As new Trump Kings County Republican Club slams Atlantic Yards for "systemic failure," remember: it's bipartisan (& developer Trump worked the system, duh)

Atlantic Yards has had its history of strange bedfellows, such as when opponents of the project allied themselves with libertarians challenging eminent domain. (Well, liberal jurisprudence, especially in New York, has stood for unfettered power for condemnors, including dubious "blight.")

 

Another example recently surfaced in this harsh tweet from the new, Bay Ridge-based Donald J. Trump Kings County Republican Club:

The criticism is valid:

Atlantic Yards was supposed to bring 2,250 affordable units to Brooklyn. Fast-forward nearly two decades... and 876 units are still missing.

What’s the solution? Extend the deadline. Postpone the fines. Bend the rules. The people of Brooklyn were promised real homes. Instead, they’re getting real estate bait-and-switch. Let’s be clear: Penalties were meant to protect the public. Now they’re being “paused” to protect the developer. And you wonder why trust in government is gone? This is what systemic failure looks like, dressed in bureaucracy.

They're right that it's diminished trust in government, and they imply--though they could say it more explicitly--that Democrats can be blamed. 

 

After all, it's Gov. Kathy Hochul's decision to suspend the $2,000/month liquidated damages for each of the 876 affordable units not built by May 31, 2025, awaiting a renegotiation for a new plan, perhaps with more promised benefits associated with concessions like a new timeline, no fines, and increased development rights (aka free vertical "land").

Note the ironies

 

However, there are glaring ironies here. The original Atlantic Yards plan was approved under a Republican administration, that of Gov. George Pataki, in 2006, and it was Mayor Mike Bloomberg, elected in 2001 and 2005 as a nominal Republican, who agreed that the project could go through the state's General Project Plan, rather than the city's more rigorous Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP).

The wired deal to award railyard development rights to project sponsor Forest City Ratner ignored the possibility of negotiating with a rival bidder, Extell, which bid more cash--though Forest City said its overall bid was more valuable. That was under Republicans.

 

It's a bi-partisan failure. The City and State Funding Agreements, later incorporated in the project Development Agreement, gave the developer 25 years, not the promised ten years, to build the project. Those were developed under Republican Bloomberg (who in 2009 would run as an independent) and Democratic state governance.

Though developer Bruce Ratner claimed to be a liberal Democrat, he supported Republicans like Bay Ridge-based state Sen. Marty Golden, who backed the project at an oversight hearing and opposed residential parking permits, which might deter drivers looking for free parking near the Barclays Center.

The Trump angle

It's also a supreme irony for a club named for Donald Trump to criticize real-estate failures, given their namesake's history. In December 2016, Politico's Jack Shafer wrote America’s First Real Estate residency, an article that surely needs an update:

Then there’s Trump’s unique relationship with the truth, which earned him a chart-busting 59 four-Pinocchio ratings from Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler during the campaign. That’s a whole lot of big, fat lies in a very short period; but by developer standards, it’s a modest haul. Developers, to remain solvent, must crumple reality in a manner that keeps their clients, contractors, suppliers, partners and bankers content. It’s a business in which lying is not a sin but a virtue. After all, the clients, contractors and suppliers are all lying to the developer, too. These lies aren’t white lies in real estate land, they're green, situational truths spoken in the pursuit of dollars.

Trump too had a history of bait-and-switch. As Shafer wrote: 

A real estate guy can scorch the earth in pursuit of profit in his one-and-done deals—renege on debts, stiff contractors and screw clients as Trump has. But it comes at a price. According to the New York Times, major banks avoid him after losing millions in past deals. He’s been sued scores of times for nonpayment of his debts, including lawyers who have done work for him. He’s been slapped numerous times with liens and judgments for his unscrupulous business practices. His reputation stinks, indicating that even the industries grouped around real estate have some standards.

The blight parallel

And guess what. Trump used the Urban Development Corporation (UDC), later known as Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) or Empire State Development (ESD), just as Forest City did, for subsidies and eminent domain.

In February 1979, describing The Dirty Deal That Helped Make Donald Trump, the Voice's Barrett wrote:

In order for UDC to use all its statutory powers of exemption and condemnation, the board actually had to adopt a resolution that described the Grand Central area as a 'substandard or insanitary area.' We have redefined triage if East 42nd Street is the "substandard" neighborhood that a post-default UDC sees as the site for its largest project.

The final irony

The real estate industry is all about relationships. So what was the first job for Trump's daughter Ivanka after college? Forest City hired her, once Trump called Ratner.