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

[NYguy]

Park Slope Courier

Nets promise local fans cheap tickets - Say $15 seats will be open for BK games



Rapper, Def Jam Records President and Nets part-owner Jay-Z said bringing the team to the borough will create a new spirit.

By Stephen Witt
01/26/2007


Brooklyn’s hardworking basketball fans will not be forgotten once the NBA’s Nets land in Brooklyn, according to team spokesperson Barry Baum.

Baum’s comments fly in the face of a recent published report touting that tickets for Nets games, once the team comes to Brooklyn, are estimated to go for between $51 and $970 each.

“We want to make Nets games in Brooklyn as accessible for everyone and so we’re providing 2,000 $15 tickets for all regular season games in the upper bowl seats,” said Baum.

Baum also noted that the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA), signed with eight local community based organizations, calls for the team to designate one luxury suite, four seats in the lower bowl and 50 seats in the upper bowl for community seats.

The seats will be free and priority will be given to seniors and youth for Nets games throughout the year as per the CBA, said Baum.

Baum also said the NBA currently requires that each team sell 500 tickets for $10 each.

Baum’s comments came after a published report cited a confidential December audit by KPMG projects that the Nets will charge a $4,500 “personal seat license” fee for the best 4,500 seats at Barclays Center once the 18,000-seat arena is built and the team starts playing there in 2009-2010 season.

The audit also states that the 170 luxury suits in the $637 million arena could command a record $463,710 each.

But Baum noted the KPMG report was separate from the Nets management and might not necessarily reflect the team’s ticket pricing.

“The KPMG report is an independent consultant’s projection prepared for the Empire State Development Corporation of how the economics of the arena might work and the actual numbers may very,” said Baum.

“We’re committed to making Nets games accessible for everyone in Brooklyn and the metropolitan area,” he added.

Meanwhile, Brooklyn-born rap artist Def Jam Records President and Nets part-owner Sean (Jay-Z) Carter, said that to have an NBA team in Brooklyn up the street and down the block brings the dream closer to youths in the borough.

“I was telling Bruce [Ratner] and the guys from the beginning [that] you guys think this is a good idea, but you don’t understand it’s really a great idea,” said Jay-Z.

“You don’t understand the passion and love that Brooklynites have for each other and something they can claim ownership in. They have no idea how incredible its going to be,” he added.

©Courier-Life Publications 2007

[Transic]

http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/po...berg_addin.php


Bloomberg Adding $226 Million for Nets, Mets, Yanks?
By Neil deMause | January 29, 2007

Buried in the nether reaches of the preliminary capital budget that the mayor released last Thursday are some curious details on the three new sports facilities—that's Yanks, Mets, and Nets, for those scoring at home—that the city has in the works. Namely, total city capital funding for the projects appears to now be as high as $586 million—a nearly two-thirds hike from the $360 million (not counting tax and lease breaks) that Bloomberg had promised taxpayers would be on the hook for when the projects were first announced.


Our story begins last Thursday, when Norman Oder of the Ratner-watch blog Atlantic Yards Report noticed something odd in the mayor's capital plan overview: On a page marked "Economic Development Capital Highlights," Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project to bring big-ass skyscrapers and a Nets basketball arena to the northern edge of Prospect Heights was listed at a city price tag of $205 million. That's more than double the $100 million in direct city cash that Bloomberg agreed to spend back in 2005:

Under the MOU, the State and the City will each contribute $100 million in capital contributions to fund site preparation and public infrastructure improvements on and around the arena site, including streets, sidewalks, utility relocations, environmental remediation, open space and public parking.

The mayor's office didn't respond to Voice queries about the discrepancy, but Doug Turetsky of the Independent Budget Office did. The added $105 million, he explains, is for still more infrastructure costs, "some of which might have been on the books prior to Atlantic Yards, but some substantial amount of which is likely related to the scale of the project—such as the need for expanding sewer and water capacity."

News of the mayor's apparent hidden-ball trick provoked outrage at Develop Don't Destroy, whose spokesperson Dan Goldstein fumed in a Monday morning press release, "The ballooning number comes after the project received its only political approval by the State's Public Authorities Control Board in December, amounting to a bait and switch at taxpayer expense." Councilmember Tish James's office is currently investigating exactly where the new funds are headed, and what, if anything, the council can do about it.

Elsewhere in the mayor's budget, meanwhile, projected capital costs for land and infrastructure associated with the Yankees and Mets stadiums—previously pegged at $160 million and $98 million, respectively—are now listed as totaling $209 million and $172 million over the next several years. The Observer's Matt Schuerman first noticed similar overages in last summer's city capital plan; at the time, city Office of Management and Budget spokesperson Ray Orlando claimed that the added funds were a mistake that would be rectified in this month's budget.

Not so much, it turns out. (Orlando has yet to return Voice phone calls asking for an explanation.)

It's all enough to make one wonder if New Yorkers are really meant to know what our elected officials are spending our money on. "The city budgets, while they have become increasingly transparent, still are not organized in a way to allow the kind of public scrutiny necessary to evaluate these sorts of items," admits Citizens Union director Dick Dadey, though he says the problem may be less "intentional effort to obfuscate" than the fact that " our city budget is far more complex than most states'." Council speaker Christine Quinn, he points out, has pressed for more transparency in the budget process; it will be interesting to see if an unexpected $105 million invoice will be enough to get the speaker to start asking tough questions of her pal the mayor over the project that would eat Brooklyn.

[lofter1]

boondoggle ^^^

[Transic]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/nyregion/02yards.html

Barclays Arena Deal Raises a Reputed Link to Slavery

By ANTHONY RAMIREZ
Published: February 2, 2007

Hakeem Jeffries, a state assemblyman who supports the $4 billion Atlantic Yards project near Downtown Brooklyn, has denounced an important facet of it — the name for the new arena for the Nets basketball team, which he called an affront to the black community.

Another supporter, Roger L. Green, a former assemblyman, has said the Nets naming deal contributed too little money to help Brooklyn.

With all the public criticism and praise laid at the doorstep of the Atlantic Yards project, the naming of the arena did not figure to be controversial. Last week, Bruce Ratner, the owner of the Nets and the president of Forest City Ratner, the Atlantic Yards developer, announced that the British bank Barclays would pay $400 million over 20 years for naming rights to the 18,000-seat stadium, to be called the Barclays Center.

Barclays’ accusers say the bank’s early founders had ties to the African slave trade in the 18th century. More recently, they say, the bank cooperated with the apartheid regime of South Africa. A spokesman for Barclays denied both claims.

In remarks reported last Friday in The Brooklyn Paper, a local weekly that is critical of the Atlantic Yards project, Mr. Jeffries said, “Of all of the companies in the world to pursue a naming rights agreement, Barclays is inappropriate to be in a borough which has one of the largest populations of African descent in this country,” Mr. Jeffries, who is black, said in an interview.

He said he would discuss the agreement with Forest City Ratner officials. “All options should be on the table, and those options should include termination of the agreement or Barclays compensating the community for the wrongs” of the slave trade, Assemblyman Jeffries said.

Mr. Green, who is also black, said that Barclays, one of the wealthiest corporations in the world, had agreed to pay $2.5 million for park renovation and other projects. “At least as a point of negotiation,” he said, “we should seek far more.”

He added, “If we were to exclude all the corporations that participated in the slave trade, there would only be a handful of companies” for Forest City Ratner to negotiate with.

Forest City Ratner, which is the development partner in building a new Midtown headquarters for The New York Times Company, declined to comment.

Letitia James, a city councilwoman who opposes the project, said, “The reason that Barclays is the largest bank in the world by total assets is because their assets represent fruit from a poisoned tree.”

Peter Truell, a spokesman for Barclays, said, “Claims that Barclays was founded on the profits of slavery are untrue.” He also said that Barclays withdrew from South Africa in 1986, six years before the end of apartheid, and was one of the first to return to the country in 1995, after the fall of apartheid.

“Indeed, David Barclay, who was a partner in one of the primary Quaker banks in the 1770s that eventually merged to form Barclays, was opposed to slavery,” Mr. Truell added.

In an 1801 book entitled “An Account of the Emancipation of the Slaves of Unity Valley Pen, in Jamaica,” David Barclay wrote, “Having been a slave owner, and much dissatisfied in being so, I determined to try the experiment of liberating my slaves; firmly convinced, that the retaining my fellow creatures in bondage was not only irreconcileable with the precepts of Christianity, but subversive of the rights of human nature.”

Christopher Leslie Brown, a Rutgers history professor and an expert on the early British Empire, said in an interview that the Barclay family were slave owners, but minor ones.

Mr. Brown, who is black and the author of the 2006 book “Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism,” said, “The point I would make about these banks, like Barclays, is that much of the wealth generated in the 18th century came either directly or indirectly out of either the slave trade or plantations” in Virginia, Jamaica and Barbados.

He added, “This game of ‘gotcha!’ — pointing out this particular bank had relationships with slave traders or slaveholders — gets a little bit silly because all banks did. Barclays is not unusual in being connected to the history of slavery, nor is it unusually innocent.”

[NoyokA]

And Bayer used Nazi slave labor, who cares...

[Eugenious]

And Bayer used Nazi slave labor, who cares...

Every major American company benefited in some way from slave labor, in fact there would be no United States if there wasn't slave labor. These people are illiterate nincompoops.

[NoyokA]

Every major American company benefited in some way from slave labor, in fact there would be no United States if there wasn't slave labor. These people are illiterate nincompoops.

Exactly, business is evil, there’s a reason its condemned in the bible.

[NoyokA]

Here's some illustrations I haven’t previously seen. They given an idea of the impact, although they are not from Gehry or Ratner, instead are done by Jason Lee of New York Magazine.

[ablarc]

^ Could be taller.

[infoshare]

“A powerful look and indictment of how red-carpet treatment for big real estate substitutes for any real planning skill or capacity by public agencies in New York City.”
-Jon Orcutt, Director, Tri-State Transportation Campaign

[NYguy]

Here's some illustrations I haven’t previously seen. They given an idea of the impact, although they are not from Gehry or Ratner, instead are done by Jason Lee of New York Magazine.

I think we discussed these earlier, particularly the way only Gehry's towers cast shadows in the rendering.

[stache]

A building that looks like it's falling down. Thanks, Frank -

[antinimby]

C'mon stache, you know better than that.

It's a distorted, crude drawing that came out a few years ago that everyone pretty much dismissed as highly exaggerated back then.

No need to dig that stuff back up again.

[lofter1]

Everything is falling over in this pic: trees, lampposts, 19th C. brick houses ...

[NYguy]

NY Sun

Barclays Denies Alleged Ties To Slave Trade

By ELIOT BROWN
February 5, 2007


Amid criticism by black leaders in Brooklyn over the naming rights deal for the Nets stadium, Barclays Bank late last week issued a letter denying allegations that it had links to slave trading in the 18th century.

After staying relatively mum on the issue for two weeks, Barclays failed to pacify many outspoken critics with its letter, though it prompted a correction from the Brooklyn Paper.

In its letter dated February 1 signed by the head of corporate communications, Peter Truell, Barclays rejected allegations that early bank partner David Barclay was a Quaker slave trader, a claim they say was first printed in a 1944 book "Capitalism and Slavery."

"This book makes serious, unsupported and mistaken allegations about Barclays," Mr. Truell wrote. "The ‘ David Barclay' referred to in this book also had no connection with the bank."

The Brooklyn Paper issued a correction, but not a retraction, of its first article on the naming rights deal. Under the headline "Blood money: Nets arena to be named after bank founded on slave money," the article highlighted opponents' allegations against Barclays concerning links to slavery, apartheid funding, and cooperation with the Nazis.

On Friday, the paper corrected a quotation it lifted from a British paper, initially cited to a Barclays official, that acknowledged the company was linked to slave traders. The quotation actually was from a reader apparently unaffiliated with Barclays, Brooklyn Paper's editor, Gersh Kuntzman, said.

The paper has seemingly been feeding some of the firestorm surrounding the naming rights issue, and coverage similar to the paper's has appeared in the Independent of London, among other press outlets.

However Mr. Kuntzman cautioned that he didn't think his paper provoked the initial outcry, saying opponents were approaching him about the slavery links before any articles were written.

City Council Member Charles Barron, who has repeatedly spoken out against the naming rights deal, said the letter did nothing to change his view of Barclays.

"Whether the Brooklyn Paper had highlighted the link to slavery or not, many of us involved in the reparations movement were aware of Barclays for a long time," he said.