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December 19, 2005
Predicting the Big Stories of 2006
The Gotham Gazette
Bruce Ratner offers his lukewarm prediction of "nothing dramatic" for the year to come, feigning lack of concern over the myriad of controversies that fill the pages of NoLandGrab.
It will be a calm year in the sense that the same economic growth, focus on improving education, housing development, and improved safety that we have enjoyed for the last three years will continue. It will be steady, positive growth -- nothing dramatic.
City Councilmember Letitia James, on the other hand, has turned her predictions into a wish list, in which Bruce Ratner and his political supporters might put themselves in the shoes of us regular folk.
My New Years wish would be that Bruce Ratner finds religion. That he wakes up on January 1, realizes he has done the wrong thing in proposing the Atlantic Yards project, and stands on the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues waving a white flag.
I pray that Marty Markowitz will realize that there are poor people in Brooklyn, and instead of diverting public revenues to build a basketball arena, he decides to build a hospital instead.
I hope that Senator Charles Schumer will recognize that his home could be taken by eminent domain if a developer wanted it.
And I would like the mayor to spend a night in a homeless shelter.
Click here for the list and scroll down for the Ratner-related items.
Looking back at last year's predictions, WNYC host Brian Lehrer was slightly off the mark when he predicted that Ratner would win final approval for the Nets arena. Lehrer gets half credit for the MTA approval of Ratner's lowball bid for the railyards, since no one predicted that the MTA and Public Authorities Control Board would be tied up exclusively with the failed West Side Stadium for the first half of the year, leaving the Ratner approval process to drag into 2006.
Posted by lumi at December 19, 2005 7:17 AM