caldwell.

Slowly, they carved a base of support in downtown Brooklyn, which seemed more inclined to oppose the project, and those allies began doing much of the work for them.

"Acorn knocked on doors in East New York, Bed-Stuy, Brownsville to find out what they knew about the project," said Bertha Lewis, the executive director of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. "The opposition seemed to be sucking up the press."

The opposition remained publicly united. But the Ratner group, working closely with Mr. Bloomberg's housing aides, worked out a crucial agreement to undercut concerns that the project would drive out poorer long-term residents. Last month, in a boisterous rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall, Mayor Bloomberg, Mr. Ratner and Ms. Lewis announced an agreement to build thousands of units of low-cost housing.

The agreement was a milestone, and the moment was indicative of the differences between the Brooklyn plan and the West Side effort.

"It's when Ratner agreed to the housing that opportunity turned to support in low-income and working-class parts of the area," said Dan Cantor, executive director of the Working Families Party, which derives its support largely from housing and labor groups and has its headquarters in Brooklyn.

But Mr. Cantor added: "In Manhattan, community opposition stayed that way because the benefits were too abstract and the downsides were too concrete. In a way, Ratner was a better politician than Doctoroff and the mayor."

City officials pointed out, however, that Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Doctoroff have been deeply involved in Mr. Ratner's project from its inception and are pleased with its progress.

Others noted important differences between the West Side stadium and the Brooklyn arena. For example, the Brooklyn arena would require a $200 million public investment as opposed to the $600 million investment the West Side plan was calling for.

Manhattan also has an especially practiced antidevelopment movement on its West Side and is already home to Madison Square Garden and countless world-renown cultural institutions. Brooklyn, still smarting from the loss of the Dodgers nearly 50 years ago, is generally more welcoming to projects that could help put it on the national map.

But opponents say all of this ignores this crucial advantage that Forest City Ratner had over the Jets: It did not have to face an opponent such as Cablevision, the owner of Madison Square Garden, which has money to wage such a battle. Cablevision was less threatened by competition in the form of a competing site in Brooklyn than it was by one a few blocks away in Manhattan.

"There is a lot of community opposition," said Councilman Charles Barron, of East New York. "But I don't have enough money to put television ads on."

NoyokA

June 9th, 2005, 12:45 PM

I like:

The "Brooklyn Pride"

The "Brooklyn Bridges"

Clarknt67

June 9th, 2005, 06:07 PM

Brooklyn Playas

fioco

June 9th, 2005, 11:04 PM

Unofficially sportswriters might refer to them as the 'Lords of Flatbush'

NYguy

June 10th, 2005, 06:17 PM

DAILY NEWS

Ratner sweetens the deal
BY DEBORAH KOLBEN

Ratner will offer all displaced tenants new apartments in one of his soaring Frank Gehry-designed towers for the same rent they now pay. Ratner also will pay for tenants to move to a new apartment nearby and subsidize their rent until they move back.

How sweet it is....(BROOKLYN PAPERS)

STAY PUT!
Beep says Ratner will protect the displaced

By Jess Wisloski
The Brooklyn Papers

Borough President Marty Markowitz attempted this week to allay the fears of tenants who may be displaced by the proposed Atlantic Yards project.

During a residents-only meeting of the Dean Street Block Association June 2 at the Latin Evangelical Free Church, on Bergen Street at Sixth Avenue, Markowitz urged renters not to move from their apartments even if landlords threatened eviction or refused to renew leases, according to Robert Puca, a resident of the Newswalk condominium on Dean Street, who attended the meeting.

Markowitz said that developer Bruce Ratner had assured him that tenants in Ratner-owned buildings would retain their protections and their rents, Puca said.

“Forest City Ratner has promised me that when they purchase any building within the footprint, they will help these tenants find a comparable apartment as temporary housing,” Markowitz said after the meeting, in a statement e-mailed to The Brooklyn Papers.

“Forest City Ratner has committed to paying the difference in rent for temporary housing,” Markowitz said. “They have promised that they will move the tenants into comparable rent-stabilized apartments in Atlantic Yards at the same rents, and also pay for moving expenses.”

Puca said that at the meeting, which was closed to other elected officials and to reporters, tenants “complained about how no one has come to their help.”

Joseph Perez, who lives on Flatbush Avenue, said that when he questioned Markowitz on the matter, the borough president responded, “Well you know, you move out, and then you come back in.”

“I told him, ‘Put it in writing’,” Perez said.

On a tape recording of the meeting obtained by The Brooklyn Papers, Markowitz urged tenants to stay put.

“I understand the notices,” Markowitz said. “Don’t leave. Every tenant that is impacted, I want to make sure you let my staff know. I don’t want any tenant to leave. It’s the best advice, don’t leave.”

“I have spent my entire life organizing and fighting for tenants rights. Not one of you can challenge that, and nothing changed now,” he said. “You will be protected, you will be protected.”

NoyokA

June 10th, 2005, 06:37 PM

You know what’s really a good sign, a lot and a lot of recent press about this project. Not only is this project very much a reality but its quickly creeping up on being realized.

NoyokA

June 10th, 2005, 06:50 PM

Of course Markowitz is just pulling the political strings here. Like he really cares about the likes of residents over the pet project that he initiated, he just wants to pull a little Pataki wrangling and try to appeal to the masses that re-elect.

Why couldn't they all be straight shooters like Bloomberg?

alex ballard

June 10th, 2005, 06:56 PM

/\ Contrary to beilef, not all politicans have 4 Billion to sit on.

Also, I get the sense that Bloomie is not in it for the power. I think this is an adventure for him and that he really, truly loves this city. Understandable considering the city has given him (and tens of million of others) so much out in life.

*did you know fact: 1 out of 7 people in the United States can trace their linneage to a start in Brooklyn. Hence "Tens of millions".

NYguy

June 10th, 2005, 07:02 PM

Also, I get the sense that Bloomie is not in it for the power. I think this is an adventure for him and that he really, truly loves this city.

I think in the beginning, there was a little "power trip" involved for Bloomberg, and the sense that he could just run things better. Maybe a challenge. But he wouldn't even commit to running for re-election.

However, I think as he became more involved with the job, he came to love it and the city even more. But what's not to love when things are going so well?. What New Yorkers need to worry about is what comes after Bloomberg leaves his second term (and he will have one).

alex ballard

June 10th, 2005, 07:14 PM

/\/\ You didn't seriously mis-read that post like you just did did you?

I was saying that tens of millions of people have have gotten their start in life via NYC. And as immigration, wealth, and oppertuniy continues to expand and grow in NYC, that number will climb.

/\ I do personally beileve Blommie is in for a second term. Man, why is it that NYC puts in term limits, we end up getting back to back excellent mayors? pooh:). Oh well, I guess we'll just have to wait till 2009 to find out when the next great one will rise out of. Any guesses?

And BTW, has the last 16 years of flourishing under Republican rule made you change your mind on how you vote locally? When 2009 rolls around, are you now more likely to look at that "(R)" next to someone's name with optimism? Are you a "City Republican"?

NoyokA

June 10th, 2005, 07:21 PM

alex ballard

June 10th, 2005, 07:38 PM

/\ That's probably as right as it gets in the city. And personally, I'll go for any RINO over the likes of Charles Barron or Freddie Ferrer. We don't need a return to 1 million poeple on welfare and 2,000 homcidies in the streets, all in the name of "diversity" and "community".

JCMAN320

June 10th, 2005, 07:51 PM

UGH!!! I can't believe this arena deal is moving along this smoothly. I just don't understand why NY needs ANOTHER team to add to it's roster especially a team I have loved since my first Nets game at the age of six. We over here in New Jersey don't have much in the way of pro-sports. I mean we rule in highschool sports and minor league baseball mecca with 6 teams and one of those the Trenton Thunder who are the minor league team for the Yankees. I mean all we have currently are our beloved 3 time champions New Jersey Devils who are building in Newark (demolition there is almost finished and construction on OUR arena will start late this summer while the site in Brooklyn has yet to be touched), the Metro Stars who are building across the river from Newark there own soccer field in the huge soccer world of Harrison and Kearny which have pumped out numerous soccer stars will start this fall, the Nets which will play in Newark long before even if they go to Brooklyn because OUR arena will be finished first, and the Jets and Giants, but they are NY teams so technically once the Nets leave were only going to have two NJ teams while you guys have will have 8 PRO TEAMS. SEVEN to THREE currently cmon do you really need another team which will make it and even EIGHT!!!

I mean cmon Brooklyn you are part of NYC you are not an individual city seriously. You route for the Yanks and/or Mets, the Knicks, the Rangers, the Islanders, the Giants and Jets, plus the Staten Island Yanks and Brooklyn cyclones. Really share the wealth what are you that insecure that you need two of every type of sports team!!! TWO FOOTBALL, TWO BASKETBALL, TWO HOCKEY, TWO BASEBALL, TWO MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL......give me a freggin break. and I know the Islanders are outside the city limits, but there the next county over so to me they count.

NY you don't need the Nets why not just keep them here in NJ and let them go to Newark with the Devils, that makes more sense than forkin over another team to NY. It makes a great interstate rivalry with the Nets and Devils in Newark at one end of the PATH line and the Knicks and Rangers at the other. But I guess I'm just wasting my breath...

NYguy

June 10th, 2005, 07:54 PM

/\/\ You didn't seriously mis-read that post like you just did did you?

NO - I think you jus seriously mis-read mine. I was simply backing up what you stated. Now go back and read it again.

Unless, off course, you are replying to Law & Order...

alex ballard

June 10th, 2005, 08:00 PM

/\ I was responding to Law and Order. Hence the "/\/\", which means "two posts up".

NYguy

June 10th, 2005, 08:01 PM

UGH!!! I can't believe this arena deal is moving along this smoothly. I just don't understand why NY needs ANOTHER team to add to it's roster especially a team I have loved since my first Nets game at the age of six.

It's not like New York took the team. The NETS have a new owner who wants to tie a new arena into his planned residential development. If the NETS had been as successful in attendance as they should have been, we probably wouldn't even be talking about the Brooklyn NETs.

the Nets which will play in Newark long before even if they go to Brooklyn because OUR arena will be finished first

Don't be so sure on that. Ratner won't take the team out of the Meadowlands before the arena in Brooklyn is ready. It all depends on the lease. Anyway, even if the Newark arena is completed first, it would be a year at most.

NYguy

June 10th, 2005, 08:02 PM

/\ I was responding to Law and Order. Hence the "/\/\", which means "two posts up".

Good then.

NewYorkYankee

June 10th, 2005, 08:20 PM

Alex why dont you just use the quote button instead of the "^^^^"s. Saves everyone confusion and aggrivation. Thanks!

alex ballard

June 10th, 2005, 09:00 PM

/\ I was banned for using the quote button by Edward. I don't want to discuss this any further as it is apparent that for whatever reason, I seem to skate on thin ice.

Thank you for your patience. And just for notes: "/\" equals the post above and "/\/\" equals two posts above and so on...

NoyokA

June 10th, 2005, 09:07 PM

NewYorkYankee

June 10th, 2005, 10:37 PM

ryan

June 11th, 2005, 02:37 AM

*did you know fact: 1 out of 7 people in the United States can trace their linneage to a start in Brooklyn. Hence "Tens of millions".

please cite references for your "facts"

billyblancoNYC

June 13th, 2005, 12:17 PM

It's not like New York took the team. The NETS have a new owner who wants to tie a new arena into his planned residential development. If the NETS had been as successful in attendance as they should have been, we probably wouldn't even be talking about the Brooklyn NETs.

Don't be so sure on that. Ratner won't take the team out of the Meadowlands before the arena in Brooklyn is ready. It all depends on the lease. Anyway, even if the Newark arena is completed first, it would be a year at most.

I can't wait until the Devils realize Newark sucks and shacks up with the Brooklyn Nets.

kliq6

June 13th, 2005, 12:59 PM

The Devils Newark plan is a go, they already hired a Construction manager

Clarknt67

June 13th, 2005, 06:51 PM

I mean cmon Brooklyn you are part of NYC you are not an individual city seriously.

Speaking as a 12-year Brooklyn resident, Brooklyn began life as a distinct city from Manhattan and I am glad to see it's returning to it's roots. Even if legally, it will always be just a Borough of NYC, it increasingly is asserted itself as a proud and independent locale, and that momentum is not going away.

A pro sports team in our borough is GREAT! Sorry it came at Jersey's expense (but if the stands hadn't been so empty...).

NYguy

June 13th, 2005, 07:52 PM

The Devils Newark plan is a go, they already hired a Construction manager

Demolition has already started on site ( and is probably completed, I haven't seen it in weeks).

The Newark arena:

http://www.newjerseydevils.com/2005/html/theteam/images/teamnews/newarkarena-day.jpg

And the proposed Hoboken arena (from a few years earlier):

http://www.sinkcombs.com/projects/arena/Devils/devils2.jpg

ZippyTheChimp

June 13th, 2005, 08:11 PM

Speaking as a 12-year Brooklyn resident, Brooklyn began life as a distinct city from Manhattan and I am glad to see it's returning to it's roots. Even if legally, it will always be just a Borough of NYC, it increasingly is asserted itself as a proud and independent locale, and that momentum is not going away.

A pro sports team in our borough is GREAT! Sorry it came at Jersey's expense (but if the stands hadn't been so empty...).
Brooklyn is truly unique in the world, more so I think, than any other borough. But I can't define why.

muscle1313

June 13th, 2005, 08:29 PM

Brooklyn is truly unique in the world, more so I think, than any other borough. But I can't define why.

Answer - Attitude.

alex ballard

June 13th, 2005, 08:32 PM

[QUOTE]Speaking as a 12-year Brooklyn resident, Brooklyn began life as a distinct city from Manhattan and I am glad to see it's returning to it's roots. Even if legally, it will always be just a Borough of NYC, it increasingly is asserted itself as a proud and independent locale, and that momentum is not going away.

A pro sports team in our borough is GREAT! Sorry it came at Jersey's expense (but if the stands hadn't been so empty...).[QUOTE]

I believe Brooklyn is what the city/suburb of the future is. I also Believe it's only a matter of time before brooklyn is considered among the ranks of the UES, West End, and Paris as the truly great urban residental and buisness center.

muscle1313

June 13th, 2005, 08:40 PM

I believe Brooklyn is what the city/suburb of the future is. I also Believe it's only a matter of time before brooklyn is considered among the ranks of the UES, West End, and Paris as the truly great urban residental and buisness center.

I believe that Ratner developing downtown and Thor developing Coney will make Brooklyn a powerhouse that rivals Manhattan. Brooklyn has limitless potential. From its brownstones to its downtown business district to its gorgeous beachfront. There is only upside to Brooklyn. There is no downside.

billyblancoNYC

June 14th, 2005, 11:55 AM

The Devils Newark plan is a go, they already hired a Construction manager

I know, wishful thinking...

But, there have been some ads by a guy running for gov'r complaining about spending all that money on the new arena...

billyblancoNYC

June 14th, 2005, 11:56 AM

Speaking as a 12-year Brooklyn resident, Brooklyn began life as a distinct city from Manhattan and I am glad to see it's returning to it's roots. Even if legally, it will always be just a Borough of NYC, it increasingly is asserted itself as a proud and independent locale, and that momentum is not going away.

A pro sports team in our borough is GREAT! Sorry it came at Jersey's expense (but if the stands hadn't been so empty...).

I agree. This is the approach all of the broughs should be taking, it would make the entire city stronger. Seems to be working in BK and Queens, with some plans going forward for the BX and SI.

NYC needs to take more advantage of its 300 plus sq. miles.

czsz

June 14th, 2005, 02:25 PM

Currently, only the Knicks and Rangers play in Manhattan.

Both suck. Perhaps priority should be given to the more successful teams. The rotating stewardship of a multisport MSG would be entertaining, to say the least.

Clarknt67

June 15th, 2005, 06:38 PM

Brooklyn is truly unique in the world, more so I think, than any other borough. But I can't define why.

For me I appreciate it's unpretentious blue-collar and old-world immigrant roots mixed with urban ambitions and artistic aspirations.

sfenn1117

June 16th, 2005, 04:45 PM

For me I appreciate it's unpretentious blue-collar and old-world immigrant roots mixed with urban ambitions and artistic aspirations.

Nice answer. I also agree that Brooklyn is the top borough. Give me some tall skyscrapers downtown, better than metrotech, and we'll truly have it all.

NYguy

June 17th, 2005, 07:16 PM

BROOKLYN PAPERS

YARDS AWAY
Ratner train relocation could affect eminent domain fight

By Jess Wisloski
The Brooklyn Papers

If he wants to build a new home for his New Jersey Nets basketball team atop rail yards at Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, developer Bruce Ratner will have to pay for more than air space over the Long Island Rail Road tracks — he’s also going to have to help pay to move those tracks.

According to an agreement negotiated among the city, state and Forest City Ratner Companies, the developer’s Atlantic Yards plan calls for moving the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) train storage yards.

Forest City Ratner officials told The Brooklyn Papers that, according to an agreement being hashed out separately with the state-run MTA, Ratner is being asked to foot the bill.

Moving the rail yards could shift the burden of some of the potential eminent domain property takings to a “public use,” as opposed to Forest City Ratner’s requesting the condemnation on those blocks for a private housing development — although the public use would be necessitated by the private development.

Ratner seeks to build an arena for the New Jersey Nets basketball team he purchased last summer, as well as 17 high-rises — including three that would be the borough’s tallest — on a six-square block parcel emanating from the crossroads of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues. The plan includes a mix of office space, retail and as many as 7,300 units of housing.

To build the project, the developer will need to purchase air rights over roughly 11 acres of MTA rail yard property. The remaining 13 acres are owned or controlled by Ratner or else are subject to state condemnation for Ratner’s use under eminent domain laws.

The MTA did not sign on to the memorandum of understanding (MOU) agreed to in March by the city, state and Ratner. The MTA is negotiating separately with the developer, said Forest City Ratner spokeswoman Lupe Todd.

In discussions between Forest City Ratner and the MTA, the developer has agreed to pay for “the entire rail relocation project,” said Todd.

Todd said that under the Forest City Ratner plan, the rail yards would be “reconfigured and redesigned to accommodate the future needs of the railroad on MTA land.”

“The rail yards will move from Atlantic and Pacific, primarily between Fifth and Carlton avenues, to primarily between Sixth Avenue and Vanderbilt Avenue, shifting down a block,” she said.

Then the housing, instead of the arena, would be built over the rail yards.

Todd could not explain why the arena could not be built atop a platform over the rail yards as was planned for the proposed New York Jets football stadium on Manhattan’s West Side.

Todd called the rail-shift plan an “upgrade” that would turn “antiquated rail yards” into “a modern, new and efficient facility that can and will address current and future needs, with all of the amenities that are required.”

“The city and state will grant FCRC $200 million to cover the infrastructure needs for this project — however, there is dramatically more infrastructure needs than the $200 million will cover,” Todd said.

That agreement is dependent upon approval of the Ratner plan by the state’s Public Authorities Control Board.

Despite their ongoing negotiations with Forest City Ratner, the MTA on May 18 put out an 11th-hour request for proposals (RFP) soliciting bids from developers interested in building over the Atlantic-Flatbush rail yards.

Neysa Pranger, a spokeswoman for the Straphanger’s Campaign, has said the MTA cannot abdicate its responsibility to accept the highest bidder. The transit riders advocacy group has filed a lawsuit against the MTA for not accepting the highest bidder for similar development rights over Manhattan’s Hudson Yards, where the New York Jets football team and the mayor want to build a stadium.

“The only way the MTA is going to realize the full value of the [Atlantic-Flatbush] rail yards is if they put it through a competitive bid process,” said Pranger.

The current lawsuit challenges the MTA advisory board for discarding a higher bid on the West Side site, which came from Cablevision, which owns Madison Square Garden.

“A competitive bid is necessary, but is hard to do in this climate where the power brokers are deciding who gets what,” Pranger added.

Bill Henderson, associate director of the Permanent Citizen’s Advisory Committee to the MTA and the LIRR Commuter’s Council, said it was uncertain how the Atlantic Yards project might effect Long Island Railroad commuters.

“Our perspective is really the transportation end of it,” said Henderson. “We want what’s going to work operationally for the MTA, and what’s going to work for their customers at Atlantic Terminal and in the larger system.

“It could have very little impact on it if it’s just a matter of moving storage to another point,” he said, but added that space is already tight at the LIRR station at Atlantic Terminal.

“You have limited track space and you don’t want to have to bring everything out from Long Island to run your evening rush,” Henderson said.

“It may not have much impact, but I don’t know that.”

NoyokA

June 22nd, 2005, 10:37 AM

Wall Street Journal:

The Planning Vacuum
New York stumbles into a good stadium deal.

BY ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Wednesday, June 22, 2005 12:01 a.m.

NEW YORK--This city, in its usual backhanded manner, has stumbled its way to the proper conclusion of the controversial Jets stadium saga. The stadium will not be built in Manhattan on the West Side waterfront; that was a terrible idea by any planning standards, an exercise in ego and hubris so inappropriate that even the familiar combination of money, power and politics could not push it through.

A new stadium will be built in Queens, close to other sports facilities--not for the Jets, but for the Mets, the somewhat surprising and unlikely beneficiaries of the need for a suitable stadium in New York's bid for the 2012 Olympics (if you hang around long enough, good things may happen). This is where common sense and good planning practice, both of which have been conspicuously lacking, would have put it in the first place.

In a deal structured by the city and the MTA, the financially strapped agency that runs New York's public transportation system and is selling its surplus properties to meet its growing deficits, the Jets would have bought the abandoned Hudson Rail Yards on Manhattan's far West Side for a new football stadium. The argument went that this would jumpstart West Side development, create jobs, extend the usefulness of the existing, adjacent convention center, and deliver an Olympics-ready stadium. When the agreed-on price turned out to be far less than competitors for the site were willing to offer, bids were reopened. But the city would promise the necessary rezoning of the land for new construction only to the Jets, so the deal was still stacked in their favor. However, they were forced to raise their bid to win.

In spite of the Jets' relentlessly orchestrated publicity, featuring a steady parade of pliant politicians to the steps of City Hall, the scheme was never popular; to many New Yorkers it was the wrong building in the wrong place. There was considerable relief when the project was voted down by an obscure state financial review board that controlled its fate. But a stake has not yet been driven through the misconceived scheme's heart--either remarkably obtuse or tone deaf to the larger public issues, the Jets failed to get the message. They are seeking private financing to get this monstrous spoiler built anyway, regardless of an official veto and lost public subsidies or serious concerns about the misuse of the land.

A stadium should never--repeat, never--be built on the midtown Manhattan waterfront; this is a flagrant violation of everything we know about urban land use. It is axiomatic that you do not put industrial-size blockbusters in uniquely desirable locations; they destroy an enormous potential for profit and pleasure while denying access to one of the city's most valuable amenities. We are just beginning to see the results of the long and successful effort to reclaim the Hudson River waterfront for public use in the river-front gardens and promenades of Lower Manhattan and the tree- and rose-lined bicycle and running paths that have transformed the water's edge on West Street.

Located next to the convention center, the stadium would have doubled the mass and length of the huge bunker against the river already established by that "lump of black coal"--as essayist Phillip Lopate described its dark bulk in his literary trip around the edges of Manhattan--cutting off views and access with nearly a mile of hulking wall.

The myth that a stadium was needed to revitalize the West Side was a self-serving illusion; there was already clear evidence that development had started, with some of the newest and priciest architect-designed condominium towers moving uptown from their fashionable downtown base, and a surge in developer acquisitions in the area. The reality would have been horrendous traffic and transportation problems and the lifeless alienation of surrounding communities. With the independent announcement of plans for a new Yankee Stadium hot on the heels of the Mets' good fortune--some fancy sports economics is making new stadium construction highly profitable--we now have not one, but two stadiums, with no lack of potential jobs.

Under the totally changed conditions in which the inclusion of a stadium is no longer a required part of the purchase of the rail yards, the MTA can, and should, reopen the bids. There is now a level playing field (apologies for the sports metaphor) that would allow the badly underfunded transportation agency to take full advantage of the area's rapidly rising prices and explosive growth. Nor can the city continue to withhold the necessary rezoning previously promised only to the Jets and left hanging as an ambiguous risk factor for other contenders for the site. One would like to believe that someone has something better in mind this time around than this quixotic and opportunistic kind of unplanned land use and special-interest development.

Whether state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver doomed the West Side stadium out of political pique at mayoral neglect is beside the point. His justifiable concern that it would draw resources and commitment from his Lower Manhattan district and the rebuilding of Ground Zero highlighted the fact that there is something profoundly wrong with the city's planning policies.

To put it plainly: There are none; there are no land-use principles, no guiding priorities, no design guidelines where they are needed. Construction projects, often of enormous size and impact, are developer generated and initiated, within a narrow spectrum of private interest, and the bigger they are the better the city seems to like them.

Savvy developers know how to navigate the civic shoals with singular skill. Forest City Ratner, currently engaged in a vast project for the Atlantic Yards on the Brooklyn waterfront, which includes a basketball stadium for the Nets designed by Frank Gehry, has made token changes in cooperation with community representatives, although questions remain about densities and scale. There are builders who sugarcoat their proposals with big-name architects, irresistible bait in a city that shamefully settles for the ordinary. New York has never managed, as Chicago has, to make Donald Trump use a different architect in exchange for a prime site.

What happens is pure planning roulette, a free-for-all, ad hoc gamble on the future where real estate reigns with a divine right established by astronomical values. Local residents, businesses and civic organizations may dissent loudly and file delaying lawsuits. Some public interest groups volunteer studies and offer ameliorating solutions. The City Planning Department and the Municipal Art Society collaborated to upgrade the Jets' proposal with a more rational use of existing streets and facilities.

But the city's planning agencies are reduced to a subservient, reactive role. While a small trade-off may take place for a new subway entrance or refurbished park, Governor's Island, an enormous opportunity, has languished in picturesque desuetude since its transfer from the federal government in 2003. This is planning by default, or immobility, in which creative initiatives are not taken, and few professional or architectural values survive.

This planning vacuum is at the root of the disaster at Ground Zero. The initial failure to find a way to take the land by eminent domain, the absence of the leadership that would have utilized all necessary and available means and sought others while the enormity of the attack was still fresh (was there ever a more justifiable public purpose?), threw the project into the hands of a commercial developer, sealing its fate. Sacred ground became real estate; forget civic, cultural or urban grandeur. What did not die in that trade-off was sabotaged by the political jockeying and pandering that followed as the World Trade Center site was turned into a giant memorial and bizarre pairing of art and patriotism, a place for political grandstanding while security fought architecture to a draw.

The vision, experience and conviction that turns blueprints into great cities while retaining the integrity of an idea and guiding essential changes through the intricacies of codes, zoning, market economics, popular expectations and procedural complexities is something for which politicians, businessmen and special interests are notoriously ill suited. There is no one at Ground Zero properly equipped or authorized to deal with a coordinated, conceptual rebuilding, to set the right priorities and make the right decisions. This kind of leadership has been supplanted by an ostensibly democratic process in which popular or political dictates have progressively undermined and degraded the principles and guidelines of the Libeskind plan supposedly guiding the rebuilding with every expedient, compromising, constituency-pleasing and ultimately destructive decision.

Is there hope? This is a city of eternal, last-ditch surprises. There is always hope that something will come out of this lost opportunity besides a necropolis with shops and offices, that someone will recognize its failure as a wretched political legacy. But priorities must change; the site must be treated as more than a giant mausoleum if we are to achieve a creative renewal that speaks to the living and the future. Then there may be some unexpected flashes of architectural beauty or urban richness or civic meaning to proclaim New York's survival.

Fabrizio

June 22nd, 2005, 11:09 AM

"A stadium should never--repeat, never--be built on the midtown Manhattan waterfront; this is a flagrant violation of everything we know about urban land use".

Ada Louise... my kinda gal.

alex ballard

June 22nd, 2005, 11:34 AM

I actually agree. It would have been nice if the Jets went to Queens, but whatever. Maybe the West Side and Coney Island can be our two resort/entertainment areas.

Ratner is becoming a legend in my eyes. He tamed a wildly liberal neighborhood and is able to build massive.

Can someone tell me how he did it?

NoyokA

June 22nd, 2005, 12:03 PM

Money talks.

elfgam

June 22nd, 2005, 01:26 PM

1. Pick a borderline area between three neighborhoods that is largely derilict.
2. Tell each neighborhood it's not really in their backyard (only the 80 odd people in the triangular area actually are touched). So they can't galavinize resistance.
3. Befriend all city and state officials early (Jet's didn't do this). Make it seem like it was their idea, build them up, promise them this is something that will make them look good, bring in the money, get done with minimal voter outcry.
4. Pitch this as part of Brooklyn's identity... make it seem that this is about recovering Brooklyn's honor (why the nets are so key). Remember the dodgers becomes like remember the Alamo. Make it known that Brooklyn too, not Jersey City and not queens, should be the heir to Manhattan.
5. Make this a turf thing: why shouldn't Brooklyn have what Manhattan does, what NJ does? (This is different than building brooklyn up, like I said before, it's more of a comparative thing).
6. This is key: PLAY THE RACE/CLASS CARD BEFORE THE NIMBYITES DO. Ratner played this card early -- by befriending vote hungry officials and powerful minority and lower-class groups Ratner has made the protestors seem like a bunch of millionaire white ex-manhattanites who came in, stole Brooklyn from the people who live there, gentrified and don't want anyone else to come in, and don't want the poor to have affordable housing or jobs.

To be honest I am for this development -- and I think everything Ratner did is completely valid -- but it is this politics that is so key. It doesn't matter how good/bad the project is, only how its sold.

NYguy

June 24th, 2005, 09:07 AM

NY POST

SUPREMES GIVE NETS HOME-COURT EDGE

By LEONARD GREENE

June 24, 2005 -- Opponents of a deal that would raze homes to make room for a Nets arena in Brooklyn are reeling from a U.S. Supreme Court decision yesterday that gives government and developers more room to use eminent domain.

Lawyers had filed a brief on behalf of residents, businesses and property owners, urging the high court to overturn what they called "decades of abuse" of the power to seize private property for public use.

But the court's narrow 5-4 ruling rejected the argument of individual property rights and cleared the way for state and local governments to push through development projects, even when homes and businesses stand in the way.

"It's obviously disappointing to us," said Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, a civic group opposed to the development of a Nets arena and 17 office and apartment buildings along Atlantic Avenue.

"The Supreme Court missed a historic moment to use eminent domain for its original purpose."

City Councilwoman Letitia James, who represents the area where the Nets project would be developed, said she will appeal to state lawmakers to intervene.

__________________________________________________ __

Unfair & un-American, biz cries

http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/975-liu.JPG

Simon Liu faces the heartbreaking prospect of losing his fine art supply business in Bruce Ratner’s Nets arena plan.

By DEBORAH KOLBEN

Nick Sprayregen has always dreamed of turning his family-owned business over to his kids just like his father did for him - but yesterday's Supreme Court decision put that dream in doubt.
"It's unbelievably unfair," sighed Sprayregen, 41, who owns Tuck-It-Away storage in West Harlem, where Columbia University wants to expand its campus.

"If we leave these buildings, we lose our customers and our business," he said.

Sprayregan isn't alone.

Property owners were also fuming in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, where billionaire developer Bruce Ratner wants to use eminent domain to build a 21-acre Nets arena and apartment complex.

Some owners in the footprint have already sold their homes and businesses to Ratner, but for those remaining, yesterday's decision was a blow.

"They're ruining our professional life," said Susan Goldberg, 49, who runs a successful fine art supply business at 645 Dean St. with her husband, Simon Liu. "It's taking away so much from our business."

Ratner wants to raze their building to make way for a soaring, Frank Gehry-designed apartment tower.

"I'm really disappointed. I thought if they sided with the folks in New London, we'd have some hope," Goldberg said of the court's decision.

Liu started the business over 20 years ago when he needed a way to support his family.

Their clients now include famous artists and museums, such as Chuck Close and the Museum of Modern Art.

"I tell our kids that if we wanted to move and we wanted to sell our building, that would be one thing," Goldberg said. "But for somebody to come in and tell us to get out, that's just wrong."

Liu spent yesterday looking for a new building but said everything is too expensive.

Down the block, Henry Weinstein could lose an eight-story building he bought over 20 years ago. "It's un-American," seethed Weinstein, who recently renovated the old warehouse and plans to rent out office space.

"How can you take property from one person and give it to another?" he asked.

alex ballard

June 24th, 2005, 11:03 AM

In terms of the court decision, this truly is a sad day. Unfortunetly, this will hurt the image of progressives and liberals beyond it's already damaged name.

However, this will likely make the whole "NIMBY" issue very moot. I expect to see a lot of new construcion stemming from this.

As for Ratner, if people get apartments inside the complex, I really don't see the problem. Also, for work space, you could always rent a studio.

lofter1

June 24th, 2005, 11:21 AM

Also, for work space, you could always rent a studio.

In the Connecticut case people were offered max. $150,000 for property that was "market rate" valued @ ~ $350,000 > $500,000.

Such an arbitrarily low buy-out figure certainly limits a persons options when that person is a property owner who has been forced to up and move.

The option of renting a studio that will allow a businessperson to operate a business / place-of-work becomes problematic:

(1) The businessperson is being forced to move away from the business' customer base

(2) Rents are climbing like crazy so, along with moving and other re-location costs, business expenses go through the roof

Combined these two can easily mean the death of that particular individual's business venture / dream / livelihood.

BrooklynRider

June 24th, 2005, 11:47 AM

Interesing split in the majority / minority opinions. I would've thought it would've been the reverse arguments from each group. But it does reveal the ambiguity of the written law. It isn't so much a situation where shoulders get shrugged and everyone saus, "Oh well", as much as it is a call to arms for property owners to force the writing and passsage of clearer legislative wording.

NYguy

June 26th, 2005, 03:08 AM

NY TIMES

Questions for Bruce Ratner
Stadium, Anyone?

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/24/magazine/26q4.184.jpg

Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
June 26, 2005

Q: How do you explain the sudden vogue for stadiums and arenas? So many teams want a new home -- the Mets in Queens, the Yankees in the Bronx, the Jets with their doomed project in Manhattan. And you're building a new arena for the Nets in Brooklyn.

It has to do with the economics of sports. The high salaries of athletes drive the whole thing, because it creates a need for revenue. In the case of the Nets, we need an arena that has suites and luxury seating, and where you can put up advertisements all over the place.

Since you're the principal owner of the Nets and paying Vince Carter $15 million a year, why not just slash players' salaries, lower ticket costs and preserve the old, historic stadiums?

Is that a joke? We have to be competitive.

You and your fellow investors bought the Nets last August for $300 million. Have you always loved basketball?

I was never a basketball fan, but I wanted to bring a team to Brooklyn, a team that could be like the Brooklyn Dodgers. There's something intangible that a team contributes, something as intangible as a soul.

When did you get so spiritual? I would think the arena serves your interests as a real-estate developer and will boost the value of the apartments, condominiums and stores that make up your development in progress, the Atlantic Yards.

Not necessarily. Your friends who have bought brownstones in Park Slope and Fort Greene have inflated neighborhood values more than an arena would.

Even though the arena is being designed by Frank Gehry? Look what his curving titanium museum did for Bilbao, Spain.

Brooklyn is already a world-class destination. And it's a completely different building than Bilbao. It will have more glass and transparency. And it's obviously a different shape for basketball.

What do you think of the Meadowlands, out in Jersey, where the Nets currently play?

It's hard to get to the Meadowlands if you don't have a car. There's no train from New York, and you can't take the bus because when the game is done, you've got to wait.

What's wrong with waiting for a bus?

Nothing. I love waiting for buses! I love Port Authority! I spend my afternoons there! I love panhandlers!

Shouldn't you be more bus-friendly as a former civil servant and the commissioner of consumer affairs under Mayor Koch? What led you to give that up for a career as a real-estate developer?

At first I was very embarrassed to be in real estate. As someone who attended Columbia Law School in a socially conscious era and then worked in government, I was taught to be suspicious of businesspeople. But I try to run my business in a way that has some social value.

How would you define the social value of the Nets?

The players are terrific. They are of good character. They are incredibly charitable. They are family-oriented. They have integrity.

You make them sound like Boy Scouts. But at least N.B.A. players don't appear to take steroids. Do you take steroids?

Do I look like I take steroids? Is this the body of a steroid? This is not the body produced by human-growth hormones or, for that matter, even working out.

You don't exercise?

No. I ran in six marathons, and then I just got lazy. I don't work out. I like to walk.

Do you collect sports memorabilia?

I'm not a collector. Honestly, I like to throw stuff out. I'm not acquisition-oriented.

Well, you and your fellow investors did acquire a whole team. Was that a complicated process?

We were the highest bidder for the team. Like so many things in life, it was just a matter of money.

NoyokA

June 26th, 2005, 11:18 AM

Like so many things in life, it was just a matter of money.

Like I said.

NoyokA

June 28th, 2005, 11:19 AM

New York Daily News:

Ratner touts Net gains to nabe

BY DEBORAH KOLBEN

Tuesday, June 28th, 2005

Developer Bruce Ratner promised free basketball tickets, a day-care center and affordable apartments yesterday as part of a deal to let him build a $3.5 billion arena and housing complex in downtown Brooklyn.

"This ... is historic and something warm to my heart," Ratner said at a Brooklyn waterfront ceremony.

The legally binding document - the first of its kind in the city - is based on the landmark Staples Center agreement in Los Angeles. While he still needs city approval, Ratner won the backing of eight community groups by signing the pact.

Terms of the agreement, which was also signed by Mayor Bloomberg, require 35% of the 8,500 construction jobs to go to minority workers and another 10% to women.

For each game, 54 tickets and one luxury box will be set aside for community residents. The arena also will be available to community groups for 10 events each year at "reasonable rent."

Ratner bought the New Jersey Nets last year and hopes to move them to a 19,000-seat arena at Flatbush and Atlantic Aves.

Critics charge too many businesses and residents will be displaced because of the controversial project.

The largest private development in Brooklyn history also includes soaring office towers and up to 7,300 apartments in more than a dozen high-rise buildings.

Half of the rental units are promised to low- and middle- income tenants, and a day-care center is planned.

The city and state have pledged $200 million in public money for the development.

The agreement was signed less than a week after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling upheld the right of government to condemn land for private development - which is what Ratner may need to build the 21-acre project.

"The Atlantic Yards project will be the real crown on the county of Kings," Bloomberg said.

But Bettina Damiani of Good Jobs New York, a watchdog group that monitors how government subsidies are spent, said the eight groups that signed off on the deal don't fully represent the community.

"It's a good-faith effort, but it falls short," she said. "Where are the unions? Where are the environmental groups?"

NewYorkYankee

June 28th, 2005, 07:34 PM

This seems to be sailing smoothly. Thumbs up to Brooklyn!

BrooklynRider

June 28th, 2005, 11:02 PM

...The city and state have pledged $200 million in public money for the development...

$200M here. $600M for the West Side Stadium. Hundreds of Millions for Yankee and Shea Stadiums.

Time to increae the parking ticket quotas.

pianoman11686

June 29th, 2005, 12:26 AM

I think the increased spending will be financed primarily by the city's surplus of 3 billion.

bkmonkey

June 30th, 2005, 07:16 PM

By the way.... has anyone noticed that the Brooklyn Papers is one of the most biased sources in the city (anti-development) ?

BrooklynRider

June 30th, 2005, 10:01 PM

By the way.... has anyone noticed that the Brooklyn Papers is one of the most biased sources in the city (anti-development) ?

Actually, I read it regularly and I totally disagree with you. They are hardly anti-development. Are they critical of the community input process on Atlantic Yards? - Yes. Are they critical of closed door meetings by Community Boards and Public Authorities? - Yes. Yet, they support the Downtown rezoning. They support the CIDC plans. They supported the rezoning of Fourth Ave. They support the BAM cultural development. They support Brooklyn Waterfront Inclusionary Zoning. Not a record that indicates anti-development.

Papers like that keep the politicians honest and the processes open. Biased? Because one doesn't hear an echo chamber of their own voice doesn't mean that there is bias.

bkmonkey

July 1st, 2005, 04:03 AM

The editor of the Brooklyn Papers is on record, saying he wishes that Brooklyn would stay the way it is. I see that as anti-development, and i think it trickles down a bit, just from reading their headlines, (I can always count on hearing about Atlantic Yards resistance if I read the Brooklyn Papers) They also recently had an article covering the Marty's explanation of two Brooklyn's (urban+suburban) from reading that article, one one side was really given.. that all of Brooklyn was one (surburban) and should not change

Clarknt67

July 1st, 2005, 12:50 PM

I'm inclined to agree that the Brooklyn Papers are very biased. They may be on record as supporting some plans, but they do skew the news to their view. After 9/11 they reported that the Brooklyn Bridge Park was doomed due to dwindling City resources. The report was more wishful thinking on their part than reality. They've never liked the Park plan and will give headline treatment to any whacko that disagrees with it, but bury and community support deep in the end of the text of any article.

bkmonkey

July 1st, 2005, 08:39 PM

They are getting desperate over at the Brooklyn Papers

IN BRUCE WE TRUST
Mayor Bloomberg says the word of ‘great guy’ Ratner is enough on Atlantic Yards ‘Community Benefits’ Agreement
http://www.brooklynpapers.com/html/issues/_vol28/28_27/28_27bloombergcba.jpgMayor Michael Bloomberg (left) signs his name to the Atlantic Yards community benefits agreement Monday as Bruce Ratner looks on at the press event at Fulton Ferry Landing.

The Brooklyn Papers / Tom Callan

By Jess Wisloski
The Brooklyn Papers

Trust Bruce.

That’s the message an annoyed Mayor Michael Bloomberg barked in response to a question by a Brooklyn Papers reporter regarding developer Bruce Ratner’s proposed Atlantic Yards development.

At a press conference at Fulton Ferry Landing Monday morning to announce the creation of a community benefits agreement (CBA) between Ratner’s Forest City Ratner Companies and a handful of community groups, the mayor interrupted Ratner, who was answering a question about the enforceability of such a non-governmental document.

“It’s legally binding,” said Ratner, who seemed pleased to have been asked the question. “It has in some cases economic penalties, it has mediation, as well as the ability of community groups to litigate and get an orderable injunction, and we hope to see the goals fulfilled, and if we don’t, litigation can be used.”

Bloomberg, however, cut him off in his explanation.

“I would add something else — even more importantly, you have Bruce Ratner’s word,” he said.

“That should be enough for you and for everybody else in the community,” said the mayor, directing his comments at the reporter who asked the question. “This is a guy who — if you don’t understand that, you don’t know how great this guy is, for Brooklyn and for New York City.”

The announcement of the benefits agreement, proclaimed on a mayoral press release headlined, “Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Forest City Ratner CEO and President Bruce Ratner and Civic Leaders sign Community Benefits Agreement,” came after months of concern from groups that were not participating in the negotiations that the document would be weak and have no enforcement mechanism.

Before the mayor proclaimed his disbelief that trust in Ratner might not be enough to assuage public concern, Ratner explained that the agreement was legally enforceable, and had penalties and adjudication measures in place that would be overseen by an appointed group of community members.

“Also, in the agreement, the developers have agreed to fund an independent monitoring agent,” added the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, citing one of the enforcement clauses in the contract. Daughtry, whose House of the Lord Church, on Atlantic Avenue near Bond Street, is four blocks outside the project site, joined the CBA negotiations midway and has been a staunch supporter of the Ratner plan.

The press conference may have given the impression that the mayor had signed the document on behalf of the city, when, in the face of photographer flashbulbs and television cameras, Bloomberg signed his name on the same paper on which Ratner and the members of eight community groups involved in the negotiated agreement had signed.

“He was not a signatory,” said Lupe Todd, a spokeswoman for Forest City Ratner. “He was a witness. The signers were eight people and Ratner, so technically, no, [Bloomberg] did not sign the CBA. He was a witness to the CBA.”

Opponents of the Ratner plan were left fuming at what they believed to be a misleading public relations ploy by the mayor and public advocate on behalf of the developer.

“I think that the press conference setting and signing was [Karl] Rove-ian in nature, where there are pictures of the mayor signing something that he’s not actually signed onto, giving the impression that the city would have oversight on this agreement,” fumed Daniel Goldstein, a condo owner in the project site, making an allusion to President Bush’s top political advisor.

But Goldstein, an organizer of the anti-arena group Develop-Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, saved most of his wrath for Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum who, he charged, had sidestepped her role as public watchdog in attending Monday’s signing to show her support for Ratner. Gotbaum was a colleage of Ratner when they both worked in the administration of Mayor Ed Koch.

Gotbaum, who led a lawsuit against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for allegedly mishandling the bidding process on another Bloomberg-supported project, the development of a football stadium over the Hudson Rail Yards in Manhattan, touted the Ratner undertaking.

“This is a wonderful, wonderful example of what development should be all about,” said Gotbaum. “To bring all these different groups together to get everybody on board, to have negotiated like that, Bruce Ratner, I think we can only praise you to the highest.”

Gotbaum faces a Democratic primary challenge this September from Norman Seigel, the former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who has been retained to represent property owners, like Goldstein, who may face eminent domain evictions to make way for the Ratner arena and skyscrapers.

“I am impressed by the broad support for the Atlantic Yards project from community leaders, public officials and advocacy groups,” Gotbaum told The Brooklyn Papers at the press conference. “This rare display of unity is a sign of how strong and beneficial to Brooklyn the project is. I am confident that any remaining issues can be resolved to the satisfaction of all concerned.”

Goldstein condemned her stance.

“For the public advocate to come to this thing and endorse it and not sign onto it, is absurd,” he said. “She should be signing on to it to enforce it, not just cheerlead it.

Gotbaum spokesman Daniel Browne responded, “She did not sign the agreement because she is not a party to the agreement. She endorsed it because she thinks it’s good for the community.”

The mayor’s press office did not return calls seeking comment on the appearance that he had publicly signed the agreement.

Asked about the mayor’s ceremonial signing of the document, Leonard Wasserman, chief of economic development for the city Law Department, affirmed that the “city is not a party to the CBA.”

“I understand that the mayor signed the document — I was not involved in it at all, and the Law Department was not involved at all — but the mayor signed the document, in a ceremonial capacity, providing a sort of official endorsement of the good work of the private parties in reaching an accommodation on the issues between them,” he said.

Should Ratner fail to make good on any of the many promises outlined in the CBA, the cost of any litigation to enforce the agreement would fall on the shoulders — and purses — of the largely faith-based non-profit organizations that signed on.

“[Litigation] would be between Forest City Ratner and BUILD and all those people,” said Todd, referring to Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development, one of the spearheading groups of the CBA.

“The city is not involved at all, in any of that,” she added.

Goldstein said he was disappointed to see the concerns of many in the community in which the project would be built overlooked for the sake of the CBA.

In a press release issued by his organization on the same day as the signing, Goldstein wrote that 48 “known” community and civic groups, as well as “three of the district’s four elected officials” were concerned about or opposed to the project.

“None of these groups have been involved in the ‘CBA’ negotiations, while all of the groups that have been involved [in negotiating] have supported the project from the beginning,” wrote Goldstein.

“Those most directly affected by the proposed project have not been involved either,” he said. Among the 48 groups listed were the longstanding Park Slope Civic Council, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, the Fort Green Association, the Creative Industries Coalition and Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats

bkmonkey

July 1st, 2005, 08:44 PM

Really Desperate it seems... Note Ed Weinthrob is the fonder and president of the Brooklyn Papers, his direct e-mail is at the bottom of the page.

http://www.brooklynpapers.com/html/issues/columns/weintrob/images/ed.jpgEd Weintrob
Paper founder

READ THE OTHER COLUMNS (http://www.brooklynpapers.com/html/issues/columns/weintrob/weintrobguide.html)

It’s all about money

Whether Bruce Ratner gets to build his Atlantic Yards mega-project rests not on any eminent domain decision (he already owns much of the private property on the site) but on government’s willingness to put our treasuries at the developer’s disposal.

Undoubtedly, some of Ratner’s acquisitions were at least facilitiated by the threat of eminent domain — property owners knew that if they did not negotiate a settlement early, their property might be taken later under less advantageous circumstances. But at this point, for Atlantic Yards, eminent domain is not the issue.

The issue is that taxpayers are being asked to pay for Ratner’s game.

An honest discussion will put the public price tag at $1 billion or more, not $100 million (a token down payment referenced by the Manhattan news media). Tax breaks associated with the New Jersey Nets component of the project — a very small part of the overall plan — alone amount to $300 million; the gifting of the MTA’s rail yards (yes, they will be “sold” — but in an essentially non-competitive 11th-hour bidding process); hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure costs (some will be masked as railroad improvements if the MTA moves its tracks to make way for an arena) — incredibly lavish subsidies to pay Ratner for the so-called “affordable” housing component of his project (no, Ratner is not paying for the “affordable” housing — you are), and more, lots more — all amount to virtually a blank check.

News coverage of the Ratner project has been — aside from that appearing in The Brooklyn Papers (and occasional references in Mike Lupica’s Daily News columns) — largely sanitized at best, fawningly adoring of the developer at worst. Even newspapers that were critical of the Westside Manhattan-Jets giveaway are turning a blind eye to what is developing at the gold-plated Atlantic Yards. We’d love to say, “If you don’t believe The Brooklyn Papers, read something else,” but can’t. Everyone else is on board the Ratner gravy train.

Ratner need not have felt it necessary to publish his own “newspaper” (the Brooklyn Standard, produced by people at one of Manhattan’s community newspaper companies), or to subsidize Brooklyn’s other community publications with hefty ad spending, since he already controls almost all the news coverage in New York that deals with his project.

In the end, you, our readers, may choose to oppose — or support — Ratner’s development. The Brooklyn Papers’ job is to provide the facts so whatever choice you make is an educated one.

• • •

The national news media often speaks of its role in lofty terms, and talks about Constitutional protections as though they were handed to Moses on Mount Sinai.

At The Brooklyn Papers, some of these discussions often seem besides the point. We’re not in bed with a Deep Throat, we’re not looking to start or end a war, to elect or depose a president, or even find a missing woman in Aruba. We’re also not owned by multinational publishing empires or billionaire real estate moguls. We’re local people striving to do our best (with varying degrees of success) to collect and print the truth about things that affect our Brooklyn neighborhoods.

On the eve of America’s independence anniversary, we ask New York’s high-falutin daily news media to do its job.

Simply report the news about Bruce Ratner’s project. Stop being the developer’s tool — and his fool.

Ed Weintrob is founder and president of The Brooklyn Papers. Your feedback is welcome. Write him at EdWeintrob@BrooklynPapers.com (edweintrob@brooklynpapers.com)

pianoman11686

July 5th, 2005, 02:06 AM

Instant Skyline Added to Brooklyn Arena Plan

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The area of Brooklyn where a group of skyscrapers is proposed, with the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower at left.

By DIANE CARDWELL

Published: July 5, 2005

The massive building plan surrounding a new Nets arena east of Downtown Brooklyn will include a ridge of a half-dozen skyscrapers as high as 60 stories sweeping down Atlantic Avenue, along with four towers circling the basketball arena, according to new designs completed by the developer Bruce C. Ratner and the architect Frank Gehry.

The project, the largest proposed outside Manhattan in decades, would include much more housing than originally announced in 2003, growing to about 6,000 units from 4,500, according to a plan made available to The New York Times. But the real impact would be in the size and density of the buildings, which are taller and bulkier than once envisioned.

With 17 buildings, many of them soaring 40 to 50 stories, the project would forever transform the borough and its often-intimate landscape, creating a dense urban skyline reminiscent of Houston or Dallas.

The project would be built in phases, starting with the blocks around the arena, then the apartment complexes along Dean Street at the Vanderbilt Avenue end, and finally the northern stretch of housing along Atlantic Avenue. The arena is planned to open for the 2008-9 basketball season, said James P. Stuckey, an executive vice president at Forest City Ratner Companies, with the entire project completed as soon as 2011. [An Appraisal, Page B1]

The project will come before the Metropolitan Transportation Authority tomorrow as Mr. Ratner makes a formal proposal to buy and develop the Atlantic Avenue railyards.

When it was first announced, the project drew attention primarily to the basketball arena for the Nets. At the time, the return of a major league team and a design by a world-renowned architect led many supporters in the borough to hail a plan intended to heal the old wounds left by the Dodgers' departure after the 1957 season and herald, in metal, glass and brick, a Brooklyn reborn.

But the design of the full plan shows that the arena itself is dwarfed by the scope and ambition of the development. Stretching over 21 acres from Fourth to Vanderbilt Avenues between Atlantic Avenue and Dean Street, the development would create 1.9 million square feet of office space and housing for roughly 15,000 people in an area where small businesses and multifamily houses now coexist with vacant land, automotive shops and empty industrial buildings. An alternate plan would cut the office space to roughly 429,000 square feet, and add 150 to 200 hotel rooms and 1,300 additional apartments.

The $3.5 billion project is conceived as a way to create a new neighborhood and a transition between a growing business district, the resurgent cultural zone around the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the gentrifying residential areas surrounding them. Reflecting that, Mr. Gehry's preliminary design aims to create the look of a contemporary city that grew up naturally over time, he said.

The project still faces significant hurdles, although there is far less organized political opposition than that which faced the defeated West Side stadium plan. Most of the necessary city and state officials support it, and critics are largely centered in the immediate vicinity.

Mr. Ratner, who is the development partner of The New York Times in building its new headquarters in Midtown, needs approval from the transportation authority to buy its land. Bids are due to the authority tomorrow, and although no other suitor has yet surfaced, some who are opposed to the project said an alternate proposal may be in the works.

In addition, the winning project would undergo an environmental review, and would need zoning changes and approval by the state Public Authorities Control Board, directed by Gov. George E. Pataki and the Senate and Assembly leaders, which recently scuttled Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's plan for a Jets stadium on the West Side of Manhattan. The Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver have indicated that they would not block the arena project.

And although Mr. Ratner has been steadily negotiating to buy privately owned properties within the Brooklyn development zone, he may face court battles in his efforts to acquire some land by eminent domain and with critics who have threatened to sue. Opposition is strong among some residents of the quiet surrounding neighborhoods, who say that they have been denied a role in the planning process. They accuse state and city officials of giving Mr. Ratner unfair concessions and charge that the development will strain public services and destroy their quality of life.

The plan calls for direct subsidies of $100 million each from the city and state for site improvements to the area.

If approved, the development, in combination with the city's recent moves rezoning Downtown Brooklyn and the borough's northern waterfront for larger office and residential complexes, stands to remake much of a borough that is the equivalent of the fourth-largest city in America.

"Hopefully this will be a model for other large-scale developments to be done again in the boroughs as they were in the 50's and 60's," Mr. Ratner said. "It is in some sense like Columbus Circle, where residential meets the office district and the cultural district, and it can handle this kind of density."

The preliminary designs, which Mr. Gehry refers to as "a sketch," show a new megalopolis rising over what is now mostly a collection of rail beds and three-to-six-story buildings, crowding out the clear, signature views of the clock atop what would no longer be Brooklyn's tallest building, the 512-foot Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower. At the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, an office, hotel and residential tower dubbed Miss Brooklyn by its designer would soar 620 feet, roughly 60 stories, balanced by a new 40-story tower across Flatbush Avenue at Fourth Avenue.

Miss Brooklyn would be the tallest of four mixed-use towers ranging from roughly 35 stories that would surround the arena like turrets on a castle, Mr. Gehry said. Traveling east, the design calls for a block of apartment buildings, roughly 33 to 47 stories, with gardens and walkways, between Sixth, Carlton and Atlantic Avenues and Pacific Street.

At the eastern edge of the development, seven apartment buildings, ranging from about 20 to 40 stories, would rise over a two-block area bounded by Dean Street and Atlantic, Vanderbilt and Carlton Avenues.

Pacific Street would disappear in that area, subsumed by gardens, walkways, a reflecting pool that could become a skating rink in winter and an open field that designers determined gets the most sun on the site throughout the year. In all, the project would provide at least 4,500 rental apartments, with half reserved for low- and middle-income residents, and 1,500 market-rate condominiums in a neighborhood where brownstones sell for well over $1 million.

Although the fanciful shapes Mr. Gehry has designed at this point are preliminary, he said, he plans to work with a variety of materials and designs so that the development seems more like an organic city, and less like a single-vision project like Rockefeller Center.

"It's big and so we're trying to design it as a good neighbor, which is hard to do when the buildings you're building are bigger than the ones around you," he said. "No one's had an opportunity in a long while to build a new urban complex of this density in the city," he added. "By breaking it down and making it look like a city it has a sense of belonging and a sense of choice. You're not saying everybody's got to live in the same thing. And that's something that's quite Brooklyn."

Of course, not everyone feels that way. Many residents, including some who have organized into a group called Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn to stop the project, fear their tree-lined streets where neighbors lean out of windows to chat with those below will be overrun by arena visitors and choked by car traffic.

"Our fear is that towers breed towers," said Jon Crow, a graphic designer who was working at a community garden whose organizers have clashed with Mr. Ratner in the past.

He added: "Office towers, high-rise towers, sports arenas, that's not a community. Brooklyn doesn't want to be Manhattan. If we wanted Manhattan, we'd live there."

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Site of proposed development:

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Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

pianoman11686

July 5th, 2005, 02:18 AM

Another "appraisal" from the NY Times architectural critic:

Seeking First to Reinvent the Sports Arena, and Then Brooklyn

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

Published: July 5, 2005

Frank Gehry's new design for a 21-acre corridor of high-rise towers anchored by the 19,000-seat Nets arena in Brooklyn may be the most important urban development plan proposed in New York City in decades. If it is approved, it will radically alter the Brooklyn skyline, reaffirming the borough's emergence as a legitimate cultural rival to Manhattan.

Plans for a New Brooklyn SkylineMore significant, however, Mr. Gehry's towering composition of clashing, undulating forms is an intriguing attempt to overturn a half-century's worth of failed urban planning ideas. What is unfolding is an urban model of remarkable richness and texture, one that could begin to inject energy into the bloodless formulas that are slowly draining our cities of their vitality. It is a stark contrast to the proposed development of the West Side of Manhattan, where the abandoned Jets stadium was only the most visible aspect of what seemed doomed to become another urban wasteland.

From the dehumanizing Modernist superblocks of the 1960's to the cloying artificiality of postmodern visions like Battery Park City, architects have labored to come up with a formula for large-scale housing development that is not cold, sterile and lifeless. Mostly, they have failed.

Mr. Gehry, for his part, has never worked on such a colossal scale. And the construction of an arena, in particular, is more apt to create a black hole in a city's fabric than to ignite a major urban revival.

Mr. Gehry begins by reinventing the arena. To minimize the deadening effect of the obligatory rings of corporate seats, Mr. Gehry partly hides them under a cantilevered portion of the arena's upper tier. And a slight arch in the rows of seats on either side of the court adds to the impression that the entire room is being squeezed and is buckling under invisible pressure.

Such touches reaffirm that Mr. Gehry, at 76, is an architect with a remarkably subtle hand. Yet what makes the design an original achievement is the cleverness with which he anchors the arena in the surrounding neighborhood. Located on a triangular lot at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, the arena's form is buried inside a cluster of soaring commercial and residential towers. At certain points the towers part to reveal the arena's bulging facade behind them. Pedestrians would be able to peer directly into the main concourse level, creating a surprising fishbowl effect.

The tallest of the towers, roughly 60 stories, would echo the more somber Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower, now the borough's highest building. A cascading glass roof would envelop a vast public room at the tower's base, so that as you arrived by car along Flatbush Avenue, your eye would travel up a delirious pileup of forms, which become a visual counterpoint to the horizontal thrust of the avenue.

The striking collision of urban forms is a well-worn Gehry theme, and it ripples through the entire complex. Extending east from the arena, the bulk of the residential buildings are organized in two uneven rows that frame a long internal courtyard. The buildings are broken down into smaller components, like building blocks stacked on top of one another. The blocks are then carefully arranged in response to various site conditions, pulling apart in places to frame passageways through the site; elsewhere, they are used to frame a series of more private gardens.

Mr. Gehry is still fiddling with these forms. His earliest sketches have a palpable tension, as if he were ripping open the city to release its hidden energy. The towers in a more recent model seem clunkier and more brooding. This past weekend, a group of three undulating glass towers suddenly appeared. Anchored by lower brick buildings on both sides, they resemble great big billowing clouds.

Anyone who has followed Mr. Gehry's thought process understands this back-and-forth. It is his struggle to gain an intuitive feel for the site, to find the ideal compositional balance between the forms. The idea is to create a skyline that is fraught with visual tension, where the spaces between the towers are as charged as the forms themselves. That tension, Mr. Gehry hopes, will carry down to the ground, imbuing the gardens with a distinct urban character. In this way, he is also seeking to break down and reassemble conventional social orthodoxies.

There are those - especially acolytes of the urbanist Jane Jacobs - who will complain about the development's humongous size. But cities attain their beauty from their mix of scales; one could see the development's thrusting forms as a representation of Brooklyn's cultural flowering.

Plans for a New Brooklyn SkylineWhat is more, Mr. Gehry has gone to great lengths to fuse his design with its surroundings. The tallest of the towers, for example, are mostly set along Atlantic Avenue, where they face a mix of retail malls and low-income housing. Along Dean Street, the buildings' low, stocky forms are more in keeping with the rows of brownstones that extend south into Park Slope.

A more important issue, by contrast, is the site's current lack of permeability. Because the development would be built on top of the Atlantic Avenue railyards, the gardens are several feet above ground level, an arrangement that threatens to isolate them from the street grid. In the current version of the plan, shallow steps would lead up to the gardens from the sidewalk. Olin Partnership, the landscape architect, has suggested that the same effect could be accomplished with a more gradual slope - a significant improvement - but the key will be to create a balance in which the gardens feel like a smooth extension of the public realm.

Even so, Mr. Gehry's intuitive approach to planning - his ability to pick up subtle cues from the existing context - virtually guarantees that the development will be better than what New Yorkers are used to. The last project here that was touted as a breakthrough in urban planning was Battery Park City. As it turns out, it was as isolated from urban reality as its Modernist predecessors. Conceived by a cadre of government bureaucrats and planners, it produced a suburban vision of deadening uniformity.

By comparison, Forest City Ratner Companies, a relatively conventional developer known for building Brooklyn's unremarkable MetroTech complex, has seemingly undergone an architectural conversion, entrusting a 7.8-million-square-foot project to a single architectural talent who is known for creating unorthodox designs. It seems like a gutsy decision. But Bruce C. Ratner, the company's chief executive and the development partner of The New York Times in building the newspaper's new headquarters in Manhattan, has apparently realized that the tired old models are no longer a guarantee of cultural or financial success. He seems willing, within limits, to allow Mr. Gehry the freedom to play with new ideas.

This is no small miracle. Even in this early stage of development, the design proves that Mr. Gehry can handle the challenge better than most. His approach is a blow against the formulaic ways of thinking that are evidence of the city's sagging level of cultural ambition. It suggests another development model: locate real talent, encourage it to break the rules, get out of the way.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company