No Land Grab: Stop feeding Ratner

February 15, 2008

Stop feeding Ratner

The Brooklyn Paper, Letter to the Editor

A Brooklyn Heights resident wonders why the NY City Council put the Madison Square Garden owners on a diet, while Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner has the run of the feedlot.

The $700 million in subsidies for Atlantic Yards cited by Councilmembers Yassky and James is an understatement of the subsidies Ratner is being given by the city and state (“James, Yassky: Ax Yards funds,” Feb. 9).

Among other things, Ratner is basically being given the $637.2 million arena for free through an “R-TIFC-PILOT” agreement (pronounced “Artifice PILOT,” or “Return Total Intercepted For Costs PILOT”).

Then there are 139 years of real-estate tax exemptions.

Then there are several-hundred-million more from the state and city in flat-out direct subsidies.

Then there is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority discount on the land that Ratner is being sold at below market.

Then there is the additional subsidy from the tax-exempt bonds on the arena, which includes exemption from state and city taxes in addition to federal.

And Ratner wants more tax-exempt bonds and housing subsidies for the residential portion of his project.

So even before you get to the subsidy he gains because of the state’s use of eminent domain to make properties available to him, the figure is way over $700 million. It clearly exceeds $1 billion and is quite possibly close to $2 billion.

Michael White, Brooklyn Heights

link

NoLandGrab: Furthermore, Forest City Ratner has stated in the past that it can't and won't reveal the full details of the subsidies that Atlantic Yards will suck up.

Posted by lumi at February 15, 2008 5:27 AM