Atlantic Yards Development - Commercial, Residential, Retail, NBA Arena

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Originally Posted by greenie

Awesome!
What's Ratner's next obstacle after purchasing the land?

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Some eminent domain.

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New York Daily News:
Ratner set to Net MTA deal
By PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, September 9th, 2005

MTA officials are expected to approve as soon as Wednesday a deal to clear the lane for the Nets to play in Brooklyn, transit sources said yesterday.

Developer Bruce Ratner has sweetened his offer to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for rights to develop its railyards in downtown Brooklyn, where his company, Forest City Ratner, wants to build an arena for the Jersey-based team.

MTA board members yesterday were told to come to a special meeting Wednesday where one source expects the board to approve a deal with Ratner, who owns the Nets.

The board didn't accept Ratner's initial offer at a July meeting but voted overwhelmingly - 12-to-1 - to negotiate exclusively with his company instead of a rival bidder.

Ratner since has upped his initial bid of $50 million to the $100 million range and has offered improvements on a few other fronts, sources said.

"It's a better deal," said one source.

The arena is the centerpiece of Ratner's $3.5 billion vision that also calls for 6,000 apartments and other development over 21 acres.

In his July bid, Ratner also pledged to build a new facility for Long Island Rail Road trains that use the yards, as well as other improvements.

Opponents contend the project will overwhelm the neighborhood with traffic and overtax local city services.

RATNER DOUBLES DOWN
Higher bid still far short of MTA site’s value

By Jess Wisloski
The Brooklyn Papers

Forest City Ratner this week doubled its bid for development rights over the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Atlantic Avenue rail yards, but is still offering less than half of what the property is estimated to be worth, according to a published report.

The right to build over the Long Island Rail Road storage yards in Prospect Heights is a crucial component of the development company’s plan to build a 19,000-seat professional basketball arena and 17 office and residential high-rises, including several skyscrapers that would tower over the surrounding area.

The development site of the proposed Atlantic Yards is bounded by Dean Street and Flatbush, Atlantic and Vanderbilt avenues.

Citing unnamed sources, identified only as “two executives involved in the talks,” the New York Times on Wednesday reported that a special meeting might be held as soon as this Tuesday, Sept. 13, to approve the deal because developer Bruce Ratner had upped his company’s bid from $50 million to $100 million.

An appraisal of the property for the MTA put its value at $214 million.

The MTA put out a request for proposals, or RFP, for the site on May 26. Although Ratner’s bid was the lower of the two bids submitted by the July 6 deadline, the MTA board on July 27 chose to negotiate exclusively with Ratner.

The competing bid, by Extell Development Company, was for $150 million for the three parcels, and offered to pay to build platforms above them.

The MTA board is made up of 17 appointees, most of them direct or indirect appointees of Gov. George Pataki.

At the July 27 MTA hearing, the board’s chair, Peter Kalikow, read a prepared motion to further discuss the bidding solely with Ratner, a Columbia Law School classmate of Pataki’s. The governor has been a supporter of the Ratner plan since it was announced in late 2003.

Forest City Ratner executives argued at the July 27 meeting that their bid was greater despite only offering $50 million up front, because it included $29 million in renovations of the rail yards (to help pay for their relocation required under the Ratner proposal), as well as $20 million in environmental remediation of the property (which needs to be done in order to develop the site for housing), $182 million to build a platform (to build the housing and commercial properties over the shifted rail yards), $25.4 million in MTA operating expenses and $23 million in projected sales tax revenues.

The MTA board voted to give Forest City Ratner 45 days — until Sept. 10 — to negotiate exclusively with Kalikow and Katherine Lapp, the executive director of the MTA and a former Pataki aide, leading to the $100 million, according to the Times report.

Neither MTA nor Forest City Ratner officials would comment for this article.

Additionally, an MTA spokesman said that neither Lapp nor Kalikow had been around when the Times story broke.

“I can’t verify that [the Times article is correct] because I don’t know about it,” said MTA spokesman Tom Kelly, a spokesman for the MTA.

“Kalikow has been away and Lapp has not seen a final [bid], so I don’t know,” said Kelly, who insisted that whatever information had been leaked was likely coming from the developer.

“This is not an MTA source,” Kelly said. “The ‘officials,’ as far as I can see, could be Ratner people; this could be their way of getting this out there,” he said, as a test balloon to gauge the MTA’s reaction.

“Based on what they’ve said [here], I’ve looked around, but nobody knows anything about scheduling a special meeting. So far, nothing has been changed,” he said.

Kelly reiterated that the approval for the sale might not occur until the next full MTA board meeting, scheduled for Sept. 29.

A spokesman for Forest City Ratner, Barry Baum, was less forthcoming.

“We are not discussing the MTA bid,” he said.

Re: the above Brooklyn Papers article. BP has been relentlessly negative this project. And I thought their choice of headline: "Far less than land valued" struck me as funny.

At the end of the day aren't things worth what people will pay for them, not what bean counters SAY they're worth?

The MTA put out a public request for bids--which while admittedly at best was half-hearted, at worse fixed, but still, public. And Develop Don't Destroy helped send out the request. So if this land is worth so much more, wouldn't SOMEONE have ponied that up? Extell was the only other bid they got, and that project was no prize either.

The land is only worth as much as people are willing to pay for it...period.

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Originally Posted by macreator

The land is only worth as much as people are willing to pay for it...period.

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^ If that were really the case here then the $150M Extel bid for the land iteself would have over-taken Ratner's $100M bid for same site (actually more land under Ratner's bid, no?).

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Originally Posted by Clarknt67

At the end of the day aren't things worth what people will pay for them, not what bean counters SAY they're worth?

So if this land is worth so much more, wouldn't SOMEONE have ponied that up?

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Now, on what other project have I heard that argument before?

Brooklynites bend over, here comes another Ratner project (without lube).

Im with Brooklyn, this plan is not good, it will help make Brooklyn into Manhattan and take away from its chartacter

Of course the character of Brooklyn will change, the character of a city is always changing. No doubt, the character of Brooklyn in 2005 is different, than it was in 1990. That is a given, what we dissagree on, is whether the change is for the better. I believe that Brooklyn will benifit trememdously from this project, Ive lived here all my life, and I could not be more excited

I agree. It'll be a landmark for our boro. I'm excited about a new pro team here and a new tallest. Think of all the visitors who will come to downtown Brooklyn to shop and walk around. Not to mention other run down areas would probably perk up. I can't wait.

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Originally Posted by sfenn1117

...Not to mention other run down areas would probably perk up. I can't wait.

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i.e., poor and minority's leave as whites gentrify and jack up rents

umm that's really rascist. Sounds like you're implying that the only people who will be able to afford it is white people.

I really don't like your posts lately.

It is reality. What exactly do we mean when we say we hope a neighborhood will "perk" up? That the bodegas leave, the poor folk disappear from the stoops and stop the loud noise on hot nights, and Starbucks moves in?

What don't we like about it now? It has no retail. It is a depressed (i.e, poor) area. No one is going there other than to live cheaply. Poor people live there making it unattractive and unsafe. There are group homes and SRO's.

It's not racist. It's reality. If you recognize what's there and hope that it changes, it is condemning the existing neighborhood.

This is a project that is ultimately publicly funded, because Ratner keeps the sales tax generated by the stadium for himself to "reinvest". Sorry, taxes are for the public sector - not a private developer. The MTA has one opportunity to sell that land and it is not choosing the highest bidder - that is corrupt without any rational argument to counter it. The minimal economic activity we see from this "project" will be absorbed by the increased municipal costs of servicing the development.

I want to the yards developed but I want the yards sold at the highest price - period. Ratner is no bound to build what he "proposes" - he can get the land and sit on it. Plus the guy is king of hand outs. This guy is building a second rate city in Brooklyn and in ten / fifteen years we'll look back and say "oh, this looks just like Metrotech".

That's not what you said in your previous post. Let's be serious here, there are run down areas in a prime cbd. Every city aims to get rid of these and develop them. That's how it works. Ever been to Hartford? Beautiful downtown, seriously rundown in most other parts.

It's the racist comment that burned me. Poors and minoritys leave while whites gentrify?

My comment wasn't racist. Gentrification in New York City, which you are advocating, tends to be achieved at the expense of poor and minorities.

A "racist" comment would advocate the removal of poor and, specifically, black or latino residents. I didn't do that and we need not delve into the issue of reading comprehension and misinterpretation here. If you still wish to view it that way, however erroneous your perspective is, so be it.