Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

I already wrote this past week how New York Magazine's profile of Extell Development head Gary Barnett misleadingly claimed he made a "surprise eleventh-hour bid for Atlantic Yards." After all, only the Vanderbilt Yard was up for bid--less than 40% of the site Ratner sought. But there's another fundamental error in the profile, headlined The Anti-Trump ; it ignores how Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) alerted Extell to the bid. Here's the New York Magazine version: I n June 2005, shortly after he signed the record deal for Riverside South, Barnett summoned John Cetra, a Harvard-trained architect who was finishing work on the Orion, to his office. Barnett told ­Cetra he was thinking of making a bid for Atlantic Yards. Cetra was shocked by the idea. At the time, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was in the process of negotiating with Bruce Ratner over the rights to transform the area over the Brooklyn rail yards into a Frank Gehry–­designed ...

From No Land Grab 's Eric McClure: The Anti-Trump Gary Barnett, the builder of this era’s glitziest buildings, does not have cotton-candy hair or a big mouth—but what he does have is hubris. New York Magazine by Gabriel Sherman The anti-Trump? More like the anti-Ratner. NY Magazine's profile of developer Gary Barnett goes into a good deal of Atlantic Yards backstory — some of which gets "Oderized" in the comments section . Barnett’s lone-wolf style has not exactly endeared him to his peers. New York real estate has long attracted players who view business as both a commercial and a civic pursuit. Jerry Speyer, the co-CEO of Tishman Speyer, is perhaps the most famous archetype of the New York macher , serving as a confidant to mayors and governors. Inside the fishbowl of New York real estate, Barnett has few friends. He’s a subject of fascination and derision, a combative figure who is unafraid to challenge the industry order. Since blasti...

The central question behind the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's June 24 decision to renegotiate more generous terms for the Vanderbilt Yard with Forest City Ratner--$20 million rather than $100 million down, and a replacement railyard worth $100 million less, was whether another deal was possible. No one asked that question of the MTA, though board members Jeff Kay and Mark Page at the meeting offered justifications, Kay saying "The market is what the market is" and Page asserting, "I think that this is as good a deal as is going to be available to us for this property in the foreseeable future.” The rebuttal, of course, comes from the New York Times, which in 1994 editorialized regarding the Coliseum site at Columbus Circle: The most sensible course now is for the city to find out anew the market value of this property, and that cannot be accomplished through negotiations with one bidder. As noted below, MTA CFO Gary Dellaverson told the press the opposit...