« Last Call for Bar’s Lonely Anti-Atlantic Yards Boycott | Main | Gag Me: Why Do Mr. Sitt and Mr. Ratner Like Silence? »
April 4, 2007
HELPFUL HANDS IN YOUR POCKETS
Cleveland Leader
By Roldo Bartimole
A Cleveland boondoggle is brewing which will sound very familiar to Brooklynites:
The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer is all atwitter about Sam Miller giving some money for a study to tell us what Sam Miller and the boys want now from us.
Don’t we already know.
A way to pay for a new Convention Center located on his land, near his other declining property, for his obvious benefit, and paid for by you and me.
NoLandGrab: We told you it sounded familiar. Read on:
A new $350 to $500-million Convention Center is supposed to turn the Cleveland economic tide the same way Gateway did, or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame did, or Playhouse Square did and or the Browns Stadium did. NOT. Duh.
However, it will help Forest City, of which Sam is family, bail out its failed Tower City project, already helped with tens of millions in subsidies over the past two decades.
NoLandGrab: The Tower City project only sucked up tens of millions in subsidies??
Cousin Bruce would have done much better if the project were in Brooklyn. No wonder Fred Siegel, a professor of history at the Cooper Union, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer "[Bruce Ratner is] the master of subsidy. No one does it better." ["Makes me feel sad for the rest."]
Posted by lumi at April 4, 2007 8:28 AM