A Sad Day for Brooklyn: Atlantic Yards Groundbreaking
The Huffington Post. By John Petro
(Urban Policy Analyst at the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy)

In theory, it should be everything that a progressive urban policy analyst like me would want from a new development. Atlantic Yards would create lots of new housing immediately adjacent to mass transit lines. It would be a mix of residential, commercial, retail, and entertainment space. And it would create new affordable housing and green space.

But, somehow, Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner got it all wrong. The project required two things to make it feasible: the use of eminent domain to acquire the property and hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies. Public officials justified both by proclaiming that the project would also create public benefits. But these public benefits were always dubious. And as the project has progressed, they have all but disappeared completely. Now it seems that the project will be a money loser for the city and will scar the face of Brooklyn for decades.

So what went wrong?

First and foremost, the moment Forest City Ratner turned to New York City and the state for the use of eminent domain and public subsidies, Atlantic Yards became a public project. This fact has been ignored by the developer and by the public officials who have backed it. In fact, Bruce Ratner, chief executive of Forest City, proclaimed last year, "Why should people get to see plans? This isn't a public project."

Because the public--most importantly, those in communities surrounding the project site--were not adequately involved in the planning of Atlantic Yards, opposition to the project was fierce and unyielding. This opposition caused a string of delays that would eventually force the developer to put plans for office and housing towers on hold indefinitely. The result was, to the extent that there ever were any public benefits, those benefits have now disappeared.

While it was always uncertain just how "affordable" the affordable housing was going to be, it is now unclear if and when the affordable housing will be built. There is also the very real possibility that the developer will need substantial public subsidies to build the affordable housing.

And while the amount of public tax dollars going to subsidize the project has more than doubled, from $100 million to at least $205 million, the amount of tax revenue that the project was estimated to generate for the city and state has shrunk by half a billion dollars. This is largely due to reductions in the amount of new office space that was going to be included in the project. Now there are no immediate plans for any new office space. According to Crain's New York Business:

Initially, the project called for four office towers, but by early this year, only one was on the drawing boards. Asked when it will go up, Mr. Ratner responds with a question: "Can you tell me when we are going to need a new office tower?"

No, I can't.

On top of that add the loss of an "iconic" design by Frank Gehry, a smaller rail yard than was initially agreed on, and instead of paying the cash-strapped MTA $100 million in cash as was promised in 2005, the developer will pay $20 million up front and the rest over 21 years.

But the real kicker is how the project will create blight, instead of eradicating it. The project is adjacent to some of the most successful pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods in the entire city: Park Slope, Prospect Heights, and Fort Greene. But instead of incorporating the characteristics that make these neighborhoods so successful, Atlantic Yards relies on an urban design that has been thoroughly discredited in cities across the globe.

The development will have many of the design characteristics of the public housing projects constructed in the early 20th Century. Local streets will be permanently closed, creating superblocks that will discourage pedestrian activity. Instead of mimicking the commercial corridors of nearby neighborhoods, like Park Slope's 5th Avenue, the new towers will be surrounded by "open space" that will create pedestrian dead zones and will be intimidating during the night. Think of the unused and often unsettling green spaces between public housing towers and you will begin to get the idea.

And instead of promoting the use of mass transit, the new development will actually promote the use of private automobiles. The development will create 3600 new parking spaces, 2600 for residents and 1100 for the arena. Even worse, because the development of some sites will be delayed indefinitely, there are plans for a 1044 space interim surface parking lot. That's a lot of asphalt. It's also what I would call blight.

The official groundbreaking ceremony was held on Thursday. No doubt there were smiles on the faces of Bruce Ratner, Mayor Bloomberg, and Governor Patterson. The smiles are temporary, but the scar etched onto Brooklyn will be much more permanent.

...There were few Brooklyn elected officials present, and none from anywhere near the site. Those present included State Senators Marty Golden and Carl Kruger; Assemblymen Darryl Towns and Stephen Cymbrowitz; and Council Members Darlene Mealy and Mike Nelson. (State Senator John Sampson, Democratic Majority Conference Leader, sent his regards and former Assemblyman Roger Green got a mention from Daughtry.) Oh, and of course Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, the jovial MC...

Why the Atlantic Yards Is Currently a Loser for Everyone, Even Ratner
Chris Smith. New York Magazine. Daily Intel

Sitting in traffic on Atlantic Avenue, watching as cars spill back through the intersection with Fourth Avenue to complete a perfect triangle of honking, cursing, pedestrian-endangering gridlock with the intersection of Flatbush Avenue, somehow the realization came to more than one influential person: What we need here is an 18,000-seat basketball arena!

And finally Bruce Ratner is going to give it to us. On Thursday afternoon the developer officially breaks ground on his Atlantic Yards project. Much has changed in the more than six years since Ratner first proposed a stunning 22-acre home for the NBA’s Nets and for sixteen commercial and residential skyscrapers. Long gone is architect Frank Gehry, whose industrial-whimsical designs brought an upscale veneer to the massive heap of steel and concrete. ACORN, whose kiss of approval for the project’s “affordable” housing units gave Atlantic Yards a tinge of progressive enlightenment, collapsed even though Ratner returned the favor with a grant and loan of $1.5 million. Last year Ratner was forced to unload the money-hemorrhaging Nets to Russia’s richest oligarch. The economy has gone from boom to bust, the state and city budgets from billions in surplus to many more billions in deficit.

Yet in all that time one thing hasn’t changed: The Atlantic Yards deal is still a loser for New York. Well, that’s not exactly true, either. The fact is, the deal has gotten worse. And not — caveat lector — simply for those of us who will be living next to a huge construction zone for the next four years.

The most tangible quasi-public benefits that Ratner promised — housing and parks — have been pushed off into the unforeseeable future. Lately he’s said he’ll start work on the residential and commercial buildings in 2011, but renegotiations have extended his deadline for finishing the non-arena construction into 2035. Even that date is subject to change, however, as is the number of apartments ultimately built.

The big payoff, both for the developer and for New York as a whole, was always supposed to be generated by everything other than the arena. The projections of jobs created and tax revenues generated were always dubious, as documented on Norman Oder’s invaluable Atlantic Yards Report website. But when — or if — the fiscal benefits ever start coming in, they’ll have to be even more spectacular because the public subsidies have swollen, most recently with an MTA deal deferring Ratner’s payments for the land. The Independent Budget Office says the public tab will be approximately $675 million — and that’s merely for the arena, which the IBO estimates will lose $219 million for the city and state over 30 years.

Ratner blames the delays on those pesky eminent domain lawsuits. It’s true that the legal challenges have slowed Atlantic Yards, but Ratner guaranteed the court fights by doing a politically savvy end run around the public approval process. And the most important issues were never speed or dollars: The fight over Atlantic Yards was about community and democracy. If the legacy of Develop Don’t Destroy is that whatever is finally built on the rest of the site is more in proportion with the brownstone neighborhoods surrounding Ratnerville, the group will have done the city a service. But until then, everyone's going to continue losing: Bruce Ratner is getting an arena he wanted only as a crowd-pleasing tool to divert attention from his lucrative condo towers, and New York gets a soulless billion-dollar basketball court next to a hole where there should be human-scale housing. Happy groundbreaking day to all.

Even before Gerges decision, footprint renters were leaving; for some, it was life; for others, it was blight

Atlantic Yards Report

Even before Supreme Court Justice Abraham Gerges issued his ruling last week approving condemnation for the Atlantic Yards project, several renters who had previously pursued litigation related to the project had moved out of the AY footprint--some quite recently.

For some, changing family circumstances were a driving force.

For others, the impact of living near a construction zone--blight, essentially--made their continued presence ever more difficult.

For some, it was a bit of both.

And it left several with significant bitterness and frustration, sentiments they could express, given that the settlements preclude further litigation but do not impose gag orders.

...
Dan Saks

Dan Saks, a musician and resident of 473 Dean, left on December 31 and remains in Prospect Heights. "I left because the girlfriend that I had moved into the apt. with and I got married while living there and we were beginning to think seriously about starting a family," he reported. "Given my first hand experience with how little FCR cares about the people living in the neighborhood we decided it would be an unsuitable place to become pregnant."

Now that he's gone, Saks readily takes credit for The Footprint Gazette, which he wrote (mostly) to chronicle the difficulty of living in a construction zone. (He also posted videos on YouTube, with soundtrack, and Letitia James Remixed.)

The last post, dated 1/13/09, is headlined FCR is a crap landlord. The post at right is First they came for Dean St.

"Years of intermittent unannounced utility shut-offs, deafening construction noise just feet from our front window and extreme amounts of dust led us to feel that this was an environment too hostile and toxic to consider raising a family in," he said.

Saks and his girlfriend tried to sublet the apartment, thinking they might return once the project--which for a while was reported to be in doubt--collapsed. "Despite about a dozen phone calls and two certified letters formally requesting they grant us the right to sublease (as per our lease) for said reasons, we never got a single response," he said.

"Feeling like we had no alternatives we accepted their offer and left, fearing that we'd either be evicted with nothing or forced to postpone family planning on account of pro basketball," he reported.

Ultimately, Saks said, that offer was a fraction of FCR's original offer years back, "which we accepted the day it was offered. They reneged within a couple of days, before we had a chance to sign any papers."

There were no strings attached to the settlement, he said. "You can't put a price on me not being able to talk trash about this company for years to come."

"We didn't think the project would drag on so long and that they would make life so miserable while we were still living there," he reflected. "I should add that I work from home many days as a recording musician and lost countless hours of work waiting for drilling to cease. Life is too short to put up with cracked walls and jackhammers day in and day out for years on end no matter how much I want to keep these thugs from adding another crap building to the neighborhood."

"I gave it my best, and all I can say now is that I hope my posts at the Footprint Gazette and any quotes you pull from this email can forever live on the Internet as my evidence that the Nets play ball in a cursed house and that Barclays Stadium marks the tomb of a neighborhood dismantled by businessman, dismissed by politicians and displaced by bulldozers."
...

David Sheets

Sheets, a resident of 479 Dean Street, was a plaintiff in the two Atlantic Yards eminent domain cases. After signing an agreement on January 28, the day before the hearing on condemnation before Justice Abraham Gerges, he moved out at the end of February.

(Photo from November 2009 press conference by Tracy Collins)

He said that deterioration at the house he rented, owned by Forest City Ratner, had led to two fires and water damage, and frequently required him to take time off without pay to await maintenance.

"My house caught on fire again the night before last," he said last month. "The weekend before that, I went for three days and nights without heat or hot water. The place is falling down around me."

Speaking before the judge's ruling, he said, "It doesn’t matter what Gerges rules, I can’t stay there."

He said the offer he got was "take it or leave it." He said he agreed to remove his name from pending litigation and to desist from future litigation. "However, I reserve every one of my rights that, if this is not executed as agreed to, I have every right to take action to see it is."

Recouping losses

Sheets moved to Flatbush, near the south end of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, a quick shot on the Q train to Prospect Heights. He looked in Prospect Heights but said he couldn't afford it. He has a one-bedroom on the eighth floor: "I don’t want to take an elevator to my front door."

He said the settlement was almost exactly as previously offered. "This is no windfall," he said. "This is reimbursing me for tens of thousands of dollars in expenses that I’ve shelled out of pockets as a result of their actions and inactions. I’m not making anything. It’s simply doing my best to recoup my losses and get on with my life."

In 2008, when some in the footprint "went for weeks, even months" without utilities and trash pickup, suffering from rats and vermin, Sheets' housemate quit paying rent. "He knew I had no chance of getting a subtenant," Sheets said. "In order for me to remain a plaintiff and remain a tenant, I shelled out about $11,000. These people have no clue how expensive this is to the people they inflict this on."

Sheets has cut back on his visits to Freddy’s, the neighborhood bar where he once worked--and which employed his Prospect Heights housemate. "I’m not angry with them, but there’s been a tremendous amount of press about saving a bar," he said. "There’s an enormous distinction between this [Atlantic Yards] battle and saving Freddy’s. This is about corruption and graft on a breathtaking level."

"I’ve lived there longer than the house I grew up in. It’s a very difficult thing for me to move. It’s a very difficult thing to see how it is compared to five years ago."

While "it was a great house with a great garden," the garden dug up twice for underground testing, and maintenance went downhill, garbage pickup was long suspended, and the apartment suffered a break-in.

"This has not been a spectator sport for us," Sheets said last month. "Now, 30 feet away from my head, there’s [demolition of] an eight-story building, beginning shortly after 7:15 in the morning." (His former residence is the row house near center.)

"I cannot continue to be involved in this," he said. "I cannot continue to function living in that place… I’m spending all of my time keeping a room over my head... Half of my clothing is ruined, I have water damage."

“You’ve been blighted,” I offered.

"I’m painfully aware of that," Sheets replied. "You could camp out, more comfortably... They have ruined my home, have ruined my block, have ruined my neighborhood, have ruined my life."

He allowed that his grievances might sound minor compared to people living in horrific conditions in other parts of the world, "yet, at the same time, I live in the mightiest city in the wealthiest nation on earth. Why are we living like this?"

"What did we do? We just lived there. I just wanted to be left alone. Why do I have to prove to anyone that it shouldn't be happening?"

Paterson's Town Hall -- Some Other Moments of Truth, Or As Close As We Can Get
Tom Robbins. The Village Voice

[Gov. Pateson] took some small flak from council member Tish James about both Atlantic Yards and his proposed soda "fat tax" proposal which she said was "regressive." The governor, seated cross-legged in a wooden chair on a platform, said that the decision on the Yards happened on someone else's watch and that he is now just going along with an appeals court decision on it, one that "surprised him."...
(Emphasis added)

Wednesday, March 10
Wed. 3/10, 8:30pm SHARP.
Locally-made docs at Freddy's
Freddy’s Bar & Backroom, 485 Dean St. @ 6th Ave, 2/3 to Bergen, any train to Atlantic Pacific. freddysbackroom.com

Total program totals under 90 minutes

Join us Wednesday March 10th for three homemade docs from Brooklyn filmmakers:

Michael Galinsky will be on hand with interview footage and clips from a rough cut of their investigation into the politics of the massive Atlantic Yards/ Barclays Center development, Battle of Brooklyn.

Filmmaker Adam Chadwick and producer Bill Loerch will be on hand to introduce a rough cut of their in-progress doc Fit To Print, about the decline of the newspaper industry in America

Lastly, a screening of A Hole in a Fence (2007, 46min) about a peculiar abandoned lot in Red Hook, BK.

The Nets Are Actually in Great Shape, If You’re Okay With Seizing Private Property on Behalf of a Billionaire
New York Magazine. Daily Intelligencer

...let's never forget this: Private property in a thriving neighborhood is being seized and destroyed in a 21st-century democracy so Bruce Ratner and the richest man in Russia can build a basketball stadium and luxury apartments. That the Nets' roster is in fine shape is great news, we guess, if you missed rooting for East Germany.

...THE MTA HAS A DECISION TO MAKE — IT HAS TO DECIDE WHETHER IT IS APPROPRIATE IN THIS CRISIS TO FUND FLASHY "COSMETIC" MEGA-PROJECTS IN PLACES LIKE LOWER MANHATTAN WHILE STARVING THE SYSTEM AS A WHOLE, OR WHETHER IT MAKES MORE SENSE TO STRATEGICALLY AND TEMPORARILY REDIRECT FUNDS TO PRESERVE JOBS, SAFETY, AND RELIABILITY IN THE SYSTEM.

Yes, he actually said that, forgetting, we guess, his cheerleading for the public funding of a flashy, money-losing mega-project in Prospect Heights.

...At an MTA hearing in June, Markowitz's representative, Carlo Scissura, assured the board, "As we all know, the Borough President would never support anything that is not in the interests of all of Brooklyn and all Brooklynites."

• The 8.5 acre Vanderbilt Railyards, in Prospect Heights, were appraised by the MTA at $214.5 million. ($214 million is precisely the amount of money the MTA says it would cost to run the schoolkids MetroCard program for one year.)


• In 2005, after a politically fixed bidding process, the MTA awarded the Railyards to Ratner for $100 million, even though he was outbid by Extell Development Company's $150 million.


• In September 2009 the MTA Board reached a new agreement with Ratner where he pays only $20 million up front and $80 million over 22 years (if ever).

Despite eerie parallels, more outrage over Queens video casino deal than Vanderbilt Yard bids; however, FCR, not AEG, had an 18-month head start

What's the difference between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's (MTA) questionable procedure for disposing of the Vanderbilt Yard--the key public property inthe Atlantic Yards project--and the state's recent selection of Aqueduct Entertainment Group (AEG) to run a video casino at Aqueduct Raceway?

Well, there are several similar red flags, and the Vanderbilt Yard deal is clearly more of an outlier regarding one fundamental issue.

But the press and politicians are far more exercised about AEG.

AEG background

A month ago, news broke concerning the selection (bid documents) of AEG, hich has ties to influential Queens Rev. (and former Congressman) Floyd Flake. Circumstantial evidence pointed to a sweetheart deal tied to Gov. David Paterson's desire to gain Flake's support for his reelection bid.

The role of consultant Darryl Greene, who pleaded guilty in 1999 to a misdemeanor count of mail fraud, also drew criticism.

The press piled on, and an investigation is under way. By contrast, the Vanderbilt Yard deal in 2005 drew much less outrage--criticism in news stories, but no similar editorial assault.

And, as the graphic below suggests, had the press and/or elected officials been exercised, the public might have been concerned.

Indeed, press scrutiny of the AEG deal continues. Greene withdrew, but the Daily News reported Wednesday that he's on the board of a nonprofit still involved in the AEG project. On Tuesday, the Daily News reported suits faced by rapper Jay-Z's partner in an investment company that has a piece of the deal.

Points of comparison

(Right-click on the graphic below to open up a larger version)

Details on the Vanderbilt Yard deal

Remember: there were only two bidders and, while Extell Development Co. bid $150 million cash and Forest City Ratner bid $50 million cash, the MTA chose only to negotiate with FCR, which raised the stake to $100 million.

The MTA's argument, then and in court (where it survived gentle judicial scrutiny, after the deal was revised), was that the other elements of the deal were worth much more.

Perhaps, but Extell was never allowed to revise its bid.

Four years after Forest City Ratner won the bid, it last year was allowed to renegotiate more favorable terms in 2009, putting only $20 million down, paying the rest at a generous 6.5% interest rate, and agreeing to build a smaller yard that would save some $100 million.

Why FCR's deal was more of an outlier

But the key point of comparison, I believe, comes before the two bids, not after. Whatever the irregularities regarding the bids for the Aqueduct video casino, all the bidders began from the same starting line.

In the deal for the Vanderbilt Yard, Forest City Ratner was anointed this key piece of public property 18 months before a Request for Proposals (RFP) was issued.

Seth Pinsky, President of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, said last week that RFPs were the way to go: "Similarly, many of our larger developments will involve models where the city and or state are putting in significant seed money to bring infrastructure, then we plan on RFPing the development parcel to the private sector because we believe the private sector does that kind of development best."

That didn't happen with the Vanderbilt Yard--nor the Atlantic Yards project as a whole.

BrooklynSpeaks Atlantic Yards Presentation March 2010
via Scribd (AYReport)

BrooklynSpeaks Atlantic Yards Presentation March 2010

link

Freddy's in Brooklyn is a happening place that has been named one of the city's best bars by the Village Voice, Esquire, and The New York Times.

Unfortunately, Freddy's—and the surrounding neighborhood—is smack-dab in the footprint of the Atlantic Yards project, a multi-million-dollar, 22-acre development that is intended to create "an urban utopia" in the language of developer Bruce Ratner, and a new, publicly subsidized home to Ratner's Nets, who currently play NBA basketball (if you can call it that) in New Jersey.

But don't mistake Atlantic Yards as one more instance of the market-driven transformations for which New York is rightly famous. It's actually the latest case of eminent domain abuse, where private property is seized by the state on dubious grounds and then immediately handed over to private interests for private gain.

In this case, the Empire State Development Corporation has designated the thriving area as blighted to facilitate the taking of privately owned houses and businesses without having to pay full market value. Ratner, whose partners in the venture include rapper Jay Z and the Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, stands to pocket hundreds of millions of dollars on the deal, all thanks to the brute force of the state...

Continue reading

"Today's court ruling marks the transition from the obstruction to the construction phase," Forest City Ratner executive vice president Bruce Bender said Monday.

...State officials said the occupants would be evicted in the next few months [State officials would be wrong]- but Ratner plans to hold a ground-breaking ceremony March 11. [More on this in the coming days, but lets just say you should get your signage, noisemakers and effigies ready.]

...

"It feels like I live in a state run by crooks," said Daniel Goldstein, set to get the boot from his Pacific St. condo.

"Our state government ... has bent over backwards to give Bruce Ratner whatever he wants, including my home, and the homes of other citizens."

Patrons at Freddy's bar have threatened to chain themselves to the storefront to battle the eviction.

"There's chains on the bar and a lot of people will be buying handcuffs," said Freddy's regular and opposition organizer Steve de Seve.

"People aren't just going to put up with this ruling."

Deadly silence? Officials have had one e-mail exchange over Yards security
By Stephen Brown.

Is it possible that state officials have had just a single e-mail exchange regarding securing the outside of the Barclays Center arena in the heart of Brooklyn?

It seems unlikely — given 9-11, given the seven years since the project’s unveiling, given the so-called War on Terror, and given that this year, the Long Island Rail Road admitted that it ringed its new terminal across the street with an oversized anti-terror perimeter because it is necessary “in this day and age.”

Yet the Empire State Development Corporation claims that its officials have had just one e-mail exchange over security outside the proposed 18,000-seat arena.

The Brooklyn Paper received the e-mails — with all nine lines of text fully redacted — in response to a “Freedom of Information Law” request seeking “any and all internal documents pertaining to exterior security designs at the Barclays Center.”
...

The request for information stemmed from the controversy over the bollards at the new Long Island Rail Road terminal at Flatbush Avenue and Hanson Place, which would serve the sports fans attending Brooklyn Nets games at the Barclays Center, should it ever be built.

The tomb-like bollards — which exceed NYPD counter-terrorism standards, and have been decried as ugly — raised the question of whether similar measures would be taken at the Barclays Center.
...

Brooklyn authenticity, Atlantic Yards, and those "Brownstone" and "Loft" suites now being marketed for the Barclays Center

The term "authenticity" is being bandied about a lot these days, thanks to sociologist Sharon Zukin's new book Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places, subject of a major article in Sunday's New York Times and a forum at CUNY's Gotham Center for New York History. (Also see this interview with Zukin.)

And the concept has been used, rather aggressively, both to justify a new basketball arena in Brooklyn and to market arena suites named Loft and Brownstone, both references to Brooklyn features erased for the project.

What's authenticity?

But what exactly is authenticity? Zukin writes:

Claiming authenticity becomes prevalent at a time when identities are unstable and people are judged by their performance rather than by their history or innate character. Under these conditions authenticity differentiates a person, a product, or a group from its competitors; it confers an aura of moral superiority, a strategic advantage that each can use to its own benefit. In reality, few groups can be authentic in the contradictory ways that we use the term: on the one hand, being primal, historically first or true to a traditional vision, and on the other hand, being unique, historically new, innovative, and creative. In modern times, though it may not be necessary for a group to be authentic; it may be enough to claim to see authenticity in order to control its advantages.

If authenticity has a schizoid quality, it can also be deliberately made up of bits and pieces of cultural references...

At the panel

At a panel Monday night, Hunter College planning professor (and AY critic) Tom Angotti stated, "Every year we're reminded there's a project being proposed that will bring the Brooklyn Dodgers back. This is as if we missed the Brooklyn Dodgers."

"I really don't care if they ever come back," he said. "I would rather see our children have spaces to play baseball... as those parks that are built are increasingly crowded... while the city is being marketed for global athletic events."
...

Enter the suites

According to a 2/23/10 press release regarding suites:

With construction ongoing at the Barclays Center site in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment (BSE), an affiliate of Nets Sports and Entertainment, LLC, is introducing Barclays Center suites to prospective buyers as 'Your Home Away from Home.'

BSE will initiate its public suite sale in March when prospective suite buyers can visit the multi-media interactive Barclays Center Showroom, located on the 38th floor of The New York Times Building in Manhattan.

...The Barclays Center, to be located at Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, will be designed with 104 suites, including 68 Loft Suites... In addition to the Loft Suites, the arena will include 15 Brownstone Suites (16 seats each)

Loft? Brownstone? Both brownstones and lofts have already been demolished--and more would be demolished--for the arena.

Note the phrasing: "construction ongoing at the Barclays Center site." Not "construction of the arena." They haven't had a groundbreaking yet.
...

Full article.

With construction ongoing at the Barclays Center site in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment (BSE), an affiliate of Nets Sports and Entertainment, LLC, is introducing Barclays Center suites to prospective buyers as 'Your Home Away from Home.'

BSE will initiate its public suite sale in March when prospective suite buyers can visit the multi-media interactive Barclays Center Showroom, located on the 38th floor of The New York Times Building in Manhattan.

In addition to the Loft Suites, the arena will include 15 Brownstone Suites (16 seats each) -- 14 of which are sold -- six Studio Suites, and four Party Suites. The arena will also include 11 Backstage Suites, which will offer exclusive access to a Champagne bar.

For more information on how to own a "Home" at the Barclays Center, please call 646-616-9500.

New York ACORN relaunches (in same office) as New York Communities for Change; Stringer, de Blasio, other elected officials to appear at fundraisers

New York ACORN, Forest City Ratner's key partner in the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement (for the ever-tenuous promise of subsidy-monopolizing affordable housing) has been renamed New York Communities for Change.

Why? State affiliates of national ACORN, which has been tinged by internal scandal and bad press, have apparently decided to relaunch and decentralize.

In the case of the New York affiliate, at least, the office remains at the same location. It shares an address with the Working Families Party and its many convoluted affiliates--a parallel, to some extent, with the many overlapping entities connected to national ACORN.

Scheduled in the coming weeks are fundraisers featuring local elected officials, including Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, and City Council Member Brad Lander. Organizers are rallying support by pointing to what they see as ACORN's undeserved bad press.

The bad press--and the free rides

I agree that the "sting" perpetrated by some right-wing pranksters posing as a prostitute and pimp generated excessive and misleading coverage, given that news outlets--as documented by Brad Friedman in his The Brad Blog--took at face value video that suggested that "pimp" James O'Keefe appeared in ACORN offices wearing outlandish getup.

(Greg Brock, the Times Senior Editor/Standards, gave Friedman an even less convincing response than he's shown to me.)

Still, it's notable that ACORN has gotten very little bad press concerning two far more legitimate issues: the cover-up of an embezzlement by its founder's brother and the $1.5 million loan/gift bailout of the national organization by developer Forest City Ratner.

As the Washington Post reported 9/20/09:

The liberal political organizing group ACORN faced internal chaos and allegations of financial mismanagement and fraud long before two young conservatives embarrassed the group with undercover videos made at field offices in Washington and across the country.

Internal ACORN documents show an organization in turmoil as last year's presidential election approached, with a board torn over how to handle embezzlement by the founder's brother and growing concern that donor money and pension funds had been plundered in the insider scheme.

(Here's the 6/19/08 memo, thanks to Matthew Vadum of the conservative Capital Research Center, from attorney Elizabeth Kingsley, who warned of "an organizational culture that resembes a family business more than an accountable organization. Here's Vadum's coverage.)...