« Grassroots Preservation Award for DDDB from the Historic Districts Council | Main | New Rochelle, developer reach agreement to overhaul Echo Bay waterfront »
May 17, 2008
Billionaire Land Grab Crashes
The Indypendent
Daniel Goldstein
NoLandGrab: It's not the Daily News, but Daniel Goldstein gets a public venue for a fiery rebuttal to Ratner's op-ed:
Bruce Ratner’s $4 billion, 22-acre, 16-skyscraper Atlantic Yards proposal is in jeopardy due to a perfect storm: turmoil in the credit markets, the demise of the real estate boom, the astronomical increases in construction material costs, a lack of available tax-free housing subsidies, relentless community opposition and vigorous state and federal litigation.Ratner’s dream of carrying out the largest development plan by a single developer in New York City’s history is on the precipice of failure. Despite this, the Empire State Development Corporation lets Ratner continue his scorched-earth demolition tactics. They continue the charade that the project that had been approved can still be built. It can’t.
But failure is a likely outcome when a developer proposes to demolish and remake a whole neighborhood, abuse eminent domain and subvert democratic processes, all with the support of $2 billion in direct and indirect taxpayer subsidies. And now the developer says he would “need more” subsidies.
Posted by amy at May 17, 2008 10:15 AM