Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

New York Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica wrote 11/13/05: If Caring Bruce Ratner is still the owner of the Nets in five years, I'll eat my hat. A Nets hat, even. He doesn't want the team. He never really did. He wants the land. Dan Doctoroff thought he didn't have to buy people left and right to push his agenda with the West Side Stadium, he was Deputy Mayor. Ratner was much smarter about all this, which is why he's got all these "community leaders" on scholarship now. Lupica was right (though it doesn't look like he wrote a follow-up). The sale of a majority interest to Mikhail Prokhorov was announced in September 2009.

Unlike the nasty New York Daily News editorial board , sports columnist Mike Lupica joins metro columnist Juan Gonzalez in taking a sympathetic view of the settlement to which Daniel Goldstein agreed this week: Daniel Goldstein, of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, held out against the Atlantic Yards project, and Caring Bruce Ratner, longer than you believed anyone ever would. He was the last guy in the building and the last guy on the block, and it was like being behind enemy lines. So I'm glad he got his $3 million from Ratner. I wish it had been more, because the guy didn't get into this to get rich, he got into this to fight for his neighborhood, and that doesn't make you a hustler like Ratner, it makes you a good, tough New Yorker. (Of course, as noted , after lawyers fees and a finding a replacement apartment, it wasn't close to $3 million.)

New York Daily News Sports columnist Mike Lupica, in his column today , takes a few swipes at James Dolan , CEO of Cablevision, chairman of Madison Square Garden, and thus principal owner of the Knicks, whose woes have been caused largely by some unwise management decisions: Incidentally, whom do you think Knick fans would like to have own their team right now, Dolan or the Mikhail Prokhorov? You don't actually have to answer, it was a kind of a rhetorical question. You know why they'd pick Prokhorov? Because they'd pick anybody over the guy they have. ...I don't mean to harp on this, but why CAN'T we use eminent domain to seize the Garden from Dolan the way the city and state seized all that real estate in Brooklyn for Caring Bruce Ratner?

Two weeks ago, Daily News columnist Mike Lupica called Atlantic Yards "a hustle in broad daylight by Caring Bruce Ratner from the start." Today he writes : Daniel Goldstein of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn was the hero of the whole Atlantic Yards story from the start. It just turned out he was another guy who went up against the machine in this city and lost. And when you had some of the biggest politicians around, starting with our imperial mayor, obsessed with not looking bad, it was like trying to stop the ocean. The worst of it? They didn't just throw in with a hustler like Bruce Ratner, they rolled over for Ratner and did tricks. Go back and look at what Ratner promised once they trampled eminent domain laws for him and basically handed him that land. And look at what he delivered. And then try to tell yourself ground-breaking was a great day for the borough of Brooklyn and for New York. Well, Goldstein actually wasn't there at the start (hint: Patti Hagan...

Daily News Sports Columnist Mike Lupica was a couple of days late, and he prudently avoided criticizing his own newspaper's pandering (below), but today he punctured the Atlantic Yards bubble: At a time when the city and the state have no money to do anything, they kept plodding ahead on Atlantic Yards until they finally broke ground the other day. And then acted as if the rest of us were supposed to cheer. It was a hustle in broad daylight by Caring Bruce Ratner from the start. It was always a real estate deal masquerading as a sports deal, no matter how many politicians want you to believe they're bringing the basketball Dodgers to Brooklyn. Chris Smith was so right in New York magazine the other day: In the end this was a losing deal for everybody, starting with the people who got moved out of their homes by a flagrant abuse of eminent-domain laws. You wonder why nobody trusts politicians around here anymore? Because of no-bid scams like this.

New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica on golf star Tiger Woods's tightly scripted apology: There is no way of knowing how much of this was real and honest from Tiger Woods because there never is with celebrities in trouble, who will say anything, tell any lie, to get themselves out of trouble. Sports economist Andrew Zimbalist, in the Boston Herald : “It sounded completely genuine to me,” said Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist at Smith College. “The content was open and candid. He said all the right things. Hm, let's see: should we trust Lupica or Zimbalist in analysis of jobs and housing planned for Atlantic Yards?

From Daily News columnist Mike Lupica today: I love the idea that people are wondering about Mikhail Prokhorov getting the Nets, and getting into the NBA. Are they kidding? What, our rich guys are more noble than Russian rich guys? Besides, with the state of the current economy in the NBA, a member of the Gambino family could get a team. After all, the NBA is projecting league-wide losses of about $400 million this season, according to Commissioner David Stern.

With a blowout loss last night, the Nets are 3-40 and on track--despite claims to the contrary in the New York Times--to surpass the Philadelphia 76ers of 1972-73, who went 9-73. From sports columnist Mike Lupica in today's New York Daily News: You have to say that only the people having a worse winter than Martha Coakley, Senate loser in Massachusetts, are the Nets. From Mark Ginocchio in the Nets Are Scorching blog : As it stands, and I hesitate to say it, but THIS might finally be rock bottom for the 2009-10 Nets. Because if it gets any worse that it’s been the past two games against Utah and the Golden State Warriors, the league should really consider contracting the organization, throwing Bruce Ratner in jail for fraud and blacklisting Rod Thorn and Kiki Vandeweghe from ever having a role with an NBA roster again. Because while the Nets may technically be an NBA team, they’ve lost their last two games by a combined 65 points, allowing 113.5 points and only scoring 81. Hoops ...

Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica takes a shot at the owner (for now) of the Nets: [NBA Commissioner] David Stern must be awfully proud of the job Bruce Ratner has done with the Nets. You know who Ratner really is? Donald Sterling of the Clips on training wheels. Snap. He's said it before .

I took a second read of the past week's New Yorker profile of Mayor Mike Bloomberg, headlined THE UNTOUCHABLE: Can a good mayor amass too much power? and was struck by the absence of a significant critique. Yes, as I wrote , had the profile encompassed public authorities reform and delved into Atlantic Yards, it could've been much tougher. But writer Ben McGrath gave Bloomberg too much of a bye. Consider these passages: Many in the city’s political class believe that he’s been a good, if overrated, executive, and acknowledge that his ability to forgo the shaming hat-in-hand routine has proved far more valuable in warding off corruption than they would have liked to admit. ...“He’s probably been a fine mayor, but he seems a lot better, because all the usual agitators—groups that exist to drive a mayor crazy—have in one way or another been bought off,” one Democratic political consultant theorized. “It’s amazing the climate you can have when nobody is criticizing you.” Sure, man...

From New York Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica today : But when does [NBA Commissioner David] Stern tell [Nets owner] Bruce Ratner that it is time for him to get out of the basketball business? When does the commissioner tell Ratner to see if he can find a buyer who's more interested in the NBA than real estate? Ratner is Donald Sterling of the [Los Angeles] Clippers, just taller. Last month, ESPN The Magazine called Ratner the second-worst owner in professional sports, and the worst owner in pro basketball. Ratner was ranked #121, while Sterling was #116 , though his team was overall rated worse (#122) than the Nets (#111) in the Ultimate Standings.

New York Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica writes , in some way echoing Steve Politi of the Star-Ledger: You wonder how this all would have worked out for Bruce Ratner if he'd tried to bring the Nets to Brooklyn the right way. Not using them to make a real estate score. Not looking to turn the part of Brooklyn that the city and state handed to him into Ratner World. Not with some Frank Gehry/Star Wars arena. Just a basketball arena for a basketball team that would have brought professional sports back to the borough of Brooklyn. But that wasn't enough for Ratner, and soon he'll be out of the Nets business and somebody else will own the team that can't get any better because there's no money. Ratner will blame this on the economy, or Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, or Danny Goldstein, who led the resistance. The person Ratner ought to blame is himself. Just an arena? "Just a basketball arena for a basketball team" would never have been enough fo...

Jumping on the bandwagon of architectural criticism, Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica today opines: Is it just me, or is the design for Bruce Ratner’s new Nets arena starting to look more and more like a White Castle? I'd say it looks like Conseco Fieldhouse and its inspiration, Hinkle Fieldhouse at Butler University, both in Indianapolis.

New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica, essentially a sports columnist, periodically writes about local and national politics; today he turns his attention to the implied inevitability of Mayor Mike Bloomberg's campaign for a third term in the wake of the controversial extension of term limits. The signal example of such inevitability is Bloomberg's enormous campaign spending, which is evident from the advertisements that wrap the column. (Note that the ostensible URL for the column, linked from the home page, is somehow disabled, but Lupica's columnist page and another URL do offer the column. Click on graphics to enlarge.) Lupica writes: Bloomberg is going to spend so much of his own money on a third term there will be times over the next six months when you'll barely be able to notice he's running at all. It's why the real theme of Bloomberg's reelection campaign - one begun with $4.5 million worth of television commercials - is this, whether the ma...

From  today's column by New York Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica: If the Nets really want to come to New York and Brooklyn comes off the table, how come they don't do something with the Islanders on all that land on Willets Point? This would involve the next Nets owner, of course, after Ratner inevitably sells the team. Until Brooklyn comes off the table, the response, of course, would be that Brooklyn is a more central location--which it is. But a baseball stadium out there still does pretty well.

From Mike Lupica in today's New York Daily News: Here's a heads-up for Bruce Ratner's flacks: When you put Brooklyn people up to sending me e-mails, I print them up and then make them into paper airplanes.

Apparently the reversal of the Atlantic Yards inevitability meme has now been joined by the AY downsizing meme--and both are far less certain than asserted. We don't know what a revamped Atlantic Yards arena would look like, other than there would likely be less glass--which certainly would help with security. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz recently speculated : There may be a chance to incorporate design and construction changes that will lower the bottom line and celebrate the ‘Brownstone Brooklyn’ architecture that makes our borough unique. It was unclear how much that referred to the arena or to the associated towers. Hype in the Post Still, on Monday, the New York Post turned that into: The economic downturn has even scaled back the hopes of the project's biggest cheerleader, Borough President Marty Markowitz, who recently called for the planned future home of the NBA Nets to be substituted for one with a cheaper "brownstone" façade... The Post even...

In the New York Daily News, Julian Garcia, the Nets beat writer, writes a scathing piece about the lukewarm support given to a decent team--the product of the Nets' lame-duck status. The headline: IZOD Center? How about we start calling it the U NOD OFF Center . He writes: But instead of fighting each other, the team and its fans should point the finger at ownership and those executives who promised more than five years ago to relocate to Brooklyn but have so far managed only to move to a town called limbo. Delay after delay, mostly due to legal issues, has continuously pushed back the start of construction of a proposed downtown Brooklyn arena that is supposed to be part of a larger development project, Atlantic Yards. However, spokespeople for team owner Bruce Ratner continue to tell reporters that the Nets will be playing in Brooklyn before the end of 2011. And I'll be the Nets' starting center by then. Indeed. Maybe he's done the math , too, or just stopped believin...

Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica, in today's column , wonders: One of these days [NBA] Commissioner [David] Stern needs to figure out where the [New Jersey] Nets are going to be playing in a few years if they're not playing in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, the Nets are improving . That doesn't mean they're filling seats yet, though.

From columnist Mike Lupica in today's New York Daily News: Quick question for Caring Bruce Ratner: Where can I buy my "Brooklyn Nets" T-shirt?