Why was the city sanitation department yesterday ready to clear Forest City Ratner's private Fort Greene Place?

Update 12:32 pm: A Forest City spokesman says the developer always clears its own streets. But I'm still waiting to hear from the Department of Sanitation as to why they were there. And, as described, Forest City staff seemed to be working cooperatively with Sanitation.

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Fort Greene Place, the street between Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Center and Atlantic Terminal malls from Atlantic Avenue to Hanson Place, has since 1986 been demapped for a private street. (Last May, Tracy Collins was barred by FCR security from taking photos there.)

So a Brooklynite visiting the Department of Motor Vehicles office at the Atlantic Center mall yesterday afternoon was surprised to see Department of Sanitation vehicles on the street and savvy enough to snap a few pictures.

Street closed

"When I got to Fort Greene Place, FCR security had closed off the street and cleared all vehicles from the street," my correspondent reported. "I saw a Department of Sanitation orange front loader, an orange salt truck with a plow on it, and a sanitation supervisor's vehicle on the street. They were getting ready to plow."

(Photo at right shows plow near Hanson Place, pointing south.)

"I went up to a sanitation man in uniform, probably the front loader driver, and asked him why sanitation was plowing a private street. He did not seem to be aware of that. He asked me who owns the street and I said Bruce Ratner. I told him taxpayers shouldn't be paying to have a private street plowed. The FCR security woman listened to all this in silence."

"I then went into the building to go to DMV and I took the pictures from there. When I came back out 30 minutes later, Sanitation was gone and it looked like they did not plow the street as they intended to."

(Photo at left looks south to Atlantic Avenue.)

Who's in charge?

Because Fort Greene Place is privately owned, any parking or traffic enforcement is handled privately, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation told the 3/27/04 Brooklyn Paper.

Presumably the same goes for sanitation--but perhaps there's an explanation. See top for some partial answers and stay tuned for an update.