No Land Grab

On transfer of
economic activity
from NJ to NY

By moving the Nets from New Jersey into Brooklyn, you are taking a team from this greater metropolitan New York area and relocating it across tax jurisdictions. You have the same activity happening, but you have it happening on one side of the tax line instead of the other side. And that ends up making a net transfer into New York city or state coffers.

That is assuming a lot. It's assuming that a lot of people who are currently going to Nets games in New Jersey are going to switch over and come to Brooklyn; otherwise, people are spending the same amount in the city. The money is just going to the Nets instead of, say, a movie theater. It is a best-case scenario that we make our money back.

You have basically four-fifths of the $2.5 billion investiment--$2 billion--that has nothing to do with the arena. It's commercial and residential. That was the point. The lion's share of the benefit--or maybe all of it--in my initial study, had to do not with the arena but with the other features of the investment.

If the only benefit is the housing, why is the city planning on spending between $200 and $500 million on the arena, which is the part that will require knocking down houses? Why not just do an RFP [Request For Proposals] and say to developers, "Who wants to build on the Atlantic Yards?"