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August 21, 2012
"Honor, Integrity and Playing by the Rules" out of style, as Ratner says, "No one will care what we had to do to make it happen"
Atlantic Yards Report
In the big New York magazine feature yesterday on the Barclays Center, arena developer Bruce Ratner was quoted by Will ("Bruce-Ratner-was-affable-to-me") Leitch:
Ratner doesn’t worry about his personal legacy; once, during another meeting, he pointed to famous buildings nearby and noted that no one knows the names of the people who built them. The world is a “long, big place,” he said. One hundred years from now, “Brooklyn is going to be an epicenter of this country, and this place will be at the middle of that. No one will care what we had to do to make it happen.”
I agreed that people 100 years down the road won't care, but the point is a distraction: the Atlantic Yards towers and arena that Ratner builds likely won't exist.
The real issue, as commenters on New York's web site, Brownstoner, and DDDB pointed out, to quote "Montrose Morris," is this:
Yeah, that really is an outrageous statement. So I guess the ends justify the means. That's a slippery slope, and if that comment is his legacy, well, I'd rather be nobody, too.
Ends justify means: Independent Compliance Monitor
The list of ends-justify-the-means examples is long, but let's take just one example: the Independent Compliance Monitor promised under the "historic" Community Benefits Agreement Ratner (CBA) signed in 2005. It doesn't exist.
Related coverage...
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, Bruce Ratner Implies That There Was Indeed Something Wrong With How He Pursued Atlantic Yards
[Ratner] says one hundred years from now, "No one will care what we had to do to make it happen." That's quite a legacy he wants for himself. But more importantly it implies that there indeed was something wrong with how they made it happen, and right now a lot of people do care about the corrupt manner in which his firm and his enablers in NY state and city government made the money-losing, neighborhood-killing Barclays Center happen. The implication is correct.
Posted by eric at August 21, 2012 12:32 PM