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February 15, 2006
Demolition Can Proceed for Brooklyn Arena Project
Nicholas Confessore's article in The NY Times spends the column inches necessary to explain the details of the suit and the Justice's ruling.
In an unusual move for a highly charged case turning on fine points of law, Justice Carol R. Edmead of State Supreme Court in Manhattan ruled from the bench immediately after a long and at times raucous hearing in a suit brought by opponents of the $3.5 billion Atlantic Yards project.
The ruling hinged on the Justice's determination that the law did not give her the power to change the Empire State Development Corporation's determination that five Bruce Ratner-owned buildings may be demolished:
State law forbids developers to alter the site of any proposed project until it has been approved, but the law makes an exception for "emergency actions." Justice Edmead said that there was no basis for challenging the agency's determination that Forest City Ratner's buildings merited the exception, and that the agency was under no obligation to obtain an independent engineering review.
Jeff Baker, lawyer for the community groups, points out that the Justice's "conflict of interest" ruling:
...bolstered a potential future challenge to the agency's environmental review findings.
"It colors everything else," he said. If the agency's environmental impact statement is released quickly, he argued, it will be "per se tainted" by Mr. Paget's recent involvement. "If the final scope is lopsided, and says, for example, that we are not going to look at any other locations for the arena, then that process is tainted," he added.
Posted by lumi at February 15, 2006 8:53 AM