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March 12, 2012
Forest City in the woods in Yonkers
Developer's reputation takes a hit in Westchester scandal.
Crain's NY Business
by Greg David
When even Crain's Greg David thinks Forest City's reputation is suffering, it's likely they don't have any reputation left at all.
As for Forest City, its efforts to win approval have been detailed at great length in the trial. Here's the bottom line. To push the project, it hired the most powerful people in Westchester—namely Al Pirro (ex-husband of former Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro) and Mr. Spano. When the firm had already invested some $78 million in Ridge Hill and the council seemed unwilling to approve its plan, Forest City became desperate. It hired Mr. Mangone and eventually gave Mr. Jereis a no-show job in hopes they could change Ms. Annabi's vote. That's just what she did.
Forest City has done many good things in New York [NLG: we challenge you to name just one], and no one has suggested that it did anything illegal [NLG: Actually, we have]. But it pursued a project in a city where the politically astute developer knew there was a history of corruption, hired people with questionable bona fides and didn't ask what they did.
Forest City executives admitted in court they were uncomfortable with their deal with Mr. Jereis. Yet its approach? See no evil, hear no evil.
NoLandGrab: "See no evil, hear no evil" describes precisely the approach taken by Crain's and most of its brethren in covering Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project for the past eight years.
Posted by eric at March 12, 2012 10:54 AM