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July 2, 2007
Tally ho: Atlantic Yards Subsidies!
Lawmakers are throwing around billions of dollars trying to get Bruce Ratner's subsidy-laden Atlantic Yards Trojan Horse off the ground.
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn has been keeping a running tally of known and unknown public subsidies for Bruce Ratner's controversial Atlantic Yards arena-office-housing superblock complex (download the PDF). After adding in $300-million gift via the State's 421-a reform bill*, known subsidies register around $2.11 billion and unknown subsidies will cost taxpayers, um...
A great philosopher once said, "as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know." In Ratnerville, that means, hold on to yer wallets because it's gonna suck up more public subsidies than you can imagine.
Yesterday, Gowanus Lounge noted:
While there are a number of different ways one can count the public cost of the Atlantic Yards development, the total of the taxpayer-back financing and public subsidy is a fair indicator of the level of public support of the $4 billion project... Even in the large scheme of things, the 421-a subsidy is significant.
* Governor Spizter has yet to sign the 421-a reform bill, but you gotta love any "reform" bill that lines the pockets of a single developer!
Posted by lumi at July 2, 2007 11:41 AM