« Big Brother Bruce | Main | THANK YOU, SHELLY SILVER »
December 22, 2006
A WINNING $HOT
BROOKLYN EATERY TO BE COURTSIDE
By Rich Calder
Norman Oder of Atlantic Yards Report is a catalyst for coverage again, this time for a story about cheesesteaks:
A new Brooklyn business is making a buzzer-beating bid to score big off the Nets arena that will be the centerpiece of the $4 billion Atlantic Yards project.
Sporting a storefront sign reading, "Shoot Hoops, Not Guns," the mother-son-run High Stakes Cheese Steak in Prospect Heights is set to open today on the corner of Flatbush Avenue and Dean Street - just outside the footprint of the controversial 22-acre project.
An additional item at the end of the article quotes a homeowner who talks to the media for the first time:
[Bruce Ratner] has been furiously buying up property within the footprint for the past year and a half, but there are some staunch holdouts and he will likely have to make a case for eminent domain to get the state to foreclose the remaining private property.
Jerry Campbell, 35, of Dean Street, is one of those holdouts.
His beautiful, two-family, four-story, red-brick and aluminum-siding home is in excellent shape and doesn't appear "blighted," as the area was deigned by the Empire State Development Corp.
"If this area was really blighted, why would [Ratner's company] Forest City Ratner want it?" asked Campbell. "They want it on the cheap, and condemnation is the best way."
Posted by lumi at December 22, 2006 9:06 AM