Daily News columnist Hamill: "once-forgotten area of weedy rail yards... will be the entertainment pacemaker"

New York Daily News columnist Dennis Hamill is not as much an abusurdist as his New York Post counterpart Andrea Peyser, though 1) that's a pretty high bar and 2) they both seem to have forgotten the 10,000 office jobs that so enthused them.

But, as in the past, he remains a reliable conveyor of developer Bruce Ratner's press releases. Today, in A whole new arena: Brooklyn's O'Malley curse begins to end in 60 days, he writes:

this once-forgotten area of weedy rail yards, empty lots and a few blocks of vital homes claimed in eminent domain will be the entertainment pacemaker of our most populous borough.

He seems to not know that parent Forest City Enterprises then-CEO Chuck Ratner called it a "great piece of real estate." Or that two-thirds of the "weedy rail yards"--the "blight" that this project was supposed to overcome--have not been developed, because Forest City Ratner has not started paying for them.

In that, Hamill echoes an April article in the New York Times, which stated:

For Forest City Ratner, the developer of the project, which was strongly backed by many city leaders, the changes are evidence that the arena has already met its goal of transforming a dreary section of Brooklyn — the Long Island Rail Road’s rail yards and surrounding industrial buildings, which the company’s spokesman described as “ a scar that divided the neighborhood.”