Gilmartin, again, on the Barclays Center subway entrance

OK, it's part of her shtick. As I reported in March, former Forest City Ratner/Forest City New York CEO MaryAnne Gilmartin lamented cost inflation in the subway entrance needed for the Barclays Center: "In the original pro forma, we had it for something like $6 million. It ended up costing $72 million."

Last month, as reported in the Real Deal 10/23/18 and similarly in Real Estate Weekly that day, Gilmartin used that anecdote to highlight the challenges in dealing with government agencies. From the Real Deal:

When building the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, she said, Forest City Ratner had proformaed the cost of a new subway entrance at $5 million. But when the company got a look under the sidewalk at all the corrosion in the subway, executives realized it would cost much more.
When Forest City went to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, though, the agency put all the cost of construction on the developer — $72 million.
“It was harder to build that entrance than it was to build the billion dollar Barclays Center,” she said.

Or, from REW:

“The level of corrosion, deterioration and the need for repair is so seismic that you end up, if you touch it you own it,” she said.

OK, she's got a point, but... as I wrote in March, it's possible that, as of the project unveiling in December 2003, they'd estimated $6 million, but "mass transit improvements" were budgeted at $29 million as of Forest City's July 2005 bid to Metropolitan Transportation Authority for Vanderbilt Yard development rights, as shown in the graphic at right and link above.

So the pro forma was already updated. Did Forest City bear any responsibility in low-balling infrastructure costs?