When the city's Economic Development Corporation earlier this month explained how it planned to spend the $205 million in taxpayer money that it had earmarked for Atlantic Yards, one purpose it did not mention was lobbying expenses. But opponents are now making hay of a report that shows that Forest City Ratner spent Read More
Even Chuck Ratner, Bruce's cousin and chief executive of parent company Forest City Enterprises, thinks Atlantic Yards will take 15 years. Then he told an audience at a business conference, according to Norman Oder, "I'm not at all confident of how long it will take us to finish." - Matthew Schuerman
The Brooklyn Paper got a hold of an audit conducted for the state that reveals that Forest City Ratner was planning on charging outside organizations $100,000 to rent the Nets arena for graduation ceremonies and other non-sporting events--while the company had once promised to make it available to community groups for "a reasonable rate." Read More
Our claim from July that Atlantic Yards would be the densest census tract in the country seems to be sowing some confusion, which is just as well, because we never really said that. What we said was that Atlantic Yards would be twice as dense as the densest census tract in the country, Read More
"A woman just called me up from Queens. She said, ‘Are you the Daniel Goldstein they are accusing of racism?'" It was the very same Daniel Goldstein, the Daniel Goldstein who is the most visible and vocal opponent of Bruce Ratner's plan to build a giant mixed-use development in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, Read More
"A woman just called me up from Queens. She said, ‘Are you the Daniel Goldstein they are accusing of racism?'"
It was the very same Daniel Goldstein, the Daniel Goldstein who is the most visible and vocal opponent of Bruce Ratner's plan to build a giant mixed-use development in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, Read MoreNorman Oder reported yesterday that Forest City Ratner had given out another $350,000 to an ally in its fight to bring the Atlantic Yards complex to Brooklyn. Well, Forest City spokesman Joe DePlasco tells us that figure is the total amount budgeted to be given the group, the Downtown Brooklyn Educational Consortium, but that Read More
Charles Gargano, chairman of The Empire State Development Corporation, downplayed complaints yesterday about a possible conflict of interest because the agency, which is supposed to review the proposal for the Atlantic Yards complex in Brooklyn, relied on the same law firm that had advised the project’s developer, Forest City Ratner. "I don't know whether we Read More
Defenders of the Atlantic Yards community benefits agreement have long whispered that it is vastly superior to the much ballyhooed minority hiring plan hatched last February by the New York Jets for the football team’s ill-fated West Side stadium. The Real Estate just got a copy of the plan, which was widely believed to Read More
Sometime in late 2003, a Brooklyn activist asked State Assemblyman Roger Green what he thought about developer Bruce Ratner, who was about to propose a massive housing development and new basketball arena for Central Brooklyn. “You’ve got your Bull Connors and you’ve got your Robert Kennedys, and you are going to treat them differently. Ratner Read More
Since Sunday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer has been running an all-out series on Forest City Enterprises, the nation’s largest publicly traded real estate company of which our own little Forest City Ratner (MetroTech, the new Times tower, Atlantic Yards) is just a small part. They spend a few paragraphs on Forest City’s ability to Read More
A Nets arena opponent writes: go to the New York Times and in the search, search 'Atlantic Yards' or 'Ratner' and look what you get up top, an ad for BUILD. Apparently this is where at least a few thousand of Forest City's $138,000 contribution to BUILD is going: on your computer screen. Hey, it Read More
Forest City Ratner just issued a press release coming clean with just how much the developer has given to community groups supporting its Atlantic Yards project: $138,000 to BUILD, which is supposed to run job training programs, and $50,000 to the Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Association, which is supposed to set up a community Read More
The MTA board will vote Wednesday on whether to sell air rights over one of its rail yards in Brooklyn to Forest City Ratner for its Atlantic Yards project. A memo to board members makes it official: the MTA managed to wheedle $100 million out of the developer. That's twice what Forest Read More
