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

[Kris]

May 5, 2004

Arena Developer Rethinking Condemnation of Houses

By DIANE CARDWELL

Building a glittering new Nets arena over the Atlantic Avenue railyards in Brooklyn may not require condemning more than 100 residences through eminent domain after all, an executive behind the arena proposal said yesterday.

"We're working diligently to substantially reduce the amount of residential condemnation and eminent domain that will be part of this project," James Stuckey, executive vice president of the developer, Forest City Ratner, said at a hearing of the City Council's Committee on Economic Development. "We're looking at how we can reshape the plan, we're talking with residents and we are looking at how we can substantially reduce and possibly eliminate the need for residential condemnation."

The whole project is roughly bounded by Atlantic, Vanderbilt and Flatbush Avenues and Dean Street.

The proposed development, which would bring a Frank Gehry-designed arena along with 4,500 residential units and four office towers to the crossroads of Prospect Heights, Fort Greene and Downtown Brooklyn, has been hotly debated since it became public last December.

Proponents, who include Bloomberg administration officials and labor leaders, say that the project will provide jobs, reasonably priced housing, cachet, tourism and other economic activity. Opponents say it will worsen traffic, ruin the hard-won character of revitalized neighborhoods and bring only transient jobs or those paying minimum wage.

But the reliance on eminent domain, a tool long used by government to acquire land for public projects, has been perhaps the most controversial element, conjuring images of ordinary Brooklynites being tossed from their homes by a developer.

The original proposal would have required the state to condemn property around the railyards that now includes about 140 residences and 25 businesses employing roughly 200 people, according to a Forest City Ratner spokesman. (Forest City Ratner is the New York Times Company's partner in developing the new Times headquarters on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, in part through the use of eminent domain.)

"We object to the use of eminent domain to condemn the private property of residents and business owners of Prospect Heights for the benefit of one private developer, especially when that developer owns property adjacent to the proposed condemnation site which could be used for the proposed development," Norman Siegel, a lawyer for a group called Develop Don't Destroy, said in testimony submitted to the Council.

Some opponents of the Atlantic Yards plan have suggested putting the arena at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but Mr. Stuckey countered that only the Atlantic Avenue area had sufficient space and access to transportation to be feasible for the stadium as well as the planned office towers and residences.

After the hearing, Mr. Stuckey declined to elaborate on how the company planned to avoid condemnations, but said that it was considering redrawing the physical outlines of the plan and offering generous buyouts to property owners. "We think that there's a win here, that we can do this project, create these jobs, create this housing and do it in a way where we don't have to condemn people's homes as well," he said.

Still, the hearing appeared to do little to assuage concerns over jobs, housing and financing for the project among the council members, who do not have much power over the process because it is likely to be controlled by the state.

Andrew M. Alper, president of the city's Economic Development Corporation, told the Council that it was too early to know precisely how much the city would contribute to the project, or in what form, but that the cost of the city's contribution would be less than the projected revenues from moving the Nets to New York and from the arena itself.

But for some council members, the talk of projected jobs and low-cost housing in the absence of hard numbers and concrete assurances was not enough. Letitia James, who represents Fort Greene, said that she had been at the Ingersoll and Whitman public housing projects over the weekend, where, she said, unemployment still hovers near 75 percent, as it did when Forest City Ratner built the Metrotech development nearby.

"Do you know how many dreams that I saw standing at Ingersoll-Whitman, dreams that were deferred and destroyed?" she said.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

Nets arena plan aired out

BY ERROL A. COCKFIELD JR. AND CURTIS L. TAYLOR
Staff Writers

May 4, 2004, 8:18 PM EDT

Several hundred Brooklyn residents filled the City Council chamber Tuesday to voice concerns about the $2.5-billion development project that would include a new basketball arena for the Nets.

Their concerns included the fear of losing their homes, job creation and traffic issues.

Bill Howell, chairman of the Downtown Brooklyn Advisory and Oversight Committee, said the project's developer, Forest City Ratner, met or exceeded expectations on previous projects developed in the borough in the past 17 years.

"When Metro Tech was proposed, there were critics who said that Forest City would not provide jobs to the community," said Howell, president of Howell Industries, a minority-owned business in Red Hook. "They were wrong, and the evidence is clear. Just check the certified payrolls and the addresses of the workers at the job site and they will show that jobs actually went to the community," he told the council's Economic Development Committee.

Homeowner Chris Owens said the city failed to make a convincing case for the development.

"The city cannot articulate the benefits," he said. "There are a lot of assumptions at the moment."

Jim Stuckey, vice president for Forest City, testified that adjustments were being made to the existing plan to save more of the 160 dwellings earmarked for demolition under the current plan.

The arena is part of a redevelopment plan to transform Atlantic Yards, near the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues, into a mix of residential, office and retail space and parks.

Thirty-three businesses also would be demolished under the existing plan, according to opponents.

Monday, Forest City issued an economic study prepared by Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economist, who concluded that the Atlantic Yards development would net $812 million of additional revenue for the city and state over the next 30 years. The new revenue would come mainly from taxes on the incomes of players and team executives, as well as commercial and residential development adjacent to the proposed arena.

Forest City Ratner retained Zimbalist, who has written extensively about the negatives of sports arenas, in December.

Zimbalist said he is a proponent of the Downtown Brooklyn project because it departs from the typical stand-alone model. About 1.9 million square feet of office space and 4,500 new housing units would surround the arena.

"That makes it different from other sports projects," Zimbalist said.

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

[NYguy]

More dreams.......(Daily News)

Grand designs for Nets arena
One plan places it at the navy yard

By PAUL H.B. SHIN AND HUGH SON




One of the designs for proposed Nets arena that would allow many neighbors of the Atlantic Ave. site to keep their homes.

Brooklyn politicians, architects and activists revealed their designs this week for the Prospect Heights site where mega-developer Bruce Ratner wants to build an NBA arena.

The new proposals include one that calls for the arena to be built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, instead of over the Atlantic Ave. rail yards, where Ratner is seeking to develop it.

But the designs were overshadowed by Ratner's surprise announcement on Tuesday that he will try to reduce or eliminate the need to displace residents - a major complaint of foes of his plan.

Some opponents groused that Ratner was trying to appease his critics with hollow promises.

"I think he's trying to steal the thunder of one of many, many arguments we have against this project," said Daniel Goldstein, political chairman of the grass-roots group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn.

"He didn't make the commitment they wouldn't use eminent domain, and that's what we've been asking for," added Norman Siegel, the lawyer representing the 140 to 160 families facing eviction under Ratner's $2.5 billion plan.

Marshall Brown, an architect and urban designer working with City Councilwoman Letitia James (WFP-Prospect Heights), has drawn a design calling for buildings five to 10 stories tall, interlaced with parkland, to be built on the rail yard site. The plan also would include 700,000 feet of retail space.

"We're building only over the yards, so we're not removing a single building from the site," Brown said.

Rep. Major Owens (D-Brooklyn) - a longtime proponent of developing the Brooklyn Navy Yard - said that the waterfront site had 300 acres that would better suit an arena for the NBA's New Jersey Nets, the team Ratner recently purchased and wants to move to Brooklyn.

"You could see it from Manhattan and the three bridges," Owens said. "It would be a terrific tourist attraction."

Meanwhile, Joel Towers, an architect and director at Parsons School of Design, offered two ways Ratner could develop a sports arena on Atlantic Ave. without venturing onto private property.

Towers' designs involve either placing the arena on a raised platform above Atlantic Ave., or on property Ratner already owns at the Atlantic Mall. The second plan would require the developer to raze his own buildings and adjust Atlantic Ave. to go around the arena.

Siegel vowed again this week that he wouldn't rest until Ratner issued a guarantee that no resident whose property is endangered by the plan would be forced to move.

"The fact that some people might be spared is a step in the right direction, but I have to be concerned about everybody," he said.

[NYguy]

But the designs were overshadowed by Ratner's surprise announcement on Tuesday that he will try to reduce or eliminate the need to displace residents - a major complaint of foes of his plan.

"I think he's trying to steal the thunder of one of many, many arguments we have against this project," said Daniel Goldstein, political chairman of the grass-roots group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn.

I wish they would let us in on the "many, many" arguments they have against this project, all of which undoubtedly fall under the "we just don't want it" category. Of which the simple answer is to MOVE!

Anyway, its good that they now KNOW the cause they've built their entire argument around is being taken right out from beneath them.

[NYguy]

Brooklyn Paper


Coalition cracking - Source: Owners starting to cut deals

By Deborah Kolben

A coalition of property owners who banded together to fight developer Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards basketball arena, office tower and housing proposal showed signs this week of crumbling.

Only a handful of tenants and homeowners living on the two blocks facing condemnation under the state’s authority of eminent domain came to testify at Tuesday’s City Council hearing. Of the project’s opponents who came to testify, most do not live on the site.

The group, known as Develop Don’t Destroy-Brooklyn, who banded together earlier this year to hire civil rights attorney Norman Siegel to fight the plan, has hosted several large-turnout rallies in the past few months, comprised largely of the people who would either be evicted or have their property condemned if the plan is approved.

But aside from the conspicuously slim turnout at Tuesday’s public hearing, there were other, more overt signs of a fractured coalition this week. Anti-Atlantic Yards posters have come down from the entryway and most windows of 636 Pacific St., one of many buildings that would face the wrecking ball to make way for the 21-acre residential, retail and commercial complex.

Why have the residents gone silent?
Because they’re negotiating with Ratner to sell their homes, sources told The Brooklyn Papers.

Ratner is the principal owner of Forest City Ratner, best known for constructing the Metrotech office complex in Downtown Brooklyn.

Just last week, all but two of the 31 condominium owners at 636 Pacific St., a nine-story building known as the Atlantic Art Building, were negotiating with Ratner to sell their apartments, sources told The Brooklyn Papers.

The art-deco former storage building, converted into luxury condos last year, is just one of many buildings facing condemnation as part of the plan.

Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco declined to comment on tenant negotiations.

But at Tuesday’s hearing Forest City Ratner Vice President James Stuckey said the company was trying to reduce the amount of condemnation and said they may be able to do the plan “in a way where we don’t have to condemn people’s homes.”

It was unclear whether Stuckey meant shifting the arena or buying out residents.

The sweeping, $2.5 billion Atlantic Yards plan proposes to build a basketball arena for Ratner’s recently purchased New Jersey Nets and 17 towers over the Long Island Rail Road storage yards and adjacent blocks emanating from the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues and stretching east into Prospect Heights.

Daniel Goldstein, a resident at 636 Pacific St. and a leader of Develop Don’t Destroy-Brooklyn, said he was not involved in negotiations with Ratner, but declined to comment on his neighbors’ negotiations.

“If he is able to remove people from their homes by offering buyout packages, those negotiations were always in bad faith because they always had the threat of state condemnation behind them,” said Goldstein, who testified at Tuesday’s hearings.

Those sentiments were echoed by Patti Hagan, a spokeswoman for the Prospect Heights Action Coalition, a local group also formed to fight the Ratner arena plan.

Asked about why the other almost 300 residents facing eminent domain eviction did not show, Goldstein said, “People have to work.”

Salvatore Perry, an architect who, with his wife, owns an apartment at 475 Dean St., which is also facing condemnation, said his building had not made a deal with Ratner but declined to comment on any ongoing negotiations.

Joel Towers, an urban designer and renter in the building, who testified at Tuesday’s hearing, said the tenants had met with Ratner in January and even had a video conference with architect Frank Gehry, who is designing the arena and surrounding office and residential towers.

While owners are busy negotiating, several renters are worried about what will happen to them. Zafra Whitcomb, who moved into the building almost five years ago, said he doesn’t know what he will do.

“Ratner is not negotiating with tenants,” Whitcomb said.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Displaced renters could be offered an incentive package to remain in the neighborhood. Make people happy, and you break up stubborn opposition.

[NoyokA]

Promising! Something great to come home to.

[BrooklynRider]

I think that tackling the protests of "eminent domain abuse" by faithfully negotiating is a shrewd business move. Ratner is experiencing extremely bad criticism and, as a result, a P.R. nightmare with his initial proposal. Local Brooklyn papers are all over him for his fortress like developments that seem to be built to "protect" tenants from the neighborhoods. Atlantic Center and Metrotech were scathingly ripped to shreds by locals. I think he was wholly unprepared for the ferocity.

He is going to buy out property owners, who I think are realizing that even if they save their property, they are still going to be situated next to an arena, attracting its fair share of drunks and rowdies. Negotiating a deal out of there is the smart path.

[NYguy]

Slam dunk!
Residents get a cool mil to get out of Ratner's way

By HUGH SON and NANCY DILLON

Real estate tycoon Bruce Ratner is showing Brooklyn homeowners the money.

He's turning residents of one building into instant millionaires so they'll go quietly - letting him knock down their homes to make way for his controversial $2.5 billion Nets arena and housing complex.

That means people who paid about $600,000 for a swank three-bedroom, 1,300-foot condo just last year are being offered a cool $1.2 million to flee.

One couple is bolting to trendy Chelsea, where a million bucks can buy a corner loft with 11-foot ceilings and a roof deck, according to real estate Web site Corcoran.com.

Another woman said she hopes to stay in Brooklyn, where the bulging pot of newfound cash can buy a seven-bedroom "mansionette" on tony Prospect Park West.

A move to Staten Island could land these residents in a brick colonial estate on ritzy Todt Hill, down the street from the late mob boss Paul Castellano's storied neo-Federal mansion.

"Many people really love this building, but Ratner understood that we're young and not that rooted yet in the community," said one resident of 636 Pacific St. who requested anonymity.

"It's a lot of money," said another woman, who did not want her name used, citing an internal building pact to keep mum about the deal.

Nearly all the 30 owners in the eight-story condo - a renovated warehouse called the Atlantic Arts Building - are negotiating with Forest City Ratner.

One holdout remains.

"They're kind of mimicking what they did at MetroTech, which is to treat people equitably," said Atlantic Arts Building developer Marc Freud, referring to the downtown Brooklyn office and university complex Forest City Ratner built in the early 1990s.

Ratner recently purchased the Nets and is set on moving them to Brooklyn. He commissioned renowned architect Frank Gehry to design a 21-acre residential and commercial complex over and around the Long Island Rail Road's Atlantic Yards.

But the project - which would displace more than 160 homeowners - has faced opposition from local leaders and residents, who say it will toss aside longtime Brooklynites and overwhelm the neighborhood.

Opponents called Ratner's buyout offers a cynical move that will do little to quell the uproar against the project in Prospect Heights and Fort Greene.

"There are still a number of hurdles, including a significant number of people in the footprint and the adjoining communities who are opposed to this project," said Councilwoman Letitia James (WFP-Brooklyn).

Ratner spokesman Barry Baum would say only that the company was "looking at how we can substantially reduce and possibly eliminate the need for residential condemnation."

The buyout of the Atlantic Arts Building is seen as key because it's in the direct path of the planned 19,000-seat basketball arena. Ratner hopes to have the arena ready for tipoff by 2007.

Roger Paz, a Prospect Heights resident who lives near the proposed arena site, said word of negotiations at 636 Pacific St. spread a panic among homeowners, who fear Ratner is using a divide-and-conquer strategy.

"All of a sudden on the street, there was talk of people making deals," Paz said. "Nobody wanted to be last to cut a deal."

Movin' on up

Here's a look at what $1.2million can get you around the city:

1. Park Ave., Manhattan - A "super-luxury" one-bedroom apartment in the Trump Park Avenue, at 60th St.

2. Boerum Hill, Brooklyn - A four-story brick townhouse with a "graceful" center staircase, gourmet kitchen, garden and English basement.

3. Tottenville, Staten Island - A four-bedroom brick mansionette with a lush front lawn, backyard pool, intercom system and a two-car garage.

4. Jamaica Estates, Queens - A six-bedroom Tudor with three fireplaces, a private driveway leading to a two-car garage, and plenty of trees.

5. Riverdale, Bronx - A "sensational" three-bedroom stone Tudor with a breakfast balcony, a garden, a two-car garage and an "entertaining level" with a summer kitchen and a stone dining terrace.

[NYguy]

I'm sure now the people who accept money and make deals with Ratner will be hated by the arena opponents. The very people who they were building their entire argument around will now be looked at with the same scorn as Ratner.

More news of the development...(Daily News)

Ratner Co. vows room for elderly
Low-cost & seniors-only flats

By HUGH SON

At least a portion of the apartment complex developer Bruce Ratner plans to build at Atlantic Yards will be set aside for senior citizens, high-ranking sources have told the Daily News.

Bruce Bender, an executive in Ratner's Forest City Ratner Corp., said that 10% of the affordable and middle-income housing that Ratner has pledged to build on the Prospect Heights site will be reserved for elderly tenants.

"We have to recognize that seniors on fixed incomes need housing," Bender said. "It's important because what we're trying to do is for everybody in the borough."

If Ratner builds a total of 4,500 apartments - half of which will rent to those within specific income brackets - then 225 apartments will be dedicated to older people, a Ratner spokesman said. Along with homes, Ratner's 21-acre proposal includes an NBA arena, office towers and retail space.

The senior housing vow is part of a larger agreement that Ratner hammered out with ACORN, one of the nation's largest groups representing low- and moderate-income families.

"We've actually created a brand-new model of housing," boasted ACORN Executive Director Bertha Lewis.

According to the proposal - which Lewis said is still being drafted into a binding agreement - there are five brackets for low- and moderate-income housing, starting from those earning $18,000 yearly all the way to families who make $98,500 per year. No family would pay rent exceeding 30% of its income, she said.

Apartments for seniors will differ from regular units, with wider doors, ramps and other amenities for the aged, she added.

Lewis said she was pleasantly surprised when she contacted Forest City Ratner with her affordable housing proposal, and was granted a meeting with the real estate mogul himself.

"This is the first time we've had a developer not laugh us out of the room," she said.

Critics viewed the news as the latest public relations gesture meant to deflect attention from the displacement of hundreds of residents who live in the footprint of Ratner's planned megacomplex.

"I think it's terrific if it's 10% for seniors, but it doesn't change the fact that he's planning to impose this project on an already existing community," said Patti Hagan, president of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition. "You don't do a good deed on top of bad deeds."

But the pledge was welcomed by Evangeline Porter, 71, a Crown Heights retiree.

"I applaud it wholeheartedly," Porter said. "We need to have a percentage for senior housing, because many of the people that are going to be displaced are seniors."



Bertha Lewis

[Clarknt67]

Arena Opponent: "This is about our homes. This is about respecting community. We have roots here in Brooklyn! This is a neighborhood, he can't just bulldoze over our homes and turn this into Manhattan!"

Ratner: "Here's a million dollars, go away."

Arena Opponent: "Yee ha! I'm rich, screw community! I'm buying a loft in the Meatpacking district!"

:wink:

[billyblancoNYC]

We have roots here in Brooklyn. I moved here from Kansas a whole 13 monthes ago. I can't leave...

[NYguy]

LOL. Its funny, I was born in Brooklyn, but only lived there for a couple of years. But you always feel connected to Brooklyn somehow.

[NYguy]

(Brooklyn Paper)

Ratner buyout silences critics

By Deborah Kolben

Real estate developer Bruce Ratner is closing in on a $32 million deal to buy out residents of a nine-story building standing at what would be center court of his new Nets arena project.

Residents of the Atlantic Art Building at 636 Pacific St. are being offered up to double what they paid for their posh apartments, but few are talking publicly about the deal.

That’s because they must agree to a gag order to get the money, sources said.

The waiver residents are being asked to sign prohibits them from speaking out against the arena or attending anti-arena rallies and public hearings.

Residents are also required to take down anti-arena signs from the building’s entranceway and doorway and are forbidden from donating money to any groups opposing the project.

Civil liberties attorney Norman Siegel, who is representing residents and businesses that would be displaced by the $2.5 billion retail, residential and commercial development, called the gag order “extremely offensive and troubling.”

While first amendment rules don’t apply to private business deals, “lawyers are thinking about whether there is anything that can be done [about the gag rule],” Siegel said.

Barry Baum, a spokesman for Ratner, declined to comment on the gag order saying, “We are not discussing negotiations with individual residents.”

James Greilsheimer, an attorney representing the owners at 636 Pacific St., also declined to comment.

Prospect Heights Councilwoman Letitia James, an outspoken opponent of the project, said she found the gag order “very troubling.”

“This project is not a done deal, money can not buy love from the entire community,” said James, adding, “Unless he’s willing to have a dialogue with the larger community, he is going to continue to face roadblocks.”

[NYguy]

Daily News...

Ratner puts biz bldgs. on arena hit list

By HUGH SON

Real estate mogul Bruce Ratner, who made instant millionaires of condo owners living in the path of his planned basketball arena, is throwing even more money around.

The deep-pocketed developer also has been quietly snapping up commercial properties in the neighborhood.

"They're being very nice, and being very, very fair," said K.C. Lerner, the owner of two buildings that will soon become the property of Ratner.

Lerner's buildings, 624 and 640 Pacific Ave., flank the Atlantic Arts building, where condo owners are cutting a deal to move out in exchange for more than $1 million apiece.

"The bottom line is, everybody's moving up," Lerner said.

The purchases help smooth the way for Ratner's 19,000-seat sports arena, the planned new home for the Nets basketball team.

A Ratner spokesman declined comment on any negotiations.

J.R. Giddings, proprietor of a Caribbean eatery and bar at 177 Flatbush Ave., said he was looking forward to meeting Ratner next week to start talks to sell his three-story building.

Not everyone in the footprint of the planned 21-acre arena and housing complex is itching to leave.

Jo Watanabe, who runs a printmaking business at 642 Pacific St. and leases the entire three-story building for $6,000 a month, said he doesn't know where he can find a comparable deal. Moving costs alone will cost him $50,000, he said.

"It's going to kill us. I have to find a new place," Watanabe said.