From the Times's article today on the lawsuit filed Wednesday by Atlantic Yards footprint tenants challenging the relocation plan:
James P. Stuckey, the Forest City official in charge of Atlantic Yards, said yesterday that the company sent all its tenants a letter in 2005 describing a relocation agreement and instructing them to get in touch if they were interested in it. He said the company chose not to send the agreement itself, unsolicited, lest it be seen as an attempt to intimidate the tenants by treating the project as a settled deal.
The latest version of the agreement, which Mr. Stuckey provided, does include all the offers cited by the development corporation, though it also says that if the landlord of the interim apartment ends the lease, the offer of subsidized rent is void.
That's a lot less protection than rent stabilization, which currently protects those renters who are suing, and news to me.
Loophole remains
The relocation offer would be void, as I've written, if the developer abandons the project. The Times reported:
Mr. Stuckey said that if the project was eventually not built, “we would no longer have an obligation” because there would no longer be a project plan for Forest City to adhere to. But citing the hundreds of millions of dollars Forest City has put into the project already, he said there was almost no chance that it would simply abandon the project.
Well, if the eminent domain lawsuit is successful, that decision would not be solely up to the developer.
James P. Stuckey, the Forest City official in charge of Atlantic Yards, said yesterday that the company sent all its tenants a letter in 2005 describing a relocation agreement and instructing them to get in touch if they were interested in it. He said the company chose not to send the agreement itself, unsolicited, lest it be seen as an attempt to intimidate the tenants by treating the project as a settled deal.
The latest version of the agreement, which Mr. Stuckey provided, does include all the offers cited by the development corporation, though it also says that if the landlord of the interim apartment ends the lease, the offer of subsidized rent is void.
That's a lot less protection than rent stabilization, which currently protects those renters who are suing, and news to me.
Loophole remains
The relocation offer would be void, as I've written, if the developer abandons the project. The Times reported:
Mr. Stuckey said that if the project was eventually not built, “we would no longer have an obligation” because there would no longer be a project plan for Forest City to adhere to. But citing the hundreds of millions of dollars Forest City has put into the project already, he said there was almost no chance that it would simply abandon the project.
Well, if the eminent domain lawsuit is successful, that decision would not be solely up to the developer.
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