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July 30, 2008
Typo? City/state letter on tax-exempt bonds backdates MTA RFP by three years
Atlantic Yards Report
Maybe it's just a typo. Maybe it's a calculated slip. But there's another misleading element in a letter that, as I and Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn have contended, deserves serious scrutiny.
The 5/8/08 letter to the Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Treasury Department from the New York City Industrial Development Authority and the Empire State Development Corporation backdates the issuance of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's request for proposals (RFP) for the Vanderbilt Yard by three years, to 5/24/02.
The MTA's RFP was issued on 5/24/05.
...What's the value of the 2002 date, compared to 2005? Well, maybe it's none, given that 2005 still would fall well before the October 2006 cutoff.
Then again, a 2002 date suggests that momentum for the project--which the letter says commenced in 2003--reached back even earlier.
Also, the 2002 date avoids potential consternation should regulators wonder why, if the project began in 2003 and the MOU was signed in February 2005, the Vanderbilt Yard was put out for bid only in May 2005.
That sequencing issue has been at the heart of the AY federal eminent domain case, which was dismissed by a district and appellate court and refused a Supreme Court hearing--but was never really addressed by the courts.
NoLandGrab: Typo or obfuscation? We don't know, but we do know that once the tale-telling starts, it gets easier to do it again and again, and it's been going on with Atlantic Yards since about "May 24, 2002."
Posted by eric at July 30, 2008 8:12 AM