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August 15, 2012
Bruce Ratner Talks Brooklyn Nets & Barclays Center
The Wall Street Journal
Softball all-star Lee Hawkins sits down with America's Greatest Human Being.
Bruce Ratner, chairman and CEO of Forest City Ratner Companies, talks to WSJ's Lee Hawkins about the new Barclays Center arena and his shift from majority owner of the New Jersey Nets to owning 20 percent of the new Brooklyn Nets. Plus a look at upcoming Barclay's concerts featuring Jay-Z, Justin Bieber, Bob Dylan, and many other major artists.
NoLandGrab: He's humble, he's winsome — he's just plain awesome.
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Norman Oder debunks the bunk.
Would you believe that Wall Street Journal interviewer Lee Hawkins, whose beat is The Business of Celebrity, makes local columnists like Denis Hamill and Andrea Peyser, known for fawning treatment of developer Bruce Ratner, look like hard-nosed investigative reporters?
Hawkins, as if reading off a Ratner-provided script, not only hit all the talking points, in some cases he made the point for his interviewer himself. He started off with the inevitable mention that the Barclays Center arena would open 55 years after the Dodgers left.
"55 long, hard, Brooklyn years," responded Ratner, in affirmation, doubling down on the cliche.
Click through for the blow-by-blow.
Posted by eric at August 15, 2012 10:06 AM