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March 29, 2011
Ratner Creates 1,786 New Artists
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn
The saga of Forest City Ratner's green-cards-for-cash hustle in China and Korea just gets more weirdly corrupt, thanks to investigative digging in multiple languages by the indefatigable Norman Oder.
The basic premise of the EB-5 program is not bad: dangling a priority lane to citizenship in exchange for investment funds that will create jobs in the United States. But now it turns out that to justify their pursuit of $249 million in Asian money, FCR and its partner, the New York City Regional Center, claim the arena will generate 7696 jobs...3705 in construction, 350 in retail and--ready for this?--1786 in art and entertainment.
As far as construction jobs go, at the moment on a good day there may be 150 workers on the site. And that's before Ratner starts using prefab buildings to cut down on labor.
Posted by eric at March 29, 2011 11:02 PM