« EMINENT DOMAINIA: Chinese Farmer And Son Light Themselves on Fire To Protest Land Sale, And The Shanghai Bulldozers Pause For Just Two Hours | Main | DDDB's April Fool's joke: "The Arena Can Wait. Affordable Housing Now" »
April 1, 2010
Forest City Ratner News Release: "The Arena Can Wait. Affordable Housing Now!"
via Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn
This shocking news release from Forest City Enterprises just landed in our mailbox.
FOREST CITY ENTERPRISES
NEWS RELEASE
The Arena Can Wait. Affordable Housing Now.
Forest City Ratner Prioritizes Affordable Housing
Over Barclays Center Arena
In Brooklyn Atlantic Yards ProjectCLEVELAND, Ohio and BROOKLYN, New York - April 1, 2010 - Forest City Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE: FCE.A and FCE.B) today announced that the Barclays Center Arena for which it broke ground just three weeks ago, is going on the backburner so the development firm can break ground on the affordable housing units it has long promised to construct for Brooklyn.
Bruce Ratner, chairman and chief executive officer of Forest City Ratner Companies, the company's New York-based subsidiary, and other Forest City executives, were joined by New York Governor David Paterson, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Barclays PLC President Robert E. Diamond, Jr., NETS investor and cultural icon Shawn "JAY-Z" Carter, and many other community leaders to happily announce that they realized the depravity of constructing a money-losing, billion dollar arena in the middle of housing crisis and will immediately commence construction of affordable housing towers.
Bruce Ratner announced, specifically, that all preliminary work on the arena would cease immediately so that the construction crews could begin constrcution of the residential towers, all fourteen of which Ratner said would be built within five years.
Forest City has told Mikhail Prokhorov's Onexim Sports & Entertainment that Barclays Center may be a good business venture for him and his ownership of the Nets may be good for his portfolio, but that they are sorry, the priority must be housing over bread and circuses.
Click thru for lots more.
Posted by eric at April 1, 2010 11:11 AM