« Still waiting for Ratner's profit projections | Main | Missing in ESDC presentation to PACB: housing subsidies »
December 18, 2006
Atlantic Yards So Close, Yet So Far
RetailTrafficMag.com
Forest City Ratner’s controversial 22-acre Atlantic Yards mixed-use project in the heart of downtown Brooklyn cleared another hurdle last week. On Dec. 8, the Empire State Development Corporation, New York’s economic development agency, approved the general project plan and the use of eminent domain for the complex. If Forest City Ratner clears the remaining development hurdles, up to 60 local properties and 12 small businesses will be seized under the power of eminent domain.
Yet it probably won’t play out that smoothly.
“These things can drag on for years and, unfortunately, around the country these sorts of lawsuits have caused well-intentioned urban renewal projects to die by the thousands,” says Ted Zangari, a lawyer with the New Jersey-based Sills Cummis Epstein & Gross P.C.
NoLandGrab: The article tries to get both sides of the story and as a result cites Ratner's contention that the city and state would earn $6 billion in revenues over 30 years. This number has never been substantiated — the State's own documents claims less than a billion and that's before a litany of other subsidies (i.e. affordable housing costs) are subtracted from the total.
Posted by lumi at December 18, 2006 8:59 AM