« Crain's: suites at new NYC-area sports facilities should sell well | Main | RATNER CLAUSE CONPROMISE »
July 26, 2007
Ratner Handouts, PD Embarrasses, ‘Sicko’ Shames Us
Cleveland Leader
By Roldo Bartimole
The legendary Mad Overkiller of Cleveland illustrates how Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner learned his moves from the Cleveland clan.
Someone sent me a copy of a column from the New York News entitled, “Atlantic Yards gets a deal so sweet it’s sick.”
Welcome to Cleveland, all you New Yorkers.
Read about how head honcho Al Ratner bragged to Bartimole that Ratner family affairs were going national:
He told me that I’d have a ball observing Forest City’s operations around the country. He said that they were getting federal subsidies all over the country. I guess his comments emanated from my reporting over the years about his and Sam Miller’s local hunger for government handouts.
Bartimole breaks down a Cleveland project that's slated to suck up even more publc subsidies, and castigates the local media for lack of talent, or interest, or something....
NoLandGrab: The manner in which the Cleveland project gets "back in line" for more public assistance is reminiscent of Bruce's MetroTech and Atlantic Center Mall, bailed out by the City and State, respectively, which have relocated agencies to the projects in order to "mitigate" the vacancy rate.
There's also a tidy tale of how the Ratners took care of a family member of a politician who turned on the subsidy spigot. This hearkens back to the scandal in Yonkers, where the former Mayor's twenty-something son-in-law left the payroll of the local development corporation sponsoring Bruce's Ridge Hill project in a storm of protest, only to appear a year later in Ratner's employ as the "property manager" (the project was years away from being approved, much less built or "managed").
Posted by lumi at July 26, 2007 8:43 AM