The lead story in this week's Brooklyn Paper comes with a banner headline: DOWNTOWN DOWNTURN: Condo price cut on Flatbush.From the article:
“In [the Oro] building there are [many] apartments that are exactly alike — and the people who like them, bought them and now, what do you do with the rest?” [broker Roslyn Huebener] added. “They are not original like other buildings with four or six different units. They’re putting a glut in their own buildings.”
Downtown super-broker Chris Havens told The Brooklyn Paper the price cuts aren’t a case of desperation on the part of the developer, but a dose of common sense.
“Reality is setting in on pricing,” Havens said. “The coming year will see a lot more aggressive pricing to get down to the market price.”
The Brooklyn Paper, in its editorial, states We’re still bullish on Downtown!.
What's missing
But there's nothing in the Brooklyn Paper, nor its Community Newspaper Group (aka Murdoch-owned) sibling Courier-Life, about the dubious KPMG report released Wednesday concerning the market for condos and rentals in the Atlantic Yards project. That report claimed that the Oro was 75% sold.
Nor did the two newspapers cover the Empire State Development Corporation's September 17 vote to approve the 2009 Modified General Project Plan.
In March, Brooklyn Paper editor-in-chief Gersh Kuntzman, who regularly reminds us how both he and the paper are "award-winning," asserted that "our coverage of Atlantic Yards has not 'tailed off.'"
The evidence, however, shows that it has.
The decrease in coverage of important twists and turns in the Atlantic Yards story in the Brooklyn Paper is palpable since Murdoch bought it. It is glaringly obvious, a disservice to readers and a shame, but sadly not surprising.
ReplyDeleteOne wonders what Ed Weintraub things about this sad state of affairs.