Brooklyn - Nets Gehry Stadium + Development

[bagel]

As a New Jerseyan, I'd be sad to see them go, but if it means we get a bunch of Brooklyn talls and a Frank Gehry building, then I'm all for it!


NYTIMES

A Grand Plan in Brooklyn for the Nets' Arena Complex
By CHARLES V. BAGLI

Published: December 11, 2003

The developer Bruce Ratner unveiled his plans yesterday to build a Frank Gehry-designed arena for the Nets basketball team near Downtown Brooklyn. He detailed his ambitious $2.5 billion commercial and residential project at a theatrical presentation attended by the mayor, a former basketball star and a best-selling rapper.

Whatever political juice and street credibility he gained — from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the former Nets and Knicks legend Bernard King and the performer Jay-Z — Mr. Ratner's presentation at Brooklyn Borough Hall was aimed mainly at the owners of the New Jersey Nets, who are selling the two-time Eastern Conference championship franchise.

A group led by Mr. Ratner of Forest City Ratner Companies has the highest bid, $275 million. But the sale of the National Basketball Association team has gone through many twists over the last six months, and another round of bidding is in the offing. The news conference was also a response to rivals who questioned whether Mr. Ratner could deliver on his promises.

Showing how pitched the battle will be, Gov. James E. McGreevey of New Jersey upped the ante after the Brooklyn news conference yesterday by saying that his state had secured $150 million to build a rail line to Continental Arena at the Meadowlands, the Nets' current home.

Mr. Ratner has a track record with such projects, having built, among other things, the seven-million-square-foot MetroTech Center complex nearby in Downtown Brooklyn. For the Nets project, he has assembled a group of well-heeled investors with Brooklyn roots, including Vincent Viola, chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange, and Jay-Z. (Forest City Ratner is The New York Times Company's partner in developing the new Times headquarters on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan.)

Speaking of the Brooklyn project, Mr. Ratner said: "We are real. This is going to happen." He added, "If we don't get the team there will not be a project."

Mr. Bloomberg lent City Hall's support to the project, saying, "We're rooting hard" for it to succeed.

Outside the news conference, about two dozen residents distributed cookies in the shape of turkeys, an edible reference to their view of Mr. Ratner's proposal for the arena, office towers and apartment buildings. But the Brooklyn Borough president, Marty Markowitz, said the project would fill the hole left when the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles after the 1957 season, a moment that he said still reduces him to tears.

"Brooklyn is a world-class city, and it deserves a world-class team in a world-class arena designed by a world-class architect," he said. "This plan goes even further, creating thousands of apartments affordable to Brooklynites of every income and producing thousands of jobs."

Mr. Ratner said his effort began after Mr. Markowitz called urging him to buy the Nets and move the team to Brooklyn. The 21-acre project centers on the Long Island Rail Road yards at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues. Under the proposal, the tracks for the train storage yard would be moved to the east, allowing the developer to build the $435 million, 19,000-seat arena for basketball, topped by a park with a running track that could be converted to an ice rink in the winter.

The arena, which will be linked to the Atlantic Terminal subway and train lines, would be embraced by four tall office towers totaling 2.1 million square feet, with up to 4,500 apartments in buildings to the east.

Rather than walling itself off from the community, Mr. Ratner and Mr. Gehry said, the arena would be sheathed in glass, allowing patrons a view of Brooklyn night life and passers-by a look at the interior.

"This started with basketball, a Brooklyn sport," Mr. Ratner said. "This was always the site. But it became clear it was not economically viable without a real estate component. And Frank Gehry was the perfect architect for this site."

Mr. Gehry, who designed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Mighty Ducks hockey training facility in Anaheim, Calif., said he had never had an opportunity "to build a neighborhood from scratch in an urban setting."

He said the renderings and models on display yesterday were merely the first steps in the designs. "Don't worry about these funny shapes at this point," Mr. Gehry said. "These are just blocks, and we'll make something out of it."

Even some sports economists who have been critical of stadium and arena projects elsewhere are intrigued by Mr. Ratner's plans.

"It has all the ingredients to be successful," said Prof. Mark S. Rosentraub, a sports economist and the dean of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University in Ohio. "It's a very attractive market. Add in the kind of housing that's being talked about and the retail opportunities, you have something that could work."

Mr. Ratner said that the project "will be almost exclusively privately financed," although taxes derived from elements of the project will be diverted to help pay for it. The developer also wants the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to turn over some of its land and the state to condemn the rest of it. Only one block, he said, had apartment buildings, with about 100 residents.

Mr. Ratner must also survive a grueling environmental review and community opposition.

Despite the developer's pledge to conduct a public review, Patti Hagan, a member of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition, said she was "appalled by the secrecy surrounding the project." She questioned why the city was intent on giving Mr. Ratner exclusive rights to public property without a review.

[Mike in TO]

Are the NJ Devils moving as well?

[New Jack City]

This site has alot of pictures and info:

http://brooklynnets.net

Here are some models and captions from some newspapers:

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2003-12/10566297.jpg

Architect Frank Gehry, (far right), along with Bruce Ratner (far left), joined Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz to unveil a vision for a basketball arena and mixed-use complex in downtown Brooklyn. They hope to woo the New Jersey Nets.

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2003-12/10566442.jpg

Scale model of a design by architect Frank Gehry for a basketball arena and mixed-use complex in downtown Brooklyn. The presentation on Wednesday was part of a bid to woo the New Jersey Nets to Brooklyn.

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2003-12/10566430.jpg

Scale model of a design by architect Frank Gehry for a basketball arena and mixed-use complex in downtown Brooklyn. The presentation on Wednesday was part of a bid to woo the New Jersey Nets to Brooklyn.

http://www.nypost.com/photos/news12110309.jpg

HOOP DREAMS: Designer Frank Gehry's concept for a downtown Brooklyn arena includes a roof garden that could be frozen over in winter to create an ice-skating rink.

Good article:

Group unveils plan for arena and housing

By Glenn Thrush
December 11, 2003

If only Nets home games were as well-attended, star-studded or boisterous as Brooklyn's bid to woo the team from the swamps of New Jersey to the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues.

At an event that was part planning session and part pep rally, developers yesterday unveiled a $2.5-billion proposal to build an arena and housing complex above the Atlantic Avenue rail hub in Fort Greene.

Superstar architect Frank Gehry joined Brooklyn-bred rapper Jay-Z, who is part of the project's investment group, ex-Knick and Net Bernard King and Mayor Michael Bloomberg to sell the Nets on relocating to Brooklyn.

"I'm in love with the whole thing," said Jay-Z, who wouldn't disclose how much he'll invest. "Let's get the Nets."

So far, Ratner has outbid a New Jersey-based partnership that includes developer Charles Kushner and Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.).

Gehry's preliminary plans for a 19,000-seat arena would not require public financing, city officials said. Instead, the project would be funded by Ratner, his investors and tax revenue from 4,500 residential units and more than 2 million square feet of commercial and retail space.

[New Jack City]

NY1

Brooklyn Residents Say Proposed Sports Arena Threatens Their Homes

http://www.ny1.com/Content/images/live/56/110177.jpg

JANUARY 14TH, 2004

Brooklyn residents living near a proposed sports arena say their homes are being threatened.

Developer Bruce Ratner's proposal for a 20,000-seat arena over the MTA rail yards near Flatbush and Atlantic avenues drew resistance Wednesday from a group of protestors opposed to the plan. Protesters accuse Ratner of trying to take over private homes and businesses to complete his plan.

“Mr. Ratner is expecting the state to condemn as blighted and seize private property – the homes, the businesses - of more than three blocks of Prospect Heights in order to convey this land over to one private developer,” said Brooklyn resident Patty Hagen.

Former New York Yankee pitcher Jim Bouton says the same thing happened in his Massachusetts hometown when a new arena was built. He says residents will not reap any lasting benefits from the venue.

“The jobs that are attracted by sports arenas are very low-level jobs like popcorn salesman, Zamboni driver or ticket taker,” said Bouton. “The real money made at the stadium or the arena is made by the players and developers, and they take their money with them when the season is over.”

Top city and state officials have supported a plan to lure the New Jersey Nets to play at the proposed $2.5 billion arena in Brooklyn. A decision on the team's future is expected later this month.

[New Jack City]

DAILY NEWS

Say Nets deal near
But builder's rivals set for fight to death

By OHM YOUNGMISUK and LEO STANDORA

A city real estate developer is "extremely close" to buying the New Jersey Nets, sources said last night - but his dream of bringing the team to Brooklyn is still far from a slam dunk.

Builder Bruce Ratner is expected to soon ink a deal in which he would shell out about $300 million for the basketball franchise, sources familiar with the negotiations said.

"No papers have been signed yet, but it should be very soon, possibly within a few days," said a source close to Ratner. "The money is about right, but they're extremely close to a deal."

Another source said Ratner already has told government officials he's getting the team.

Both Ratner and Nets owner Lewis Katz declined to talk about the negotiations.

"If somebody is going to make a comment, it is not going to be me," said Katz, who has been seen with Ratner more and more in recent days.

Ratner upped his offer for the Nets from $275 million to $300 million last month after rap impresario Jay-Z joined forces with him. Two other groups are vying for the team, including one led by Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.), who wants to keep the team in Jersey.

If the Ratner deal comes off, Brooklyn will have its first big league sports team since the Dodgers left in 1957. The Brooklyn Nets could be a reality by the 2006-07 season.

But Ratner's interest in the team is directly hinged to building an arena in downtown Brooklyn - a project that faces a number of hurdles:

Ratner can't write a check until 21 of the 28 other NBA owners approve the sale and the move from the Meadowlands to Brooklyn. There have been rumblings that the Knicks may lobby hard against the plan.

The city also would have to give Ratner the okay to build the proposed 20,000-seat arena. The Frank Gehry-designed stadium is part of a controversial $2.5 billion development that also includes Manhattan-sized office and residential towers.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority must grant Ratner air rights to build the arena over the Long Island Rail Road yard at Flatbush and Atlantic Aves.
If everything comes together, Ratner has said, construction on the stadium would begin next year.

Last month, Mayor Bloomberg hailed the plans as a way to revitalize Brooklyn, saying, "This is the place for a professional basketball team."

But critics contend the arena complex would overwhelm the low-rise communities of Fort Greene and Prospect Heights.

And while Ratner has estimated 100 people would be displaced under his plan, foes put the number at 1,000, and say more than 400 small-business jobs would be lost.

"Ratner doesn't give a damn about the neighborhood," said Patti Hagan of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition. "He's never walked around this community to find out who would be affected."

[bagel]

Nets Are Sold for $300 Million, and Dream Grows in Brooklyn
By RICHARD SANDOMIR and CHARLES V. BAGLI

Bruce C. Ratner, the developer who wants to move the New Jersey Nets to downtown Brooklyn, reached an agreement yesterday to buy the team for $300 million, defeating a similar offer by Charles Kushner and Senator Jon S. Corzine, the team said.

There is no guarantee that Mr. Ratner will be able to fulfill his vision in Brooklyn, where sports fans are still haunted by memories of the Dodgers' departure to Los Angeles after the 1957 season. The arena would be built on the same site the Dodgers were rebuffed from buying.

Mr. Ratner faces numerous obstacles, including having land condemned and having railroad tracks moved, before he can move the Nets to Brooklyn when the team's lease at Continental Arena expires in 2008.

But the first step in building a new arena for the Nets is complete: the purchase of the team. Without the team, Mr. Ratner has said, the $2.5 billion commercial and residential complex designed by Frank Gehry, with the Nets' arena as the centerpiece, would be dead.

Edwin Stier, president of the Nets' ownership group, Community Youth Organization, said: "We're in the final stages of negotiating an agreement with Bruce Ratner. The contract terms have been finalized and we're putting the paperwork together."

For most of the past week, Mr. Ratner and Mr. Kushner were able to examine long-withheld and detailed financial records about the team, allowing them to form substantial, final bids.

On Monday, Mr. Ratner formalized his month-old $300 million bid and negotiators began to clarify the elements of his offer, including the long-term salary obligations he would assume.

On Tuesday, Mr. Kushner presented two offers: one, of $267.5 million in cash, and a second, consisting of $200 million upfront and $100 million over several years, one official involved in the negotiations said. But that was considered inadequate, and the decision was made to complete the deal with Mr. Ratner.

Despite Mr. Kushner's willingness yesterday to raise his offer to $300 million upfront, the Nets and their negotiators decided that they had finished their contract with Mr. Ratner and chose not to consider Mr. Kushner's final bid.

"He just wasn't there," one executive who has been briefed throughout the talks said of Mr. Kushner. "Ratner wanted this thing so bad, he did what it took to get it."

Bob Sommer, a spokesman for Mr. Kushner, a Florham Park, N.J., real estate developer, said, "Charlie Kushner bid $300 million in cash today to keep this team in New Jersey and is disappointed in the result."

The C.Y.O. board agreed to the deal's terms, and the contract now goes for approval tomorrow to YankeeNets, the holding company for the Nets and the Yankees, which is on the verge of being dissolved. Approval is also needed from three-quarters of the teams in the National Basketball Association to buy the franchise and a simple majority to move it.

A move to Brooklyn would mean another move for the peripatetic franchise. It began life as the New Jersey Americans of the American Basketball Association in Teaneck, N.J., then played in Commack, N.Y.; West Hempstead, N.Y.; Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y.; Piscataway, N.J.; and finally found permanence in 1981 when it became a tenant of what is now Continental Arena.

The Nets have often struggled on the court but won the Eastern Conference championship the past two seasons. Still, the Nets are next to last in average attendance among the N.B.A.'s 29 teams this season.

The team's value has exploded since Roy Boe paid $1.1 million for the A.B.A. franchise in 1969. At $300 million, the price is double what Community Youth Organization, led by Raymond Chambers and Lewis Katz, paid for it in 1998, a year before they merged it with the Yankees into YankeeNets. But it ranks behind the record $360 million paid in 2002 for the Boston Celtics.

The sale to Mr. Ratner, whose company is also the development partner of The New York Times Company in a new building for the newspaper's headquarters, culminates a six-month process.

First there were three bidders: Mr. Ratner, who started at $275 million; the Kushner group, which includes Mr. Corzine, the United States senator from New Jersey, and which opened at $250 million; and Charles B. Wang, the co-owner of the Islanders, at $265 million. They were later joined by Stuart Feldman, a venture capitalist who never publicly discussed his $257.5 million offer or his intentions for the team. Mr. Wang dropped out in frustration with the process, and Mr. Feldman was never a serious competitor.

The effort to sell the Nets has been marked by recriminations between owners of the Yankees and the Nets, as well as among Nets owners themselves.

"It took so long because the personality clashes at YankeeNets created an untenable situation," said Joseph Ravitch, a managing director of Goldman Sachs, one of the team's investment bankers. "The agreement reached in December to separate C.Y.O. from Yankee Holdings was a critical step in expediting the sale of the team."

Community Youth Organization bought the Nets with the idea of moving them to Newark to help revive its economy. Mr. Katz and Mr. Chambers pledged to pour the profits into a newly formed charity. But the team lost tens of millions of dollars and failed to complete a deal for an arena in Newark, leading to a split between Mr. Chambers and Mr. Katz and ultimately the decision to sell.

Earlier this week, George Zoffinger, president of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, which owns Continental Arena, criticized Mr. Katz and Alan Landis, another Nets owner, and vowed to block Mr. Ratner from taking the Nets name to Brooklyn.

"We think a lot of N.B.A. owners are going to want to be in this market," he said. "I suggest Ratner name the team after himself: the Brooklyn Rats. Katz and Landis will fit right in."

In the final stages of their partnership, Nets owners refused to provide bidders with access to financial information necessary to assess the team's value until they were assured last month that YankeeNets would adopt a plan to dissolve, an official involved in the negotiation said.

The Ratner group, whose partners include the hip-hop entrepreneur Jay-Z and Vincent Viola, chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange, has been trying to create a proposal that would encounter little resistance from government officials and community opponents. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has been an enthusiastic supporter of the project, but the administration of Gov. George E. Pataki has been been relatively quiet.

A top state official said the governor did not want to be accused of poaching on New Jersey assets and was concerned about the growing list of teams seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in state subsidies for new arenas and stadiums, including the Jets, the Yankees, the Mets, the Knicks and the Rangers.

The project has been embraced by many Brooklyn politicians as the antidote to the loss of the Dodgers and as the crystallization of the borough's economic comeback.

But Patti Hagan, a leader of the Prospect Park Heights Coalition, said the project would eliminate 237 jobs and homes for 864 people.

"This is an example of developer imperialism," she said. "The emperor has decided to take over 10 acres of private property and abolish all the jobs and homes that exist here. Mr. Ratner should know he has a fight on his hands."

In addition to community opposition, Mr. Ratner faces extensive attendance and revenue losses while the team stays in New Jersey before the move to Brooklyn.

Dean Bonham, a sports industry analyst, said: "There is no magic solution to keeping fans in the Meadowlands when you're potentially heading for Brooklyn. But I would deliver the message that a new era for basketball is dawning in New York, he's building a state-of-the-art facility and if you want to be part of something new and fun, come participate with us."

[3tmk]

everything is coming to NYC, after the Jets, now the Nets!

[Héroe]

If Nets go to Brooklyn... are they going to be called Brooklyn Nets or New York Nets??

[New Jack City]

They'll be the Brooklyn Nets most likely, since the Knicks already got the New York title.

[bagel]

They'll be the Brooklyn something. NJ is fighting to keep the "Nets" name in the state in case there will ever be an expansion franchise in NJ (the way Cleveland was able to keep the NFL Cleveland Browns name even if the organization was moved to Baltimore and became the Baltimore Ravens). But I find this weird since the NJ Nets were at one time the NY Nets.

We'll see. It all depends on whether NYC is able to rezone the land that they hope to build the arena on and on whether the NBA approves the move.

[Héroe]

Originally posted by savethewtc

They'll be the Brooklyn Nets most likely, since the Knicks already got the New York title.

Yes, but there're LA Lakers and LA Clippers! hehe I'd prefer NY Nets rather than Brooklyn Nets...

[bagel]

Ask any Brooklyn resident and they'll tell you they're Brooklyn first, New Yorker second. Calling their team NY Nets will be a nod to the "imperialist" Manhattanites.

[New Jack City]

Huge floorplans and map:

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/01/22/sports/0122_spt_NETS_stadium.gif

[New Jack City]

NY1

Nets Owners Approve Sale Of New Jersey Team To Brooklyn Developer

http://www.ny1.com/Content/images/live/56/111196.jpg

JANUARY 23RD, 2004

The owners of the New Jersey Nets have formally approved the sale of the team to Brooklyn developer Bruce Ratner in what could be the first step in returning major professional sports to the borough for the first time since 1957.

The decision, made by the Nets' ownership group Friday morning, was trumpeted in an afternoon press conference attended by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Governor George Pataki, Senator Chuck Schumer and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.

"It's about time people not just here in New York but all over the world think of Brooklyn as a destination, and that's what this will do," said Pataki.

"It is also about values," said Ratner. "It's about the value of inclusion and diversity and housing for all incomes. It's the value of something as simple as affordable tickets so everyone can go to basketball games."

Ratner wants the Nets to become the centerpiece of a $2.5 billion complex in Prospect Heights. A 19,000-seat arena would sit amid thousands of apartments, hundreds of thousands of square feet of shopping space and more than two million square feet of offices.

Ratner's plan still faces major hurdles. The Nets' move would have to be approved by the NBA, and the construction of the sporting complex would require the approval of numerous government agencies.

Most of the project would sit atop a Long Island Railroad yard owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a state agency controlled by Pataki.

From the state, Ratner needs both air rights and a condemnation power to take nearby homes and businesses. The developer estimates about 150 homes would be affected, although neighbors fear the number would be higher.

The complex is already facing resistance from a number of area residents who would be forced out of their homes.

Among those who would be displaced are residents of a converted warehouse that has become home to many artists. Right now they're living on what would be center court.

“We believe it's entirely possible for him to build his arena on land he already owns,” said Prospect Heights resident Joel Towers. “He does not have to condemn our homes. He owns something called the Atlantic Center Mall on the other side of Atlantic Avenue. He himself has told us as recently as October that he's not particularly proud of that building and he could do us all a favor by condemning his own land as opposed to our land.”

Area residents were out Thursday to protest the potential construction of the new complex. They say they will take their fight to the courts if necessary.

Meanwhile on his radio show today, Mayor Bloomberg said he understands why people are concerned.

"I'm sympathetic to people who don't like something like this moving in to their neighborhood," he said. "Generally speaking, this guy Ratner is a very responsible developer. If you go back and look at his track record when he developed MetroTech, which made an enormous difference in this city, he treated people very well. People that get a lot of money to move or better apartments tend to say, 'Oh, well I didn't think it would be this bad. It's good. I'm happy to do it.'"

The Nets were founded in 1967 as the New Jersey Americans of the now-defunct American Basketball Association. They changed their name to the New York Nets when they moved to Long Island in 1968, then become the New Jersey Nets when they moved back to New Jersey to join the NBA in 1976.

The team has played in the Meadowlands Sports Complex since 1981. After a number of lean years in the 1980's and 90's, the Nets have made consecutive trips to the NBA Finals in the last two years.

Brooklyn has not fielded a major professional sports team since the Major League Baseball Dodgers left the borough for Los Angeles in 1957.

--------------------------------
NY1 also has a poll asking what the name of the team should be:

http://www.ny1.com/ny/Polls/index.html?topicintid=15&subtopicintid=141&pollactivequestionintid=1283

[New Jack City]

Huge pic:

http://www.bball.net/documents/jpg/09_urban_room.jpg

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/01/21/sports/21ARAT-xlg.jpg

By Derek2k3:

http://galleries.soaringtowers.org/albums/Derek2k3/DSCN0857.sized.jpg

http://galleries.soaringtowers.org/albums/Derek2k3/DSCN0868.sized.jpg

http://galleries.soaringtowers.org/albums/Derek2k3/Brooklyn_Nets_Stadium_1_BrooklynHoops_Frank_Gehry.sized.jpg

http://galleries.soaringtowers.org/albums/Derek2k3/DSCN0850.sized.jpg

http://galleries.soaringtowers.org/albums/Derek2k3/DSCN0840.sized.jpg

[bagel]

NETS MAY BLOW KEY BANK $HOT

By BRAD HAMILTON

NY Post

February 15, 2004 -- The Nets to Brooklyn? Not so fast.

Developer Bruce Ratner is up against a formidable foe in his bid to bring the NBA title contenders to Atlantic Avenue, said sources close to the deal:

His own bankers.

Ratner is preparing a full-court press to get JPMorgan Chase to loan him the hundreds of millions in investment capital he needs for the 10-building megaplex, which includes an arena for the team, offices, shops and apartments.

His game plan for the $450 million arena features a report now being worked up by two notable critics of sports facilities, experts Andrew Zimbalist and Richard Lipsky, whom Ratner hired to show that New York City would come out ahead if the Nets crossed the Hudson.

So far, Chase has committed just $150 million toward the $300 million purchase price of the Nets. Goldman Sachs crunched numbers on the sale but hasn't become a lender.

A bigger issue is getting bank bucks for the rest of the site.

And that's no slam-dunk, since Ratner hasn't yet inked any prospective tenants for the 3 million square feet of office space he plans to construct, sources said.

"No one wants to lend on a speculative project," said one commercial real-estate source who knows Ratner.

All the new proposed cubicles, corner offices and executive boardrooms - a vast array of office space larger than that at the Empire State Building - don't come cheap.

The offices alone at Atlantic Avenue could cost up to $1.5 billion to build, and they make up the biggest piece of Ratner's $2.5 billion development.

Meanwhile, Ratner has struggled to find occupants for other projects, including his stalled Times Square tower and an unfinished high-rise above the Brooklyn Long Island Rail Road terminal, which sits across the street from the proposed arena.

The stakes could hardly be higher - the project costs are half the total value of Forest City Ratner, his $5 billion Cleveland family business.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. Within the next three months, Ratner will get a grilling from the NBA's Board of Governors, a group that represents all 29 franchise owners and can veto any proposed sale, one source close to the Nets said. Rattner, who needs the support of 22 owners to win approval for the move - and the Knicks' Jim Dolan is firmly against it - faces tough questions about paying for the 19,000-seat arena.

The team's mounting losses will also spur concern.

Their average attendance this year, just over 14,000, puts them second to last in the league (above only Atlanta), prompting losses estimated at about $20 million a year.

[New Jack City]

NY Post

QUEENS POL TRIES TO MAKE A STEAL FOR NETS

By GERSH KUNTZMAN

February 19, 2004 -- Yes, in his back yard.

A Queens councilman showed up unannounced yesterday at a rally against a Brooklyn arena for the New Jersey Nets, and promptly offered his Long Island City district as the team's logical new home.

"We would welcome this team in Queens," said Councilman Eric Gioia, upstaging an announcement by Nets opponents that they had hired noted civil-rights lawyer Norman Siegel to fight Bruce Ratner's plans to build a $450 million arena for his newly purchased basketball team.

Ratner's plan would require the condemnation of several buildings and displace hundreds of people. Yesterday, many of those homeowners carried posters reading "Develop, Don't Destroy" and "Stop Illegal Eminent Domain."

Supporters of Ratner say opponents are simply suffering from the NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard - syndrome. But Gioia disagreed: "It's an awful burden to ask people to move out of homes and something you should only do if there's an extraordinary public need. A basketball arena is not that."

Gioia said he will ask city and state agencies to consider putting the Nets in an arena built over the Sunnyside rail yards or next to Shea Stadium in Flushing.

A spokesman for Ratner, Joe DePlasco, said, "We thank the councilman for his support, but we are confident that we have the best location possible in Brooklyn."

[Labtec]

New York Giants / New York Jets, New York Yankees / New York Mets, New York Knicks / New York Nets(?)

[bagel]

Originally posted by Labtec

New York Giants / New York Jets, New York Yankees / New York Mets, New York Knicks / New York Nets(?)

They call themselves the NY Giants, but they're in NJ. Same with the Jets but maybe they'll really be the New York Jets in a few years.

Mets, Yankees, yes.... Islanders and Rangers too.

The New York Knicks.... but should the Nets move to Brooklyn they should be the Brooklyn Nets. No other way to call them. If they're in Queens, they should be the NY Nets. But if they're in Brooklyn, Brooklyn's got to represent.

[New Jack City]

NY1

Opponents Of Nets Arena In Brooklyn Plan Alternative

http://www.ny1.com/Content/images/live/58/115954.JPG

MARCH 08TH, 2004

After months of protesting, opponents of a new arena for the Nets in Brooklyn that would displace hundreds of residents have adopted a new tactic, drawing up development plans of their own.

“We are not against development,” City Councilwoman Letitia James said at a rally on the steps of City Hall Sunday. “But we are for development that makes sense – development on a human scale.”

James announced she will hold a planning workshop later this month to gather community input.

In addition to the arena, developer Bruce Ratner's plan calls for four office towers and 13 residential complexes. It hasn't proved popular with local residents. One of the main objections is that it's been a closed process, without any public hearings or any meaningful input from Brooklyn residents.

“The scheme, the plot for this whole arena plus buildings has been developed in a way to shut people out,” said Congressman Major Owens. “It comes from the top.”

“We should and must demand that we be part of the process of the process of determining what will be there,” said state Senator Valmanette Montgomery. “We want a public process from top to bottom.”

Many residents say the complex simply isn't needed, and they object to being kicked out of their homes by the government to make way for a private development.

“I think the simple point is the use of eminent domain for something like this is just not right,” said Ross Bonadonna, who faces eviction. “It's not democratic, and it's not about people.”

Details of the alternative development haven't yet been decided, but the plan would not seize private property and likely won't include an arena. However, Representative Owens said an arena could go elsewhere.

“The Brooklyn Navy Yard is the ideal place for an arena,” Owens said. “Fine, bring the Nets to Brooklyn. Put them in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. We own that.”

Whatever the alternative plan looks like, proponents say it will be reached by community consensus.

“People want to be at the table,” James said. “You cannot go forward. Democracy does not call for the development of a community without input from the community.”

- Bobby Cuza

[New Jack City]

Newsday

Ratner may spare building to save plan

By Glenn Thrush
Staff Writer

April 11, 2004, 9:05 PM EDT

There's something in the way he moves...

Nets owner Bruce Ratner is thinking about using giant rollers to move one or more occupied residential buildings that would otherwise be destroyed if he builds the team's new arena on Atlantic Avenue.

Ratner's development company grabbed headlines in 1998 by rolling the Empire Theater 168 feet on 42nd Street in Manhattan. He may repeat the trick to accommodate his controversial 19,000-seat Brooklyn Nets arena in Prospect Heights, sources close to the developer told Newsday.

In the fall, Ratner dispatched engineers to the Seagoing Lofts condominium building at 24 Sixth Ave. to test the feasibility of relocating it to a site across the street, said an official familiar with the Nets project.

"Nothing they saw led them to believe it couldn't be done," the official said on condition of anonymity. "You might be able to literally save the building by rolling it 20 feet across the street. ... What you don't want to do is condemn buildings and displace people if you don't have to."

Under the plan, Ratner could move the 21-unit building, a spiffed-up red brick former Spalding sporting goods factory whose apartments fetch $500,000 or more, to a lot currently occupied by a warehouse.

"Seagoing" refers to the name of a fish company that was the building's last commercial occupant.

"I don't like the idea, and I personally don't care if it's feasible," loft owner Kieran O'Leary, 42, said yesterday. "I don't want to live next to an arena, anyway."

Marc Wancer, 36, peered at the rain-streaked stretch of Sixth Ave. that his loft would have to roll across and chuckled in disbelief.

"Ratner really must be a high roller," he said.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who backs the Nets' move from New Jersey, urged residents to keep an open mind.

"From day one, my sense is that it's possible; if a building could be moved, then I would applaud that," he said. "Bruce and I have both spoken about it over the course of many months. It's among a smorgasbord of possibilities."

While an ambitious idea, it pales to the relocation of the landmarked, 3,400-ton Empire, which cost Forest City Ratner about $1.2 million.

Last month, Newsday reported that Ratner and architect Frank Gehry were considering revising the arena project to spare an unspecified number of occupied buildings that would otherwise have to be razed.

The total number of buildings that would have to be moved for the arena, residential towers and new commercial buildings is unclear.

Attorney Norman Siegel, who represents a coalition fighting the project, has said 162 dwellings with 334 residents could be displaced. The project, backed by the Bloomberg administration, could also displace 33 businesses employing 235 people, according to Siegel.

[New Jack City]

Newsday

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.

[thefactor2004]

Good to see that this is one of Gehry's less hideous works :)

[New Jack City]

NY Times

Deal Is Signed for Nets Arena in Brooklyn

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/03/04/nyregion/arena.span.jpg
A rendering of the arena in Brooklyn. The city and state would each provide $100 million to help the project.

By CHARLES V. BAGLI
Published: March 4, 2005

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.

[Ellatur]

good news!

[The Mad Hatter!!]

nice stuff,i'm so jealous of new york

[Vlad the Great]

Great news.

When will construction begin?

[TalB]

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."

[TalB]

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.

[TalB]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/nyregion/05brooklyn.html
Instant Skyline Added to Brooklyn Arena Plan

By DIANE CARDWELL
Published: July 5, 2005

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/07/04/nyregion/booklyn.slide2.jpg
With 17 buildings, many of them soaring roughly 40 to 50 stories, the project would forever transform Brooklyn and its often-intimate landscape, creating a dense urban skyline.

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]

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.

[TalB]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/327890p-280264c.html
Ratner rival ripped over W. Side project

BY TANYANYIKA SAMUELS and DAVE GOLDINER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Neighborhood activists rallied last night against an upper West Side skyscraper plan from Extell Development - the company that won praise for countering Bruce Ratner's Nets arena mega-project in Brooklyn.

Dozens of people held signs and chanted opposition to the 31- and 36-story towers that Extell wants to build at Broadway between W. 99th and W. 100th Sts.

"We believe in development, but there needs to be responsible development," said community activist Miki Fiegel.

Clutching a sign reading "Expel Extell," Annie Barry said she is dreading the estimated two years of noisy construction, plus the flood of wealthy new residents who will follow.

"We want to preserve our neighborhood," said Barry, who lives next-door to one of the planned towers. "It's a nice middle-class neighborhood and we want to keep it that way."

Extell, owned by real-estate mogul Gary Barnett, does not need city or community board approval for the towers, in part because it has bought air rights from a neighboring church.

An Extell spokesman said it would "continue to consult with the community" about the project.

"These buildings will bring additional families into one of Manhattan's premier neighborhoods," said the spokesman.

The demonstrations mark a dramatic turn in fortunes for Extell, which has been hailed by activists in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, for putting forward a lower-rise alternative to the Nets stadium plan.

Ratner's massive $8 billion arena project also calls for buildings to rise 60 stories above and around an MTA railyard. Extell hopes to build a much smaller project with several apartment buildings between four and 28 stories tall.

Originally published on July 14, 2005

[sfenn1117]

Love that karma, look what happened at the Manhattan site today.

[TalB]

Despite that incident in Manhattan Valley, the people of Prospect Hts still support him.

[TalB]

http://www.nyobserver.com/pageone_newsstory2.asp
Ratner Is Gaining as the Nets Owner Nuzzles Advocates

By Matthew Schuerman

On a January day last year, about 30 activists walked into a windowless boardroom, high over downtown Brooklyn, belonging to Forest City Ratner Companies.

“Is Bertha going to start something?” one of the Forest City executives asked the group. The activists—members and employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now—were more used to knocking on tenement doors in East New York than being put such a question about their executive director across an oaken conference table.

Bertha—Bertha Lewis, ACORN’s colorfully dressed leader—did start something that January day: a mutually beneficial relationship with one of the city’s largest real-estate developers which has become so close that she recently kissed Forest City chief Bruce Ratner on the lips. In public. And Mayor Michael Bloomberg for good measure.

Bertha and Bruce represent the new synergy powering some of New York’s grandest development schemes: the picketer and the developer, happy together. And if the scene seems less incongruous than Jane Jacobs taking out a parks contract to plant the median of Robert Moses’ proposed Westway, that’s simply because the economics—and politics—of development in New York City have changed irrevocably since then.

Bertha Lewis is politely described—when she is described politely—as “a forceful advocate for her causes.” A former Off Broadway producer, the 54-year-old Ms. Lewis retains a flair for the dramatic, and the kisses are just the latest performance.

Her last run-in with Forest City was in 2000, a few years after the developer opened up a mall just a mile away. Ms. Lewis picketed the mall for several days, until the developer agreed to pressure the retail tenants to hire through a hiring hall that ACORN had set up for its members.

Ms. Lewis brings such moral authority to Mr. Ratner’s plan to build 7.5 million square feet of apartments and offices, along with an arena for the Nets basketball team, that it will be hard for city and state officials to do anything to block it.

The M.T.A., which owns the land on which much of the project will be built, may vote on selling the land as early as next week.

In return, Ms. Lewis gets a chance to enact the type of mixed-income housing scheme she has been trying to turn the city on to for several years, and she will probably get a substantial marketing contract for her organization as well. Along the way, however, she has attacked her adversaries with such disdain—accusing them of being (gasp!) gentrifiers and white liberals—that some of her old comrades in the community-organizing world wonder whether she has gone too far.

Forest City wanted to include affordable housing in its Atlantic Yards project, but its proposal—setting aside one-fifth of the units for low-income families—struck ACORN as doing nothing for the wide swath of working people who were getting priced out of Brooklyn. When Ms. Lewis entered MetroTech that January day, she was fresh off a mildly successful campaign to convince the city to change the way it subsidizes mixed-income housing. In 2002, the city’s Housing Development Corporation began offering extra-special financing—1 percent loans—for developers who were willing to set aside 20 percent of their units for low-income tenants and another 30 percent for a rather generous version of the middle class: those with incomes of up to $109,000 for a family of four.

But ACORN believed that those guidelines resulted in “bunching”: The entire middle-income quota tended to come in just under the maximum, so that in one building one could find the very poor, the affluent and the well-off who were renting at market rates, but no one much in between.

Ms. Lewis wanted to change all that. Her plan—hatched with her housing expert, Ismene Speliotis—was to divide up the non-market portion of these complexes into five sections, each with a different income slice, from about $18,400 to $94,200. Rent would initially be set at 30 percent of the household’s income, and would then increase along with other rent-stabilized apartments in the city.

ACORN was only able to persuade the city to set aside $25 million for a tiered-income housing pilot project, so Atlantic Yards represented a chance to convince a private developer to do what the city wouldn’t. (Forest City will ask for city Housing Development Corporation bonds, however.) By the time Ms. Lewis had finished her presentation in the 11th-floor boardroom, Mr. Ratner was sitting in the back, grinning, but with his fingers crossed. “He was saying, ‘I hope you know what you’re talking about. I don’t want you pulling my chain here,’” said Debbie Tiamfook, an ACORN member who attended the meeting.

But ACORN succeeded, then and in subsequent meetings, in convincing Forest City—which is one of ACORN’s top donors, giving about $20,000 a year for its fund-raiser, according to Ms. Lewis—that it could both make a profit and set a model for public policy. The development company had done enough work in Brooklyn to know the value of an important local ally, and so it gave ACORN pretty much everything it asked for. “Usually we don’t give up our final position when we start negotiating, but this time we threw all of that out the window,” Ms. Lewis recalled. “There was never this sense of an opening gambit, and they never played around with us either.” This May, as part of the housing agreement that occasioned the kisses, ACORN formally agreed to appear at events promoting the project—although, in reality, Ms. Lewis has already been doing that for a year. The fight she encountered was unlike any other she had fought in her life: Her enemies turned out to be not crass developers or greedy bankers or stubborn city officials, but the most grassy of the grassroots: neighbors and churches and a local City Councilwoman who objected to Forest City’s proposed swath of towers, so large and shiny that it would rise up out of the plain of Brooklyn three-flats like the City of Oz.

Ms. Lewis likes to characterize these opponents, as she did last month on WNYC radio’s Brian Lehrer Show, as “brownstone folk,” as opposed to the “black and brown people” in the public-housing developments about half a mile away whose cause she champions. She dismisses the black ministers who are opposing the project, or reserving judgment on it, as a mere handful of individuals out to get a piece of the action. (She also neglects to mention the congregations they represent.) The Brooklyn Eagle quoted her as saying: “Whenever you have a small group of white liberals running and screaming about something, people think it’s important.” When asked whether it’s a conflict of interest if her organization gets paid to market the units, Ms. Lewis told The Observer, “Then again, I guess you could ask the same thing of the folks who oppose it. Isn’t it a conflict of interest for people who have been part of the wave of gentrification to oppose something, wanting to protect that asset?”

Forest City, by the way, does want to hire ACORN as its marketing agent, according to James P. Stuckey, a Forest City executive vice president and the Atlantic Yards project manager. “I think ACORN has proved to be a very, very strong advocate for affordable housing in Brooklyn,” Mr. Stuckey said.
Ms. Lewis seems to reserve her strongest feelings for the local City Council member, Letitia James, characterizing her to Brian Lehrer as an elected official who “doesn’t choose to represent all of the people in her district.” Ms. James, like Ms. Lewis, is black; she is also a member of the Working Families Party, which was founded by Ms. Lewis and a number of labor unions in 1998 to bring the Democratic Party more to the left. Usually, the Working Families Party is content to endorse the Democratic or, occasionally, the Green Party candidate, but Ms. James actually won her race by running solely on its line. The Atlantic Yards project has split the members of Working Families down the middle—but strangely enough, it didn’t poison the party’s endorsement for the 35th District Council seat, which Ms. James won this spring. What ACORN does with its endorsement is another matter.

“This is really not a debate between ACORN and myself,” Ms. James said. “This is really about development and how development should go forward in the city of New York, and whether we in the city and the state of New York should be subsidizing a basketball arena and 17 buildings.” Ms. James is all in favor of affordable housing, but she says she wants the towers to be lower, and she also wants to devote the land that would be used for the arena to build more affordable housing. She helped draft a plan with some neighborhood architects outlining such a project, and many of its aspects were adopted by a rival development company, Extell Corporation, which submitted the only other bid to the M.T.A. (besides Forest City’s) for the Atlantic Yards.

Extell wouldn’t need the government to seize property under eminent domain—another major grievance in the Forest City plan—but it is asking for at least some of the $200 million that the city and state have offered Forest City to cover the rail yard, purchase property and do other improvements. (A study by the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development estimates that the true cost of Forest City’s plan—including tax credits that the city and state offered under an exclusive agreement signed in March—might exceed $1 billion.)

Extell is still vague about affordable housing—the company only learned that the M.T.A. had put the land up for sale a few weeks ago—but it has said that it would put aside 30 percent of its units at non-market rates. How that compares to Forest City’s plan is a matter of some debate. The housing agreement, signed by Ms. Lewis and Mr. Ratner in May, stipulates that 2,250 units will be non-market units. (The top price, at $1,440 a month for a studio, however, is about market rate for the area.) But it’s less clear about the condominiums and additional rentals that Mr. Ratner is suggesting he will build instead of office space, for which there is less of a demand. If Ms. Lewis fails to win any more units through subsequent negotiations—a possible but unlikely scenario—Forest City would end up devoting just 31 percent of its rentals to non-market rates.

Forest City seems flexible on the height of its towers, but it won’t start discussing lowering them until the governmental review begins. “We are completely prepared to address the density issue and the density question, which we know they will raise with us as part of the approval process,” said Mr. Stuckey, the Forest City executive vice president. “Although we have a lot of reasons to believe that what we have proposed makes perfect sense, obviously we know that there is a process, and we haven’t begun that process yet.”

Ms. Lewis, on the other hand, long ago sacrificed the scale of the neighborhood. If this debate, at heart, is about the “community”—the “brownstone people” versus the “brown and black people”—then Ms. Lewis’ position is all the more curious, considering that the housing plan she had fought for will set aside 225 units for families making as much as $94,200 a year—a tacit acknowledgment that the upper-middle class needs help also. “I think the density issue actually helps to address the jobs problem, the housing problem and the amenities problem,” Ms. Lewis said. “I don’t think any other plan does it. We have no problem with the density, because it is so far outweighed by other benefits.”

The opposition is trying its best to pick apart the housing agreement, as well as the so-called community-benefits agreement that Mr. Ratner signed last month with eight community groups, including ACORN. Again, do eight groups represent the entire community? The most visible opposition group, Develop-Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, lists 48 groups as either being against or having serious reservations about the Atlantic Yards project on its Web site. The community-benefits agreement—which includes goals for Forest City to meet in terms of minority hiring, job training and leasing to minority-owned stores—is too easy to get out of, according to one critic, the Reverend Clinton Miller of the Brown Memorial Baptist Church.

But the very diversity of the project’s opposition—advocates for low-income residents joining property owners concerned about a changing neighborhood—is also problematic. On the one hand, how can critics complain that only 20 to 30 percent of Forest City’s units will be truly low-income, when Extell’s lower towers wouldn’t accommodate any more? Few people with experience in grassroots work think that ACORN could have won any more concessions. “They did better than I thought they would, and they didn’t beat anybody up to do it,” said Brad Lander, the director of the Pratt Institute Center and former head of the Fifth Avenue Committee. But he remains ambivalent about the project, waiting to hear more details on traffic and the subsidies. “I just don’t feel ready to pick between Ratner and Extell,” Mr. Lander said. “I have a lot of reservations, but I also think it’s a lot of affordable housing and a meaningful number of union jobs—and I like basketball.”

Another community organizer put it this way: “One day I think, ‘Oh, it’s a pretty good arrangement,’ and the next morning I wake up and say, ‘What the fuck is going on?’”

What sort of day will it be when members of the M.T.A. board—and other public officials down the line—wake up and have to make a decision on Atlantic Yards? Whether or not they think the plan has its imperfections, they know that by rejecting it, they’ll be rejecting a massive affordable-housing package. And “affordable housing” has become as American as apple pie in New York today. Ms. Lewis knows that. It will be very hard for anyone to take away her slice.

You may reach Matthew Schuerman via email at: mschuerman@observer.com.

[NewYork-wala]

I really hope they allow Ratenr to build his stadium and residentials... I think its would be a real shame if it werent built. The revenues, long term and even short term would be immense and it would bring a lot more invesment in brooklyn along with it i bet. The new plan without the highrises seems to run counter to the trend that we are seeing in Brooklyn towards highrises. Highrises could really bring Downtown to life.
But the planning has to be done right. Brooklyn needs highrises and a lot of open pblic space. Atlantic avenue coulb be turned into a really amazing and people friendly avenue if things are done right... Right now its just an old industrial nightamre..

[ramvid01]

wasnt the voting for the approval yesterday? or am i wrong?

[TalB]

FORWARD

New York Skyline in the Balance As Real Estate Titans Square Off

By NATHANIEL POPPER
August 5, 2005

It is a battle that has involved collapsing buildings, racially-charged protests and two of New York's most powerful Jewish developers, pitted against each other for the future of New York's skyline.

At stake, say community activists, are the characters of two iconic, heavily Jewish New York neighborhoods known as bastions of middle-class liberalism.

The main battlefield is a plot of land in downtown Brooklyn that has been opened for development by New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority. The authority agreed last week to enter exclusive negotiations for the site with Bruce Ratner, a well-connected scion of Cleveland's most prominent Jewish family, who is planning to build an arena and move the professional basketball team he owns from New Jersey to Brooklyn.

Ratner is facing heat from a competing developer: Gary Barnett, a reclusive, publicity-shy Orthodox Jew. Barnett's proposal has won over some community activists who complain that Ratner's mammoth plan to remake 21 acres of Brooklyn ignores the character of the storied neighborhood, in the heart of a borough that still calls itself "America's fourth largest city."

The Brooklyn battle, however, is not the whole story. While Barnett is depicted as a concerned citizen in Brooklyn, he is the subject of protests 10 miles north on the Upper West Side, the traditional nerve center of New York's Jewish cultural elite. Opposite a synagogue on 100th Street, Barnett's company, Extell Development Corporation, is building two high-rise apartment buildings that activists say will destroy the character of the quiet, middle-class neighborhood in the shadow of Columbia University.

Adding to emotions, the project is a partnership between Extell and the Carlyle Group, an international investment firm that has close ties to President Bush, and was famously portrayed in Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" as a tool of Texas and Saudi Arabian oil interests.

"What's really interesting here is that there's a Jewish man in bed with the Saudis to build this project," said Miki Fiegel, the head of the main community group, who was interviewed at a protest at the building site last week. "The profits are going to go back to Saudi Arabia — a country that wants to push Israel back into the sea."

Similar criticisms of Barnett have been voiced at community meetings in Brooklyn by Ratner's supporters, even though Carlyle is not involved in that project. A spokesman for Barnett, Bob Liff, dismissed the criticism as "beneath the people who are raising that kind of comment."

The construction of the two Upper West Side towers was temporarily halted by the city July 14 after an existing building on the site collapsed during demolition work, injuring five passersby and garnering international headlines.

It is the proposals in Brooklyn, however, that have attracted the most attention, primarily because of their scale. At issue are the Vanderbilt Rail Yards, an 8.6-acre expanse of train tracks that the Brooklyn Dodgers once hoped to convert into a new stadium before they left for Los Angeles.

Ratner's plan would create a new arena for the New Jersey Nets basketball team, which he bought last year. His proposal extends far beyond the arena, however, to include a string of apartment and office buildings designed by the pop-architect Frank Gehry. Gehry's vision would reshape Brooklyn's downtown, currently an aging district dominated by pre-World War II architecture, with new structures rising as high as 60 stories.

The transit authority has been negotiating with Ratner for more than a year, even though the project was officially open for competing bids. A community group opposed to Ratner — called Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn — sent letters to 100 developers asking them to submit alternative bids. Barnett was the only one to respond. Following the activists' guidelines, he submitted a plan that would cover only 8.5 acres and have buildings rising to 28 stories.

The transit authority was not impressed. On July 27, it entered exclusive negotiations with Ratner for 45 days to hammer out a deal. Ratner has offered $50 million for the site, far less than Barnett's $150 million. The authority hoped to push Ratner higher. Barnett's spokesman said his bid remains on the table.

Ratner's opponents come mostly from Prospect Heights, a gentrifying enclave just south of the rail yards. It sits at the edge of Park Slope, a sprawling neighborhood second only to the Upper West Side as a bastion of Jewish liberals.

Facing the protesters, Ratner has lined up his own cadre of community activists from mostly minority districts further east, who say his plan would do more for minorities. He has signed an agreement promising to give 35% of construction jobs to minorities. His plan also offers 2,500 middle- and low-income apartments, as compared to Barnett's 573.

At one community hearing, Ratner's supporters called the Jewish spokesman for the don't-destroy group a "trust fund baby," according to the New York Sun.

"I don't want to make this out to be a black versus white situation," said James Caldwell, president of a pro-Ratner group called Build, "but it seems like that's what it's turning out to be."

Daniel Goldstein, the spokeman for Develop Don't Destory, said the racial language is "a deliberate attempt by this developer to divide communities." Goldstein pointed to the black clergy group working with his organization, as well as to three local black politicians who have opposed Ratner.

On the Upper West Side, Barnett has made some effort to reach out to community members. At a community board meeting at a local synagogue, Barnett presented his plans for the two towers — one 31 stories and the other 37 stories — and then listened to two hours of criticism from community members.

The Upper West Side has undergone rapid change in recent years, as an influx of lawyers and bankers has driven up prices and forced out many of the middle class Jewish intellectuals and artists who long dominated the neighborhood. Community activists said Barnett's project, a mile north of other such high-rises, was one more sign of unruly development in the area.

Unlike Ratner in Brooklyn, Barnett does not have community members arguing his case on the West Side. However, he has secured the necessary legal rights and permits, making his plan all but unstoppable.

In a further irony, he won the right to exceed neighborhood height limits in part by acquiring air rights — the trading of height limits between adjacent properties — from a parcel recently sold by the cash-strapped Jewish Theological Seminary of America. The seminary had sold the parcel to a church.

In response to criticism that the towers hurt the area's character, Barnett's spokesman said: "People have a right to say their piece. It's important to note that everything has been done by the book. It will continue to be done by the book."

The collapse of the building has fueled opponents' hopes of winning changes in the zoning laws that allowed Barnett to win his building permits. The city is investigating whether criminal charges should be brought against the demolition company hired to take down the previous structure. A city spokesperson said construction will likely resume after the investigation ends.

The community activists who are backing Barnett in Brooklyn say they don't plan to join protests against him on the Upper West Side.

"Every large or medium developer in New York has problems with the communities they are trying to build in," said Goldstein, of the anti-Ratner group. "It's a much lesser of two evils here in Brooklyn."

[TalB]

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=9&aid=52868
Brooklyn Councilwoman Moves To Block Use Of Eminent Domain

August 17, 2005

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/images/live/85/169935.jpg

A Brooklyn city councilwoman is fighting to save homes in her district from the law of eminent domain.

Letitia James is backing a new bill that would curb the city's ability to use the law.

She says the city should only be able to force a person out of their home if the land will be used for a public project, such as a hospital. She says developers should not have access to city funds for such projects.

The legislation comes as developer Bruce Ratner is proposing the construction of a new Nets stadium complex over the Atlantic Rail Yards in Brooklyn in a project that would require several nearby homes to be cleared out.

The City Council press office says whether the bill is passed or not it will not impact the fate of Ratner's sprawling development, since the state would be the one condemning the nearby homes or businesses.

[TalB]

NY SUN

Private Memo Guarantees Ratner Space

BY DANIEL HEMEL August 18, 2005

City and state officials, in a memorandum they never released, promised the developer Forest City Ratner six months ago that they would arrange for the firm to obtain the rights to build almost 1.9 million square feet of residential and commercial space in downtown Brooklyn, even if the Metropolitan Transportation Authority rejected the firm's bid for the development rights at a nearby rail yard.

The disclosure of the February 18 memorandum comes three weeks after the MTA board told Forest City Ratner the firm's $50 million cash bid was insufficient. The firm's president, Bruce Ratner, is also the principal owner of the New Jersey Nets, and he is seeking to build an arena at the rail yard to house his professional basketball team.

A rival firm, Extell Development Company, offered the MTA $150 million for the development rights at the rail yard, but the transportation authority's board, which is dominated by members appointed by Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg, voted July 27 to negotiate exclusively with Forest City Ratner.

Council Member Letitia James, who has led the opposition to the Ratner project and whose district includes the rail yard, said the memorandum speaks volumes about the cozy relationship that Mr. Ratner maintains with city and state officials.

"It says that he is a favored developer, and it says to me that he's going to continue to have a monopoly on downtown Brooklyn and in my district without giving any other developer the opportunity to bid," she said.

In early March, Messrs. Bloomberg and Pataki announced a separate memorandum, also signed on February 18, endorsing Mr. Ratner's plans to build a 7.8 million-square-foot commercial and residential complex in downtown Brooklyn. The high-rise development would encompass the 8.4-acre MTA-owned rail yard, as well as nearly 13 additional acres in the adjacent Prospect Heights neighborhood. Mr. Ratner's firm has purchased most of the Prospect Heights property, but a handful of homes and small businesses face seizure by city and state officials through eminent domain to make room for the developer's ambitions.

Although Messrs. Bloomberg and Pataki announced one of the two February 18 memorandums with considerable fanfare, they did not mention the other, which was signed by Mr. Ratner and by the deputy mayor for economic development, Daniel Doctoroff; the Pataki administration's chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, Charles Gargano, and the Bloomberg administration's president of the Economic Development Corporation, Andrew Alper.

In it, the officials agreed to facilitate Mr. Ratner's development aspirations at a pair of nearby properties along Atlantic and Flatbush avenues: a Ratner owned mall located north of the rail yard, Atlantic Center, and a commercial block on Flatbush Avenue, which is referred to as Site 5 in the memo. That site is currently occupied by a sporting goods retailer, Modell's, and an electronics store, P.C. Richard & Son.

The development called for in that memorandum increases by 25% the square footage that Mr. Ratner - whose previously publicized project has been attacked in some quarters as too big - would construct in the area.

A Ratner spokesman, Joseph DePlasco, said yesterday, "The proposed development at Site 5 should not come as a surprise to anyone." He noted that the firm's plans for the site were revealed in many public meetings, including a presentation at a May 26 hearing of the City Council. Also, a chain of local weeklies, the Brooklyn Papers, reported that a vice president of Forest City Ratner, James Stuckey, mentioned plans for Site 5 at the May 26 hearing.

Another council member from Brooklyn who opposes the Ratner project, Charles Barron, said yesterday, however, that although he attended the May 26 hearing, he was never informed about plans to build an additional 1.9 million square feet at Atlantic Center and Site 5. After The New York Sun contacted Mr. Barron to ask about his reaction to the newly surfaced memorandum, the council member said: "This is the first time I've heard of it."

Council Member James, too, said she had no recollection that plans for Atlantic Center and Site 5 were mentioned at the May hearing. As for the memorandum, a spokeswoman for the Economic Development Corporation, Janel Patterson, said that although it was never distributed publicly, it "has been available to anyone that requested it."

The anti-Ratner group Develop Don't Destroy obtained a copy of the previously unreleased memorandum and distributed it to reporters yesterday. A spokesman for the group, Daniel Goldstein, would not say how he initially secured a copy of the memo. But he said that, given the failure by city and state officials to disclose the existence of the memo before yesterday, "Why should we trust any of the information the public has seen from the developer and the public agencies?"

Forest City Ratner has said that the 21-acre Atlantic Yards project - which does not include the Atlantic Center and Site 5 developments - will create 7,500 permanent jobs as well as 2,250 units of affordable housing.

Mr. DePlasco, the Ratner spokesman, said that the firm "already owns part of what is being called Site 5 here," but that P.C. Richard, which also owns part of the site, has not yet agreed to sell its stake. He said negotiations between Forest City Ratner and P.C. Richard are continuing.

In the newly surfaced memorandum, state and city officials said they would aid Forest City Ratner's efforts to gain control over the remainder of Site 5, specifically mentioning the possibility that they will use eminent domain.

Regardless of whether Mr. Ratner's arena plan comes to fruition, the memorandum authorizes his firm to build 308,000 square feet of residential space at Site 5 and 1.3 million square feet of commercial and residential space at Atlantic Center, "subject to obtaining necessary approvals." Under the terms of the memo, Mr. Ratner's firm will build an additional 328,000 square feet of office space at the Atlantic Center site if his bid for the MTA site falls through.

The famed architect Frank Gehry, who was hired by Mr. Ratner to design the proposed high-rise hub,has sketched plans for a 60-story tower along Flatbush Avenue that would be named "Miss Brooklyn." If the MTA approves the Ratner bid, allowing the Miss Brooklyn plans to proceed, then, according to the newly surfaced memorandum, the developer will be able to transfer the additional 328,000 square feet of zoning rights from Atlantic Center to Site 5.

[New Jack City]

^PLEASE refrain from posting back to back articles...it ruins the thread and turns off people from responding. I'm going to delete them if it keeps happening.

[TalB]

Nobody makes that complaint in the Israel Economy thread in the Israel fourm. Either way, somebody has to update date with new articles even if it is the same person. I can see you made consecutive articles as well. If you want then, all articles in one day will be in one post with a line dividing them. Getting back to topic, I hope that the Extell Plan wins the overall bid. I actually met councilwoman Letitia James not too long ago at Brooklyn's borough hall, and I agree with what she had to say. Even Robert Moses knew what eminent domain was for despite his actions. This idea by Bruce Ratner takes the next step the West Side Stadium uses by tearing down almost an entire neighborhood to put up an expensive complex. I will not use any of my tax dollars to kick people out of their homes without getting a say on it nor do I want the Nets to leave NJ. The group Develope Don't Destroy represents the people who do not want to be displaced just b/c of this idea. Those who support are those who will not loose their homes/offices in this developement. Also, Ratner gives nearly no alternatives to where else he can place the arena even though the Jets did think about Flushing Meadows. In the end, I hope it fails like the Jets statdium did, though I didn't oppose it personally, I just didn't want to pay for it.

[New Jack City]

Nobody makes that complaint in the Israel Economy thread in the Israel fourm. Either way, somebody has to update date with new articles even if it is the same person. I can see you made consecutive articles as well. If you want then, all articles in one day will be in one post with a line dividing them. Getting back to topic, I hope that the Extell Plan wins the overall bid. I actually met councilwoman Letitia James not too long ago at Brooklyn's borough hall, and I agree with what she had to say. Even Robert Moses knew what eminent domain was for despite his actions. This idea by Bruce Ratner takes the next step the West Side Stadium uses by tearing down almost an entire neighborhood to put up an expensive complex. I will not use any of my tax dollars to kick people out of their homes without getting a say on it nor do I want the Nets to leave NJ. The group Develope Don't Destroy represents the people who do not want to be displaced just b/c of this idea. Those who support are those who will not loose their homes/offices in this developement. Also, Ratner gives nearly no alternatives to where else he can place the arena even though the Jets did think about Flushing Meadows. In the end, I hope it fails like the Jets statdium did, though I didn't oppose it personally, I just didn't want to pay for it.

I don't mod the Israeli forums, so it's really not my place to say what goes there. I agree someone has to update with articles, important articles, not articles people don't care about or minor stuff.

Before I post an article, I actually read it, as you can see, I highlight key points in bold. I have serious doubts you post what you read and we're not here to boost post counts, if that's your intention. I'd rather have articles posted all in one, if you have such a need to post the articles. However, it still won't eliminate the fact that no one will reply to these minor articles and will just clutter the thread.

I don't get your opposition to the plan either. Don't you like development and skyscrapers? These people so called "kicked out of their homes" have been offered new space, in a newer homes. It's just the common nimby and opposition to any big plan that is proposed in the city.

[ramvid01]

i personally hope this goes through. It would be great if this development would get off the ground for the city so the economy can grow. I dont know why people would oppose it, its not like the pple who are getting kicked out arent getting compensated, but whatever i just hope they can work this thing out.

[TalB]

I don't get your opposition to the plan either. Don't you like development and skyscrapers? These people so called "kicked out of their homes" have been offered new space, in a newer homes. It's just the common nimby and opposition to any big plan that is proposed in the city.
I don't see why Ratner must choose Prospect Hts. This is not a neighborhood that is facing any decay. As a matter of fact, Prospect Hts comes right after Brooklyn Hts and Park Slope in being the richest areas in Brooklyn. The group that I have mentioned are those who have worked very hard to earn their homes, and feel that they shouldn't loose their homes to some developer. Even though they will get compensated, they would be forced to sell their places even they say no. After the conservative influence in the Supreme Court, it upheald a ruling that allowed for governments to use eminent domain for private businesses if there is a need for it. You should have seen the cartoon on the Daily News that showed what this will be like in which a developer gets someone's home even if it was never for sale. If you remember the Home Depot comming to the White Sands area of Brooklyn, that neighborhood was virtually destroyed by it after it bought over half of the houses and demolished them. It's not as if they are against it, it's just why them. The only reason why they like Richard Meir's 1 Prospect Pk is b/c it does not build on any of their homes and rather and a parking lot that was up for developement. This is the same reason they support the Extell plan over Forest City Ratner. On a sidenote, there is a plan to build another skyscraper that will surpass the WSB near MTC that is 41 stories, so it may not be a total loss for Brooklyn and that is actually in downtown.

[BigMac]

New York Times
September 14, 2005

M.T.A. Votes to Sell Lot to Nets for Stadium

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK (AP) -- The New Jersey Nets dribbled closer to making a new home in Brooklyn on Wednesday when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted to sell an 8.3-acre railyard to team owner and real-estate developer Bruce Ratner.

Ratner will pay $100 million for the downtown Brooklyn site where urban planner Robert Moses once turned down the Dodgers' push for a domed baseball stadium, helping prompt the team's move to California in 1957.

The vote by the nation's largest public transit system keeps the Nets on schedule to be playing by November 2008 in a Frank Gehry-designed Flatbush Avenue arena at the heart of a 21-acre office and apartment complex, which would transform the low-rise Brooklyn skyline.

Ratner doubled his original $50 million bid after a last-minute, $150 million bid in July from Manhattan-based Extell Development Co. prompted second thoughts from MTA board members.

The agency has had the railyard appraised at $214 million.

Arena opponents have called the MTA's decision-making process biased in favor of Ratner, a politically connected former city official whose plan has the support of Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who together effectively control the MTA board.

Proponents point out that along with the cash, Ratner offered the MTA tens of millions of dollars in inducements such as improvements to the aging yard for Long Island Rail Road cars.

Building trades unions and residents of the poorer neighborhoods and housing projects near the proposed arena site have been supportive of the plan. Ratner has promised to use union labor and minority contractors to build more than 2,000 low- and middle-income apartments, about a third of the units in the $3.5 billion project. The planned development includes 15 towers rising around the glass-sheathed, 18,000-seat Nets arena.

Extell wanted to build a project less than half the size.

The city and state have promised as much as $200 million in public money for the project. Ratner has said he would use all of it for his project, while Extell said it would use $150 million.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[TalB]

http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/347878p-296899c.html
74 homes in Ratner's path

Up to 74 households could be uprooted to make way for Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project, a new document filed by the developer shows.

The document, which outlines the mixed-use development and Nets basketball arena in advance of an environmental review, says 82 housing units are still occupied within the 21 acres needed.

Of the 82 units, eight are condos or co-ops whose owners have agreed to sell them to Forest City Ratner Cos., and another 32 are rental properties that the developer controls.

"Depending on [our] plan for displacement or relocation ... the number of households directly displaced by the proposed project would be between 42 and 74," the Ratner document adds.

In a public notice issued last Friday, the Empire State Development Corp. said it anticipates that condemnation proceedings will be used to acquire some properties. The notice followed the MTA board's vote to sell Ratner the air rights to the Atlantic Ave. railyards for $100 million, clearing the way for the project. Ratner's executive vice president said the MTA's 8.3 acres increased Ratner's control or ownership to more than 80% of the area it needs.

The new document also elaborates on Ratner's plans for the block at Flatbush and Atlantic Aves. occupied by Modell's and P.C. Richard & Son, even though it's not technically part of the Atlantic Yards project.

Paul D. Colford

Originally published on September 20, 2005

[TalB]

Newsday:

Brooklyn arena opponents call community group a front:

September 29, 2005, 8:57 PM EDT

NEW YORK -- One of the most vocal community supporters of a $3.5 billion Nets arena project said in a tax filing that it expected to receive $5 million from the arena developer.

Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, an anti-arena group that released the filing at a press conference Thursday, said the document proved that Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development was a front for developer Bruce Ratner.

Ratner plans to build a Frank Gehry-designed arena within a new 21-acre office and apartment complex that would transform the low-rise Brooklyn skyline. Many residents of the neighboring Fort Greene and Prospect Heights sections object to the plan.

BUILD said in an August filing with the Internal Revenue Service that it would receive $5 million from the developer's Forest City Ratner Companies. BUILD chief operating officer Marie Louis said Thursday that the group had received no money from Ratner and did not expect to receive any. Cheryl Duncan, a spokeswoman for BUILD, said the group had projected receiving the money from Ratner but no longer expected to. She said Ratner is providing office space to the group.

Louis has spoken in support of the project at public meetings, saying it would help ease poverty and unemployment in neighboring areas. A Ratner spokesman said the developer supported BUILD and other worthy local organizations but had not purchased the group's support.

"It is the right thing to do and FCRC encourages others to do the same," spokesman Joe De Plasco said.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Brooklyn Papers:

Ratner to bar public from promised park

By Jess Wisloski

Plans for a glorious, 52,000-square-foot publicly accessible recreational space on the roof of Bruce Ratner’s proposed Frank Gehry-designed basketball arena will not be open to the public, according to a document released last week by the state authority acting as lead agent for the project.

The elevated parkland, described as “1+” acres in earlier promotional material distributed by the developer’s Forest City Ratner Companies, which hopes to develop the site with the help of at least $200 million in public funds, is now going to be for private access only, according to the “Draft Scope of Analysis for an Environmental Impact” on the Atlantic Yards plan. The project would also include office skyscrapers and more than a dozen high-rise apartment buildings and relies on the use of eminent domain to seize private property for the developer.

The document was prepared by consultants hired by Forest City Ratner.

That private roof garden was the only green space locals were promised for the first 11 years of development of the 22-acre Atlantic Yards, which would stretch east across six square blocks of Prospect Heights from the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues.

Another promised “7+” acres of open space would be completed only after the rest of the project is done, estimated for 2016, according to the scoping document.

And that’s if the plan sticks to its construction schedule.

As initially envisioned in Forest City Ratner promotions, the open space would be both active (featuring such amenities as tennis courts, jungle gyms, playgrounds, blacktops) and passive (typically benches, trees, grass, landscaping).

Norman Oder, a freelance journalist who on Sept. 1 published a 168-page report criticizing the New York Times for a lack of critical reporting on the Atlantic Yards proposal, pointed out the differences between what was promoted and what the developer actually plans to build, on his Web log, www.timesratnerreport.blogspot.com.

“One of the selling points for the Atlantic Yards has been the promise of publicly accessible open space,” he wrote, citing a May 2004 promotional flier sent out by Forest City Ratner.

“But don’t hold your breath,” Oder added.

A Forest City Ratner handbook describing the plan, also released in 2004, stated: “The roof of the Arena offers an exciting opportunity to create new public space, with 52,000 square feet of new passive recreation and active public space for community residents.

“A promenade along the outside edge of the Arena will provide lushly landscaped areas for passive recreation, and outstanding views of Manhattan. For active recreation, an outdoor ice-skating rink connects the four gardens; in warmer months the rink will become a running track,” stated the publication “Bring Basketball to Brooklyn.”

As recently as May 26, a color brochure distributed to press and members of the City Council at the one official public hearing that’s been held on the plan, promised, underneath the bold heading “Open Space for All of Brooklyn,” that “7.4 acres of public open space, increased from 6 acres” would be featured, designed by noted landscape architect Laurie Olin with “both active and passive uses for children and adults.”

An adjoining map showed the rooftop garden as part of that open space. Olin is a well-regarded landscape architect who designed Bryant Park and Battery Park City.

Now, the new scoping document states, “At least 52,000 square feet (approximately 1 acre) of private recreational space would be provided on the roof of the arena. This rooftop open space would be accessible to users of the buildings constructed as part of the proposed project.”

The timeline estimates that just one of the seven promised acres of open space will be completed by the end of Phase I of the development, scheduled for 2009. Phase II is not expected to be completed until 2016, and at which point the status of the remaining open space is left unaddressed in the scoping document. Nor is the running track or ice-skating rink mentioned.

Forest City Ratner did not return repeated calls for comment.

“If the publicly accessible open space at Forest City Ratner’s Metrotech development is any cue, there will be a host of rules regarding usage of the space,” said Oder.

Last November, The Brooklyn Papers reported the plight of a local business owner trying to solicit business in another one of developer Bruce Ratner’s so-called “public spaces” — the Metrotech Center office campus in Downtown Brooklyn.

An employee of Jive Turkey, a local gourmet eatery less than a mile from the marble-edged plaza that covers what was, before Metrotech, publicly accessible Myrtle Avenue, was kicked off the property while handing out menus.

Not only was marketing to the office workers off-limits, but the employee was effectively told he was on private property.

Michael Weiss, executive director of the Metrotech Business Improvement District, said at the time, “In effect, if you’re out on the Metrotech Commons, you’re in a private building. The owners of the property have a right to say you can and cannot be there.”

Just weeks before that, Councilwoman Letitia James, in whose district the arena and housing complex would lie, was asked by security guards to move off property still called “Fort Greene Place,” between Atlantic Avenue and Hanson Place, but now owned by Forest City Ratner, when she was handing out fliers promoting a meeting to protest the project. Ratner’s Atlantic Center and Atlantic Terminal malls lie on either side of the portion of Fort Greene Place, which was ceded to Ratner by the city.

The Atlantic Yards plan would de-map three city bocks: the northernmost piece of Fifth Avenue, Pacific Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues, and Pacific Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues.

Like Metrotech, the project is planned as a campus-like series of super-blocks that may shut out would-be park uses in the neighborhood while creating the same kind of private property issues that exist downtown.

Diane Buxbaum, a Carroll Gardens resident and conservation chair of the NYC Sierra Club, said it would be a shame to lose any public green space.

“New York City has the lowest amount of green space and park space per capita of any major city, and it’s a tragedy,” said Buxbaum. “In that neighborhood, where you have a borderline poor neighborhood — that these people will not have access to that green space — it is a slap in the face to people whose means are less than average.”

[TalB]

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/55062.htm
B'KLYNITES CALL A FOUL ON PARK

By ANGELA MONTEFINISE

October 9, 2005 -- A Downtown Brooklyn neighborhood is fuming that it's been locked out of a lush rooftop park atop a proposed new arena for the Nets.

"The roof of the arena offers an exciting opportunity to create new public space, with 52,000 square feet in four lushly landscaped areas for passive recreation," gushed developer Forest City Ratner's December 2003 fact sheet on the sky-high park at the sprawling Atlantic Yards development.

The fact sheet explained the rooftop park would have an ice skating rink in the winter and a track in the summer — and described it as "a destination for community residents."

The Ratner plan for the yards — including the new arena, residential units and commercial space — will require at least $200 million in public funds.

Last week, the description of the rooftop park was decidedly more sober — and less generous.

"This rooftop open space would be accessible to users of the buildings constructed as part of the proposed project," according to a draft environmental-impact statement released by the state.

The p