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December 17, 2009

Bonding with the Nets: Financing is in place at long last to bring the team to Brooklyn

NY Daily News, Editorial

Here's another example of the Daily News having to resort to lying to make its point about the promise of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards megaproject:

...the Atlantic Yards plan calls for building 6,400 housing units, a third of them affordable, on a tract that has been fallow for half a century. Those will take time. Right now, it's enough that we end the dark half-century that began with the defection of the borough's Dodgers and enjoy all the jobs that building the arena will create.

article

NoLandGrab: Most railyards are "fallow" if you ignore the trains coming and going throughout the day. The remaining two-thirds of the land is private property acquired under threat of eminent domain.

And while we're picking apart the vitriol, may the editorial board also "enjoy" the massive taxpayer subsidies that this project is sucking up, the traffic headeache it will create, past promises broken and those still to come.

Atlantic Yards Report, Daily News editorial claims "city will reap substantial benefits" from "fallow" tract

Here are a few more holes in the Daily Snooze's delirious editorial:

They can claim that the city "will reap substantial benefits," but they still have to grapple with the New York City Independent Budget Office's conclusion--not rebutted by the Empire State Development Corporation--that the arena would be a net loss to the city, some $220 million.
...
There's no guarantee that the housing would be built in the quantity and timing promised.

As for the "tract that has been fallow for half a century," no the Atlantic Yards site has not been fallow. Rather, the head-in-the-sand editorial writers are pointing to the Vanderbilt Yard, a working railyard that would make up less than 40% of the site.

It was not fiscally feasible to build there until recently. And when it was, there was not an open RFP process but a belated one, after Forest City Ratner was anointed the site.

Posted by lumi at December 17, 2009 7:03 AM