« The Approval Matrix: Week of December 7, 2009 | Main | Moody’s Rates Atlantic Yards PILOT Deal at Baa3 »
December 1, 2009
Andrea Peyser Versus Property Rights
Future of Capitali$m
In the New York Post, columnist Andrea Peyser takes aim at those property owners who sued to try to stop their homes from being seized to build a new Nets arena and an associated development known as Atlantic Yards.
...The project's opponents seem to have exhausted their legal appeals, and Ms. Peyser calls them "selfish." Some of the area around Atlantic Yards is blighted, but some of it, including some of the property that the government wants to seize, is not blighted at all. To the extent that it is blighted, it is because of government ownership of the rail yards and because of Mr. Ratner's poorly designed shopping mall that already exists nearby. The announcement that Mr. Ratner is going to spend 10 years on a huge construction project that is 50% "affordable" housing served to freeze improvements that were already under way on their own organically in the surrounding blocks. If Mr. Ratner and the city and state government were to announce plans tomorrow to kick the New York Post's owner, Rupert Murdoch, out of his $44 million Fifth Avenue triplex and use the space for "affordable housing" and a basketball arena, would Mr. Murdoch be "selfish" to resist? Of course not.
NoLandGrab: We almost feel sorry for the venom-spitting Peyser; it can't be easy waking up angry every morning — and being consistently wrong about almost everything.
Posted by eric at December 1, 2009 1:45 PM