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July 6, 2010
KPMG's Atlantic Yards market study: not just blatant lies but shameless plagiarism (from Corcoran)
Atlantic Yards Report
In court June 29, Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) attorney Philip Karmel said that "probably the most important factor" in the ESDC’s decision to assume a ten-year buildout for Atlantic Yards was not the Development Agreement that provides 25 years without sanction but a KPMG report that backs the timetable.
The KPMG report got very little discussion, but it contains lies--blatant, checkable lies--about condo sales.
And, as I discovered when I took another look, it contains more than two pages of shameless borrowing--plagiarism that is not diminished by a vague footnote.
Borrowing from Corcoran
The entire section on New York City Market Dynamics is cribbed from The Corcoran Report(s) for Manhattan and Brooklyn for the second quarter of 2009.
Yes, there's a footnote to the section headline that cites "The Corcoran Report--2nd Quarter 2009" as a source, but there's no indication that nearly all the text--with the slightest of changes--comes from Corcoran.
No quotation marks, no indentations, no italics.
Nor did KPMG change a line like "We estimate that sales are down," which indicates not KPMG's observation but that of Corcoran.
NoLandGrab: So let us get this straight. "Probably the most important factor" in the ESDC's assumption of a 10-year build out was a market report published by a real estate company that counts on a robust real estate market to make money? Which they copied, like test answers in high school?
Additional coverage...
Brownstoner, Busted! KPMG Blatantly Plagiarized from Corcoran In Its Yards Report
Mega-consulting firm KPMG got big bucks to prepare a market study report for ESDC that was used to justify all sorts of overly-optimistic assumptions about the future of the real estate market. Sounds like they should have kicked some of that dough Corcoran's way though, since the highly-paid execs indulged in a liberal dose of the old cut-and-paste in its preparation of the report.
Posted by eric at July 6, 2010 7:51 AM