Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

The tide may not have turned regarding Atlantic Yards, which has been officially approved and likely heads for new approvals, but public opinion is shifting, with the widespread disapproval of new designs for the arena. Yesterday New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff called it a “"stunning bait-and-switch" and a "shameful betrayal of the public trust" and today the New York Daily News quotes general disdain from locals. So last night was an opportune time for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn to hold a long-scheduled community update on the project, drawing some 130 people to the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Fort Greene. I saw a good number of unfamiliar faces, and there was a distinct energy in the crowd; they enthusiastically applauded speakers and gave City Council Member Letitia James a partial standing ovation. The project, as a DDDB handout (below) explained, is neither a dead deal nor a done deal, and the next six months will be cr...

Even if Michael Ratner, the most publicly left-wing member of the Ratner family, has given several contributions to Rep. Dennis Kucinich's Congressional and Presidential races, others in the family worked hard to support Kucinich's most recent opponent. Should Kucinich scrutinize plans for the Atlantic Yards arena the same way he's done the Yankee Stadium deal --with the important distinction of doing it beforehand rather than after-the-fact--undoubtedly there would be reason for the Ratners to support his next opponent. Cimperman v. Kucinich In a 2/26/08 piece in the Cleveland Leader headlined Cimperman Is Doing Corporate Work , Cleveland gadfly journalist Roldo Bartimole wrote about the campaign of Downtown Councilman Joe Cimperman to gain support from developers in the city, including Forest City Enterprises. Bartimole wrote: Cimperman got one of his first tastes of the downtown crowd after taking office. At a holiday party, someone poked him in the back. It was the leg...

The Tax Foundation's new report, From the House That Ruth Built to the House the IRS Built: New York City and New York Yankees Abuse PILOTs to Finance New Stadium , draws on reports from Assemblyman Richard Brodsky and hearings held by Rep. Dennis Kucinich. The same criticisms could be launched at the Atlantic Yards arena, should it be built, given that the same regulations that allowed the financing scheme for Yankee Stadium were grandfathered in for AY . Based on calculations from Brodsky, the $942 million in initial bonds would save the team between $231 million and $471 million--though the federal government bears the brunt of the cost. "Without this generous subsidy, it is unlikely that such an expensive stadium could have been built," the report states. (The Tax Foundation describes itself as a nonpartisan tax research group based in Washington, DC, though some say it has a conservative bent .) Executive summary Travis Greaves and Joseph Henchman offer this summary...

Representatives Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Ted Poe (R-TX) have asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to demand that Citigroup dissolve its $400 million naming rights contract for the New York Mets, known as Citifield. Citigroup has received more than $350 billion in taxpayer money from economic stabilization efforts and loans, the letter notes. "In every state, American homes are foreclosed and people put on the street. At Citigroup, 50,000 people will lose their jobs. Yet in the boardroom of Citigroup, spending $400 million to put a name on stadium seems like a good idea. The Treasury Department, which forced Citigroup corporate executives to give up their private jet, should also demand that Citigroup cancel its $400 million advertisement at the Mets field and instead begin to repay their debt to the taxpayers," stated Kucinich. Essentially, the naming rights agreement is a marketing expense, and even banks that take federal money aren't being asked to stop marke...

The big news in today's papers is that, as the New York Times reports, in an article headlined City Gives Up Its Stadium Suite in Exchange for Cash : After intense criticism, the Bloomberg administration has given up a perk it worked fervently to secure: a free luxury suite at the new Yankee Stadium. But lower down in the article there's a hint at the larger story: “Does the Bloomberg administration really think that giving up a suite at Yankee Stadium is going to soften the blow that this project has had on city taxpayers?” said Bettina Damiani, director of Good Jobs New York... Indeed, though Rep. Anthony Weiner, a stated mayoral candidate, criticizes the suite deal in the Times, Tom Robbins in the Village Voice points out that both Weiner and Comptroller William Thompson, a fellow candidate, are unwilling to criticize the larger question of taxpayer funds supporting the stadium via tax-exempt bonds. If they're unwilling to raise that issue, it's unlikely they'd ...

Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez continues to look into the astounding inflation (from $26.8 million to $204 million) in valuation of the land under Yankee Stadium, apparently aimed to qualify for the amount of foregone taxes needed to pay off construction bonds via PILOTs (payments in lieu of taxes). (Yes, Atlantic Yards watchers are waiting to see if something similar happens with the land under the planned $950 million arena.) In a column yesterday headlined E-mails reveal how city went to bat for Yankee to inflate value of stadium land , Gonzalez describes how it took only hours for the Department of Finance's chief tax assessor to do an about-face and "jack up" the valuation. Smoking gun Gonzalez writes: "This is the smoking gun," said Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, who has spearheaded a state probe into the stadium deal. "The professionals did their job. The political appointees then ordered them to change the assessment - and they did." And Gonz...

On yesterday's Live from City Hall with Mayor Mike and John Gambling radio show, Mayor Mike Bloomberg said some very curious things about sweetheart deals, tax-exempt financing, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's capital budget. Special deals At about 25:45, he flatly declared: Letting any group have a special deal is not what democracy is about. It breeds contempt for our laws. Pop Quiz: That was said in relationship to... A) The zoning override that allows Forest City Ratner to build Atlantic Yards at the size it desires B) The City Council's vote, at his behest, to overturn and extend term limits C) The ongoing sales by Indian reservations of tax-free cigarettes Answer: C Financing sports facilities At 22:50, Gambling brought up a controversial issue with a big fat pitch: Speaking of things that are expensive, I'm reading that our baseball stadiums are getting more and more expensive, and they've looked for more money… Bloomberg responded breezily, ...

Let’s take a walk over to Alphabet City, to the part of the East Village still called the Loisaida . Turn off 14th Street down Avenue D. Then, on the east (left) side of the street, going south, the Jacob Riis Houses, public housing named after the journalist/reformer, stretch from 13th Street all the way to 6th Street, 19 buildings in all. On the right side of the street is a series of modest retail establishments. As you approach 8th Street, on the right (pictured) you see the All in One Value Center, Crown Fried Chicken, and a bodega with a green awning, all occupying rehabilitated tenement buildings. Turn right at the bodega and see a cleaners occupy the same building, its entrance on the north side of 8th Street. Then there’s a vacant lot, to the west a building houses a ground-floor church, Iglesia Evangelica Bautista. Next door is a modern, handsome public housing complex, the four-story Lower East Side III , built in 1996, flush to the street, unlike the Riis Houses superblock....

In response to those who've prematurely assumed that the Atlantic Yards arena is dead, I've asserted that it is, rather, very much in play . Indeed, the recommitment of the Barclays Center naming rights deal is a sign that the project has some juice, even as the stock of parent Forest City Enterprises slumbers. (It´s still down nearly 90% from its peak, but up some 50% from its low.) At the same time, the Congressional investigation led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) into questionable assessments of Yankee Stadium also remains in play, as Kucinich has vowed. (“We’re going to continue our work here, make no mistake about that," he said after a hearing October 24.) Should further and more concrete evidence of dubious practices be found, that would cast doubt on the tax-exempt bonds issued for the Yankees and, inevitably, the still inchoate plan for tax-exempt bonds issued for the Atlantic Yards arena. In other words, even though more lenient regulations for the arena bo...

If the Atlantic Yards arena moves closer toward construction, maybe the New York Times will take a skeptical look at the numbers behind it. Meanwhile, in today's article about baseball stadiums, headlined As Stadiums’ Costs Swell, Benefits in Question , there's a lot of skepticism. And then there's some he-said, she-said: Still, Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Democrat from Westchester, and Good Jobs New York, a private advocacy group, have been critical of the Yankees project for what Mr. Brodsky says are “massive subsidies” resulting in too few jobs. He has also said that the city may have manipulated the value of the stadium land in order to comply with federal regulations regarding tax-exempt financing for stadiums, an assertion that a Congressional subcommittee under Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, a Democrat from Cleveland, is investigating. The Bloomberg administration and the Yankees have vigorously disputed those criticisms. OK, but things definitely do not co...

During a charged but inconclusive Congressional subcommittee hearing yesterday, a sometimes testy Rep. Dennis Kucinich pressed officials from the New York City Department of Finance (DOF) and New York City Industrial Development Authority (IDA) on how and why an assessment for the land under Yankee Stadium leaped sixfold in a day. The officials stood their ground during the three-hour hearing, insisting implacably that nothing untoward had gone on, even as a fellow witness, New York Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, periodically expressed disbelief at their testimony. (From left: Brodsky, Department of Finance Commissioner Martha Stark, Industrial Development Authority President Seth Pinsky; and New York Yankees President Randy Levine.) While the hearing proceeded under the conclusory title, “Gaming the Tax Code,” and Brodsky and Kucinich walked in convinced of exactly that, the only “gaming” that clearly occurred was accomplished by the city and the Yankees, given that, as a frustrated Ku...