There is constant work going on. All the usual blogs are anti-AY so none of the reporting is re progress. All attention is focused on the big loser with a megaphone. Makes lots of noise but he's just a sideshow.
There is constant work going on. All the usual blogs are anti-AY so none of the reporting is re progress. All attention is focused on the big loser with a megaphone. Makes lots of noise but he's just a sideshow.
After all this time, what has been done exactly?
Tons of infrastructural work that needs to happen before the arena work moves forward in any significant manner. A lot of work has been on boundary streets and since been covered up by new pavement. A lot of work is in the cut. The first thing you'll see if you go over there for a look is a new RR track bed suspended above grade in the cut. It appears as if it will be able to swivel and connect different track beds further along in the cut to the exit tunnel heading under Vanderbilt. There also has been tons of demo of surrounding structures and clearing of sites.
I'm posting this article here as well as here since it relates specifically to the Atlantic Yards redevelopment.
The Empire State and Eminent Domain
By NICOLE GELINAS
In September, Dan Goldstein received a letter from New York State informing him and his wife that the government was about to seize their Brooklyn apartment "In furtherance of the Atlantic Yards Arena and Redevelopment Project." The building would be razed as part of a 22-acre, $4.9 billion sports-complex project.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, and developer Bruce C. Ratner have promised that the project will bring jobs, affordable apartments and the Nets basketball team. Lost amid these promises is the story of Mr. Goldstein, his wife Shabnam Merchant, and a few others who have spent years resisting efforts to dislodge them. The state's highest court—the New York Court of Appeals—is expected to issue its ruling in Goldstein et al. v. Empire State Development Corporation any day. The case is a pivotal one in the struggle to prevent abuse of the power of eminent domain.
Eminent domain leapt onto the national stage in 2005 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kelo v. City of New London that governments can take private property for economic redevelopment because the redevelopment's "public purpose" fits a broad definition of the constitutional "public use" test. The decision sparked a national outcry that led more than 40 states to pass restrictions on eminent domain. Yet in New York there should not have been a debate at all.
For decades, New York courts rejected the notion that private landowners can be compelled to sell their property for the benefit for other individuals or companies, which is a central component of many redevelopment projects. In a 1951 case, for example, a state court prohibited a property seizure in New York City because the public use—the creation of a park—was incidental to the benefits for the private developer who would profit from building on land around the park.
Also in 1967, New York voters were asked whether to add a "public purpose" provision to the takings clause in the state's constitution to make it easier to seize private property. It was voted down.
So to push the Atlantic Yards project through the courts, New York state isn't arguing that it needs to take Mr. Goldstein's property for economic development. Instead, it has declared that Mr. Goldstein's neighborhood is "blighted." This allows the state to condemn property on the theory that clearing unsanitary and unsafe slums constitutes a public benefit.
In fact, the Prospect Heights neighborhood that Mr. Goldstein and his wife have made their home is hardly a slum. Prospect Heights was thriving before Atlantic Yards construction began. It's a hip neighborhood that's a short hop on the subway from Manhattan.
To meet the needs of in-flowing residents, developers had been converting sturdy old warehouses into condos. One of the newer arrivals, Mr. Goldstein, paid $590,000 in 2003 for his three-bedroom condo in a distinctive, eight-story dry-goods warehouse designed by a renowned Chicago architect and solidly built nearly 80 years before. His neighborhood was home, too, to small-scale industrial firms and a still-operating Prohibition-era bar, as well as to working-class renters.
To discover blight in all this, Albany hired consultants. Their 2006 report pointed to below-grade railyards for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which make up less than half the condemned area, and noted weeds growing and graffiti on some properties. All of this could be remedied without demolishing a large swath of urban landscape if the state compelled the MTA to sell the development rights above its underground tracks at a market rate.
Mainly, however, the report pointed to "underutilization" of the land, concluding that the area wasn't being used to the maximum economic benefit allowed by law. But that means the Atlantic Yards is really an economic-development project—and that the politicians along with Mr. Ratner want to manage Brooklyn's economy rather than let competitive forces continue to improve the neighborhood.
Specifically, New York would use its power to condemn private property, along with $700 million in subsidies to aid Mr. Ratner's arena, while he would deliver economic benefits favored by officials in City Hall and the state capital. To wit: 2,000 subsidized apartments and a few thousand jobs, a basketball arena and 4,000 luxury apartments.
Just last week, Mr. Ratner bristled at requests from a reporter at Crain's New York Business to see his specific building plans. "Why should people get to see plans?" he said. "This isn't a public project." A curious statement, given the state's use of eminent domain on behalf of the project.
All of this places Mr. Goldstein in an important spot. The case that bears his name is the first opportunity since Kelo for New York's highest court to affirm that the state's constitutional standard for seizing property is more stringent than the federal constitutional standard.
If the court rules against Mr. Goldstein, however, he and his wife could suffer one final injustice. The letter they received in September informed them that the state will compensate them $510,000 for their property—less than what they bought it for and less than half of what Mr. Ratner offered to pay them for it four years ago.
It's also less per square foot than what Mr. Ratner expects to sell his luxury apartments for once they are built. "I think [the state] lowballs to deter people from fighting like we have," Mr. Goldstein told me.
Mr. Goldstein should win. The state constitution supports him. If he loses, so will the owners of private property everywhere in the Empire State.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB2000...194721796.html
Similarly ^ the full text of this article is posted HERE
Pfizer to Leave City That Won Land-Use Case
NY TIMESQuote:
... In a 5-to-4 decision, the high court ruled that it was permissible to take private property and turn it over to developers as part of a plan to bolster the local economy ... The decision was widely criticized, and spurred lawmakers across the country to adopt statutes to prevent similar uses of eminent domain ... 43 states had moved to protect private-property rights since the Kelo decision. New York and New Jersey are among the seven that have not ...
By PATRICK McGEEHAN
November 13, 2009
From the edge of the Thames River in New London, Conn., Michael Cristofaro surveyed the empty acres where his parents’ neighborhood had stood, before it became the crux of an epic battle over eminent domain.
“Look what they did,” Mr. Cristofaro said on Thursday. “They stole our home for economic development. It was all for Pfizer, and now they get up and walk away.”
That sentiment has been echoing around New London since Monday, when Pfizer, the giant drug company, announced it would leave the city just eight years after its arrival led to a debate about urban redevelopment that rumbled through the United States Supreme Court, and reset the boundaries for governments to seize private land for commercial use.
Pfizer said it would pull 1,400 jobs out of New London within two years and move most of them a few miles away to a campus it owns in Groton, Conn., as a cost-cutting measure. It would leave behind the city’s biggest office complex and an adjacent swath of barren land that was cleared of dozens of homes to make room for a hotel, stores and condominiums that were never built ...
I'm in the minority, but I fully support eminent domain. In Manhattan, it is extremely hard to assemble a site when so many ramshackle little buildings can occupy a block. Greedy bastards could hold out, thereby preventing construction of new towers.
Report: Nets could remain in New Jersey if Brooklyn move falls through
By Dave D'Alessandro/The Star-Ledger
November 14, 2009, 8:15PM
MIAMI — The Nets have a safety net in Newark if the Brooklyn deal falls through, an unsourced ESPN.com report suggested Saturday.
The report stated that Mikhail Prokhorov is willing to buy the team at a reduced rate and keep it in New Jersey if the Atlantic Yards project cannot go forward, which directly contradicts what the team and the league have been saying since the Russian oligarch bid $200 million for a controlling share of the Nets in September.
Nets CEO Brett Yormark would not comment on the report, which others in the organization say originated from the league, and not the team.
Both Nets owner Bruce Ratner and NBA commissioner David Stern have stated recently that if Atlantic Yards doesn’t get under way, it’s a deal-breaker, and that Prokhorov will take his billions and go home. But that might have changed in the months since they made those assertions.
But one minority partner, who requested anonymity so he could speak candidly, said Saturday it is believed that Prokhorov “might be inclined to still buy and keep it in Jersey” if the price could be worked out.
Yormark would only say that the Jersey option will be moot as soon as the Nets take possession of the land in Brooklyn: “There are bulldozers on the site right now,” the CEO said here Saturday. “There is preparatory activity, and we will commence construction in mid-December. We’re just as confident as ever that we’ll be in Brooklyn.”
That cannot happen until some eminent domain issues and bond sales go forward, however.
Hilarious. Apparently this is the only way that high school NJ paper can sell copies. You should pay a visit to the Yards and save yourself some disappointment.
Really the Ledger high school paper??!?!?! The Star-Ledger is a great news paper!! Your ignorance is sad yet hilarious! Hey if it happen it happens. Don't be a sore sport.
Newark Star Ledger is the 16th largest paper in the Country:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipea/A0004420.html
Seriously. Do you really think this is a helpful stat? It ranks behind 3 NY papers and the basically bankrupt Boston Globe. And barely beats out Long Island's newspaper. Pathetic. Not surprising really b/c the content in The Ledge and Newsday is about equivalent.
JCMan - The Star Ledger is a joke. Just like Newark is a hole. And just like the concept of the Nets coming to Newark indefinitely instead of Brooklyn is a pipe dream. I am fond of the NJ - Long Island similarities though. Maybe you can get the Islanders to come to Newark.
I dont see a holeQuote:
Originally Posted by BrooklynLove
http://hockey.ballparks.com/NHL/NewJ...s/newfront.jpg
Oh wait, here's one!!
http://blog.nj.com/ledgerupdates_imp...ic%20yards.jpg
Considering it's competing against the New York Times, New York Daily News and the New York Post on news shelves across New Jersey, yes I think that's an impressive ranking. What's not impressive is your ignorance.Quote:
Originally Posted by BrooklynLove
Eminent Domain decision should be coming down soon.