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December 10, 2011
An arena grows in Brooklyn
The Record
by John Brennan
The financing of the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn – which includes the Nets’ Barclays Center arena – includes about $250 million in investment by about 500 mostly Chinese immigrants who receive green cards in return for investing $500,000 apiece.
That number would be $1 million each, except that the arena neighborhood is said to be an area of “high unemployment.” The estimate by blogger Norman Oder is that Forest City Ratner, the project developer, saved about $140 million by the inclusion of some Bedford-Stuyvestant tracts in a….. rather creatively-designed map.
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Good luck finding mainstream newspaper coverage of this issue, though. The entire Atlantic Yards saga, dating back to 2003, has been plagued by a lack of consistent coverage by New York City newspapers (I say “consistent,” because sporadically I’ve seen good pieces written). I always recall that line by a Brooklyn activist to me after I had attended a court hearing related to the project that the NYC papers skipped : “It’s a sad day when you have to read a Jersey newspaper to find out what’s going on in Brooklyn.”
Posted by steve at December 10, 2011 3:52 PM