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December 9, 2006
A Nod for Atlantic Yards, and Then a Lawsuit
New York Times
NICHOLAS CONFESSORE covers the project approval by ESDC as well as Gargano's tap-dancing around condemned buildings.
The board of the state agency sponsoring the proposed Atlantic Yards project near Downtown Brooklyn voted unanimously yesterday to approve it, while also voting to authorize any building condemnations that may be required.Within hours of the vote, 13 tenants living in two buildings on the proposed project site filed suit against the agency, the Empire State Development Corporation, charging that the board had authorized the buildings’ condemnation without permission from state housing officials to erase the tenants’ rent-stabilized leases.
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The 22-acre residential and commercial project in Brooklyn, which would include a basketball arena for the Nets, still faces a final decision by the state’s Public Authorities Control Board, and any condemnations would not happen immediately if approval is given.But George S. Locker, a lawyer for the tenants, said that Forest City and the development agency’s chairman, Charles A. Gargano, who presided over yesterday’s vote, had deliberately misled the tenants about the potential for condemnation.
“His public statements about eminent domain, and Forest City Ratner’s, have in common that they were both dishonest and deceptive,” Mr. Locker said, “and they were both designed to give reassurances about the noncondemnation of tenants when in fact that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
Posted by amy at December 9, 2006 11:51 AM