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December 8, 2010
Bruce Ratner Seducing Atlantic Yards Investors With Green Cards
New York Magazine
Norman Oder recently began his sixth year of reporting on the Atlantic Yards saga at his website, Atlantic Yards Report, and his best work may have just begun. This week he’s posted a fascinating series of stories about how developer Bruce Ratner, the city, and the state are dangling green cards in front of Chinese investors in order to lower Ratner’s funding costs and save him an estimated minimum of $191 million. The pieces are long and dense — though the sight of former Net Daryl “Chocolate Thunder” Dawkins signing autographs in Guangzho is entertaining — but they contain a bunch of intriguing and maddening insights, including how the deadline for building the first phase of the behemoth arena-and-skyscraper project may have been quietly extended to 2029, which could further stall the purported “community benefit” from subsidized housing. The green-card scheme, while apparently legal, is borderline sleazy; it’s supposed to swap immigration help for the creation of American jobs, but the economic worth of the program is highly dubious. But a Brooklyn NBA team owned by a Russian billionaire playing in a tax-break-larded arena surrounded by Chinese-backed buildings … hey, only in America, as the great hustler Don King would say.
Related coverage...
The Sports ITeam Blog [NY Daily News], Shady dealings surround Atlantic Yards project
Atlantic Yards Report blogger Norman Oder has posted "Anatomy of a Shady Deal," an exhaustive series that looks at Forest City Ratner and the EB-5 program, the federal program that provides green cards to foreign investors to obtain no-interest loans for its massive Atlantic Yards project.
...Oder notes that the pitch aimed at potential investors in China is questionable. The Barclays Center, the future home of the Nets, is featured in materials provided to the potential investors even though it is already funded. The chance of not getting the green cards is dismissed, and the risk of the investment is downplayed.
...The Daily News reported in October that the Empire State Development Corporation doesn't expect money raised through the EB-5 program to create any new jobs beyond those already forecast for the $4.9 billion project.
Posted by eric at December 8, 2010 10:35 AM