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October 30, 2009
Atlantic Yard Bonds May Be Sold, Escrowed: Official
The Bond Buyer via Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn
by Ted Phillips
The $700 million of bonds to finance a professional basketball arena at the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn could be sold and the proceeds placed into escrow as legal challenges to the project are resolved, an official at the Empire State Development Corp. said yesterday.
“The expectation is that they can be issued,” said Frances Walton, chief financial officer of the ESDC. “It wouldn’t be the first time that bonds have been issued with those types of legal challenges.”
...The structure and the timing of the bonds are still in flux, Walton said.
Typically an issuer would structure an escrow bond “short term with the expectation that it would be coming out of escrow to be restructured. That’s one of the possibilities they are looking at,” Walton said. “But they’re also looking at the structure with an early call ... if something changes, if the court ruling went against you, you’d just refund the bonds. Those are the two different approaches.”
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Posted by eric at October 30, 2009 11:03 AM