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April 22, 2010
Last Atlantic Yards holdout sells his condo for $3 million
NY Post
by Rich Calder
Goldstein, the most public face of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, the group that nearly broke the project's back through mounting litigation, reached the deal yesterday to sell his three-bedroom Prospect Heights apartment to Ratner.
Goldstein paid $590,000 for the condo in 2003 -- only months before Ratner revealed his Atlantic Yards project, which besides an 18,000 seat arena is set to include 16 skyscrapers of residential and commercial space.
Ratner, who purchased the Nets in 2003 and used his pitch of bringing the team to Brooklyn to help get approval for his 22-acre project, is awaiting NBA approval to sell a majority stake in the team to Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov.
GlobeSt.com, Atlantic Yards Holdouts Reach Agreements
Earlier this week, another prominent holdout, Freddy’s Bar and Back Room, announced that it too had reached an agreement to relocate from the project’s footprint. In a statement, manager Donald O’Finn says, “The owner of Freddy’s has had to consider those employed at Freddy’s as well as his own situation, needing employment and food on the table. He made a difficult decision to pull out in such a way as to keep the contents of the bar and move it into another location. If we wait for condemnation we might sacrifice too much.”
Queens Crap, Atlantic Yards opponent accepts settlement
So who the hell is the winner here?
Daniel and his family lost their home as well as 7 years of their lives fighting against this project. Sure they have money, but after paying the lawyer, paying taxes, and finding a comparable home, there really won't be much profit made.
Forest City Ratner has lost many millions of dollars and their project has been drastically downsized.
ACORN pretty much has lost everything.
The MTA is in dire financial straits in part because they accepted a low ball offer from Ratner for the right to build above their train yard.
The City (meaning us) is left with a boondoggle project that we will be forced to pay for one way or another over the next few decades. There is more likely to be acres of parking lots than affordable housing and the best case scenario gives us a shitty basketball team, a bunch of permanent but part time minimum wage jobs, and a huge a traffic headache in return for allowing the destruction of a neighborhood that was actually doing fine without intervention.
Worst of all, we still have the country's worst eminent domain laws on the books, which will continue to be used on the little guy by corrupt developers and politicians. Hopefully, awareness of the work done by Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn and other groups fighting this abuse will lead to an eventual change in the law.
THESE BASTARDS, Cheap Blogging Crutch - 4.21.10
It's a Nice Neighborhood, But it Could be Making More Money
The Atlantic Yards project, the ~$4 billion eminent domain "development" that's about to gut my neighborhood, just cut a check to the last holdout, Daniel Goldstein, general in the war against bullshit. And that, as a decidedly lame fictional character once said, is that.
Battle of Brooklyn via Kickstarter, Daniel's statement on yesterday's deal
Yesterday I met Dan at court to follow up his eviction hearing. When I got there I found that after a long negotiation he had made an agreement to leave his condo 10 days earlier than the ESDC wanted in order to receive a reasonable financial settlement- rather than the low ball offer he was proffered. As he was at court as a tenant being forced from the home he had previously owned he wasn't thinking of it as a DDDB press day. As such, when FCR released a statement after the court hearing he was inundated with press calls and unable to get a statement out until late last night.
mole333's blog [The Daily Gotham], Ratner's Plans Progress: Statement From Daniel Goldstein, Victim of Eminent Domain Abuse
Since Bruce Ratner and his businesses, Forest City Ratner (which he officially runs) and the Empire State Development Corporation (which he seems to unoffically own) have been using the court settlment reached by Daniel Goldstein and the ESDC that finally forces him out of his apartment for their own PR purposes, and since they are misrepresenting the situation to pretend eminent domain abuse wasn't used to force Mr. Goldstein and his family out of their home, Mr. Goldstein has released the following statement....
The Local [Fort Greene/Clinton Hill], The Day: Atlantic Yards Aftermath
This morning, Mr. Goldstein released a statement about the settlement via DDDB, saying that he has not given up his First Amendment rights to protest, and that Forest City Ratner created a media circus by promptly sending out a press release as soon as the settlement was agreed upon, which he did not expect to happen yesterday.
Posted by eric at April 22, 2010 10:03 AM