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May 7, 2010
Atlantic Yards-- Roll Out the Dough, Land Grab to Go
Deep QT
by Carola Von Hoffmannstahl-Solomonoff
I love the smell of eminent domain abuse in the morning. It smells like land grabs and taxpayers being soaked. A truly fragrant blast of the stuff is wafting up from Brooklyn, where developer Forest City Ratner and the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) have cleared the last man standing in the footprint of the behemoth Atlantic Yards project. Eminent domain was used to acquire much of that footprint. Until becoming a footprint, the area was a neighborhood in Prospect Heights. Atlantic Yards, which is being heavily backed by New York taxpayers, will include an arena (Barclays Center) to showcase the sad sack New Jersey Nets. Though the sacks currently belong to a group headed by Bruce Ratner (of Forest City You Know Who) a murky Russian plutocrat is in the process of becoming majority owner. The cash infusion to Atlantic Yards is sorely needed by Ratner.
Despite all this, Ms. Von Hoffmannstahl-Solomonoff seems to think that Daniel Goldstein should have been dragged from his building in handcuffs, with less money than he paid for his home.
I definitely agreed with the need to oppose the ESDC/Ratner use of eminent domain. Still do. What I have a hard time getting behind is Dan Goldstein's three million dollar deal. And after all my partisan writing, forwarding, and expanding, I feel some final words are warranted.
Dan has lots of reasons for taking the 3 mil. To paraphrase a few: He was going to be evicted anyway, it was sensible to get what he could. What would he achieve by being a martyr? At one point he was outrageously low-balled for his property, so squeezing ESDC and Ratner for a high-ball was justified. Though he agreed to resign as DDDB spokesperson, he didn't surrender his right to speak against Atlantic Yards. And so on and so forth. Dan's loyal supporters are also doing some splainin'. Saying Dan was only doing the responsible thing for his family. And the 3 mil is less than it seems, given the tax bite, the legal bills for the non-DDDB attorney who represented Dan in the settlement negotiations, and how expensive it will be for Dan to get another place in NYC. (Personally, I think the last excuse should be dropped. It's bound to grate with all the folks who somehow manage to find something for under a mil.)
I Want To Believe. But the words three million dollars three million dollars three million dollars keep beating in my brain. No matter how I twist it, the amount seems a little-- dare I say it?-- greedy. Which wouldn't be a big thing (we're all human) if the greed of Forest City Ratner and ESDC hadn't been such a DDDB theme-- and if Dan Goldstein weren't working so hard to paint himself as totally free of impure motives. As said, a lot of Dan's supporters are helping him paint. The pro-Ratner crowd is making with the jeers. (Bertha Lewis of ACORN did a bile dump almost immediately.) But anger and disappointment is also being expressed by people who are against Atlantic Yards and expected Dan Goldstein to be unflaggingly noble.
NoLandGrab: Luckily for critics of Daniel Goldstein's settlement that none of them have ever had to walk a mile in his shoes. And for the record, we know of no one involved on the front lines of the Atlantic Yards opposition — and we count ourselves among them — who believes that Daniel Goldstein owes anything to anyone.
Posted by eric at May 7, 2010 9:08 AM