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April 17, 2009
The Great Recession: A Stimulus to Get Our City Back to “Bidness?”
Noticing New York
Blogger Michael D.D. White wonders why what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander — the gander being we taxpaying citizens of New York State.
So state and local governments everywhere else are saving significant money on public sector work by getting bids during this economic downturn, and Forest City Ratner claims it is similarly going to reduce costs for itself through the lower bids they can get during the economic downturn. . . Who isn’t invited to the party to get the benefits of such bidding? The New York taxpayers who are expected to shoulder the unbelievably huge subsidies (more than $2.1 billion) being given to Forest City Ratner, without bid, for its proposed Atlantic Yards project! That is because, our politicians gave Ratner (without any bid) a multi-decade monopoly on a 22-acre site which, in theory, precludes competition for perhaps 40 years.
Are our politicians really telling us with straight faces that they have made a deal with Ratner that precludes any competition for however many decades it takes his company to complete Atlantic Yards? Are they saying that the public can’t even give project work to competing developers if Ratner dawdles for decades, goes bankrupt or reneges on what was once promised for delivery?
NoLandGrab: White cites the $2.1 billion in Atlantic Yards subsidies estimated by the New York Post, which many project-watchers consider an overstatement. However, even Forest City Ratner has copped to more than a billion dollars in assorted tax breaks.
Posted by eric at April 17, 2009 2:11 PM