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May 3, 2011
Atlantic Yards Report Refutes Ratner's Refute
Atlantic Yards Report, "Ratner's refute"? Real Deal claims "Developer insists Atlantic Yards is moving forward"
Well, we shouldn't expect that much from the real estate industry-friendly publication The Real Deal, which has published a cover article headlined Ratner's refute: Developer insists Atlantic Yards is moving forward.
I'll have more of a critique in a bit, but first, consider that such head-in-the-sand reporting somehow misses the news from last fall, as I wrote 9/28/10:
From WNYC today, Ratner Abandons 10-Year Timeline for Atlantic Yards:
Developer Bruce Ratner said Tuesday morning what many of his critics and even some of his associates have been saying for years: there is no way the entire Atlantic Yards project will be done in 10 years.
He said the 10-year timeline was always misunderstood. It was never meant to be more than a best-case scenario to be used in environmental impact statements.
“That was really only an analysis as to what the most serious impacts [would be], if all the other planned development in downtown Brooklyn happened right away,” Ratner says. “It was never supposed to be the time we were supposed to build them in.”
He added: “I would say it's really market-dependent as to when it will really be completed.”
Atlantic Yards Report, "Ratner's refute"? Real Deal claim of "largely favorable PR" deserves some footnotes
True, there were many fewer negative articles, but they were not insignificant. Consider the 11/1/2000 City Limits article headlined Wage Rage: Big corporations and developers reap major subsidies from the city, but their service staffs make starvation wages. Now a wave of organizing campaigns is trying to change the equation.:
One week before the Renaissance Plaza strike began, on May 9, demonstrators marched outside the Atlantic Center Mall to demand better wages and benefits for workers in all of malls operated by Forest City Ratner, the city's largest retail developer. Al Sharpton led the chants, but the protest was organized by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now--better known as ACORN. The group, organizer Bertha Lewis explains, wants heavily subsidized, "big box" retail developers like Bruce Ratner to make mall tenants agree to pay decent wages and benefits. "If you are feeding at the public trough, then you must at least pay your workers a living wage," she says.
Ratner's company, Lewis readily admits, is no worse than any other developer. They all have the same "dead-end, low-wage, non-union, no-benefit jobs," she says. ACORN singled out Ratner because he's one of the biggest developers in the city, and because he is currently receiving more than $20 million in city subsidies.
Those are the same Al Sharpton and Bertha Lewis who Ratner, thanks to strategic giving and questionable promises, has been able to recruit to support Atlantic Yards.
Atlantic Yards Report, Bruce Ratner, once "humble, winsome" to a supporter, becomes "affable, rumpled" to a journalistic sycophant (but what about the grim photo?)
Once upon a time, in the memorable words of the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, Bruce Ratner was described as having a customary "humble, winsome" manner.
I guess we'll have to add "affable, rumpled" to the list, since that's the shorthand description in The Real Deal's cover article headlined Ratner's refute: Developer insists Atlantic Yards is moving forward.
Consider the quote from Ratner accompanying the photo: "Ultimately the truth will come out -- that this project will be very good for Brooklyn."
The article makes no attempt to discern the competing evidence regarding that truth, but doesn't Ratner in the photo appear not so affable but rather a bit grim?
NoLandGrab: Bruce will heretofore be known as "The Grim Rumpler."
Posted by eric at May 3, 2011 12:38 PM