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August 18, 2005
MOU, Part Deux or: How I Learned to Start Worrying...
The first MOU was rolled out to great fanfare in February. The City, State and Ratner kept the lid on MOU2. Here's what they were afraid of the public finding out:
SCALE
Frank Gehry and Bruce Ratner claimed in April, 2004 that the project would be scaled back (see Brooklyn Papers, "Ratner, Gehry looking to scale back plans").
It's now even BIGGER! The neighborhoods of Park Slope and Fort Greene get a piece of the action too.
EMINENT DOMAIN
Soon-to-be-displaced homeowners begged Ratner to build the arena over his failed Atlantic Center Mall instead of building over their homes. He roundly rejected this idea.
It turns out that he was planning to take down his failing mall all along, but he's still asking the State to take peoples homes.
CITY VS. STATE PUBLIC REVIEW PROCESS
Ratner's guys swore up and down all last year that most of the state-owned MTA railyards comprised a majority of the site, therefore the project should go through NY State's land-use review process, called SEQURA. This process is less stringent than the City review process called, ULURP.
The MTA railyards comprise WAY LESS THAN HALF it is just a scant eight acres of a project that is expanding well over the original 21-acre footprint.
STATE TAKEOVER OF PROPERTY
Originally Ratner planned for the State to take private property from residents and small-buisiness owners.
Now he wants the State to take HIS property too!
Ratner so desperately wants everything to go through the State land-use review process that MOU (Part Deux) provides for a state takeover of his own property (The Atlantic Center Mall, PC Richards and Modells).
Just a hunch, but we get the feeling that the Ratner doesn't mind a State takeover of his property as much as homeowners displaced by eminent domain do. Maybe he would kick up a storm if the State took over his property to give to ANOTHER developer. We're pretty sure that it wouldn't happen, but it would make a fitting end to a morality tale.
PRESS & MEDIA
Ratner spokesperson, Joe DePlasco was quoted by the NY Sun claiming,“The proposed development at Site 5 should not come as a surprise to anyone.”
The shrug from the Ratner camp and the fact that Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn was able to obtain the second (secret) Memorandum of Understanding means that MOU2 was there for any reporter willing to do the leg work and get to the bottom of this story.
You know that the local media is really falling asleep on a story when a motley band of hackney local residents end up doing the investigative reporting that used to be done by gumshoe reporters.
Posted by lumi at August 18, 2005 8:14 AM