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March 22, 2011
Union sundown! Ratner risks losing labor support with prefab tower
The Brooklyn Paper
by Gary Buiso
Developer Bruce Ratner has yet to birth a building at the Atlantic Yards site, but he’s already causing labor pains.
Unions are recoiling after learning that the mega-developer has been secretly planning a prefabricated tower at the Prospect Heights site — a decision that could significantly jeopardize hundreds of union jobs that Ratner promised to organized labor and their political supporters at a critical juncture in his project’s approval process.
The 34-story building at Flatbush Avenue and Dean Street — the first residential building in what is on paper is stll a $4.9-billion 16-skyscraper project — would be constructed using 900 modules, or prefabricated steel boxes, that would simply be stacked and bolted together, the New York Times reported last week.
This week, union members were the ones bolting — from Ratner.
“This was never part of the plan that was presented to us,” charged Richard Weiss, a spokesman for Construction and General Building Laborers’ Local 79. “If something is going to provide good jobs to our members, we are going to support a project. But, clearly, he’s changed how he is planning to go forward.”
It was the unions who loudly supported Ratner for years, trumpeting the hundreds of construction jobs that were slated to be filled by union workers during the decade it will take to build the project.
If the modular plan proceeds, union jobs would be considerably diminished, as most of the work is completed on a factory floor rather than on site of what would be the world’s tallest prefab building.
“Everything is built in one shot — the electrical, the plumbing — then they pick up the box with a crane and put it in place,” said Tony Buscema, president of the Brooklyn Board of Business Agents, which finds work for the building trade unions. “The building trades don’t get much out of it because the rooms are already completed.”
NoLandGrab: We don't want to say we told you so — but we told you so, and we've been telling you so for the past seven years.
Posted by eric at March 22, 2011 11:28 AM