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October 5, 2010
Who Is This Guy and Why Is He in China Making Stuff Up About Atlantic Yards?
Here's some coverage of yesterday's Atlantic Yards Report exposé of Bruce Ratner's green cards-for-dollars scheme.
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, Who Is This Guy and Why Is He in China Making Stuff Up About Atlantic Yards
Norman Oder looks at the sales job the New York City Regional Center (NYCRC) is doing in China to scare up $249 million in loans (from Chinese lenders seeking green cards) for Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project—specifically building a new rail yard. Lo and behold it is as overhyped and fudged as the sales job Ratner and partners laid on New Yorkers.
Field of Schemes, Ratner's green-cards-for-arena-development-funds swap raises eyebrows
Even on a normal day, Norman Oder's Atlantic Yards Report is a cornucopia of information about the Brooklyn Nets arena project, often more than you really want to know in one sitting. Today, however, Oder was en fuego, reporting on the growing controversy over Nets owner Bruce Ratner's plans to raise money for construction by offering green cards to Chinese investors, which he first broke news of last week.
...While the whole mess mostly sheds light on the weirdness of U.S. immigration law — raise your hand if you had any idea that any foreigner with half a million dollars to throw around could buy their way out of waiting for resident alien status — it does indicate that Ratner and his partner Mikhail Prokhorov are looking for creative ways to find cheap money to finance development of the Atlantic Yards site. Whether that's because they're short of cash, or they just figure you can never have enough money, is anyone's guess.
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, Atlantic Yards Con Job Being Replicated in China for Green Card Selling Scheme
Ratner, his government friends and something called the New York City Regional Center (NYCRC)—the private firm promoting the Atlantic Yards loans for green cards scam—are all over-hyping the project's benefits to the potential Chinese lenders, in precisely the same way they over-hyped (lied, fudged) the project's benefits to ram the project down Brooklyn's throat.
[Oder] sums up what he has found this way: "...project proponents have managed to rent government for private interests.
Oder's work, including professional translation of the program's promotional websites in China, should be a wake up call to the mainstream media to jump on what looks like a scandalous misuse of the EB-5 program to boost the developer.
Posted by eric at October 5, 2010 10:21 AM