Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

Longtime Assembly Speaker (and, most recently, just Assemblyman) Sheldon Silver has been convicted in a federal corruption trial, having gained nearly $4 million in kickbacks from two schemes. Surely he will appeal, but, for now, the judgments are harsh As the Times put it in an editorial: Mr. Silver used public funds or promoted legislation that benefited a cancer researcher and two real estate firms. In one scheme, Mr. Silver used a secret discretionary fund at his disposal to make two grants totaling $500,000 to Dr. Robert Taub at Columbia University . Dr. Taub then referred patients suffering from mesothelioma to the law firm Weitz & Luxenberg, which then paid Mr. Silver for the referrals. In another scheme, in return for support for legislation benefiting real estate interests, Mr. Silver pushed Glenwood Management and the Witkoff Group to refer some tax matters to a small law firm, Goldberg & Iryami. That firm then secretly sent a portion of its fees to Mr. Silver...

Once you reach 1:21 in the video below, please make sure you have no liquid in your mouth. The Eyewitness News story, keyed to the opening of a Legoland at Forest City Ratner's Ridge Hill complex in Yonkers, resurrects an old complaint: the mall--formally "Westchester's Ridge Hill"--is named for the affluent county, not the gritty city. Mayor, Mike Spano (once a Forest City Ratner lobbyist) asked for reconsideration, but really, that decision was made before he took office. But then catch the snippet from Forest City CEO Bruce Ratner at 1:21: "No business today can survive simply on a city or a town, it has to survive on a whole region." Then he does that super-convincing hand-waving thing. Yeah, the same Bruce Ratner who has sold the heck out of "Brooklyn" to the point where it dwarfs "Nets" and, not so long ago, said , "There's no better place in the world than Brooklyn." The famous region.

Powerful developer Forest City Ratner got away with charging for parking--and issuing seemingly official tickets--on private streets at its Ridge Hill shopping center in Yonkers for more than 18 months. (Forest City Ratner impersonating the government yet again," commented Michael D. D. White, which raises questions about the proposed business improvement district in Brooklyn that includes Forest City's Barclays Center.) And without some local journalistic scrutiny this week, the whole problem would have been ignored. Papering it over See, Yonkers on 1/4/13 issued an anodyne press release headlined  CITY OF YONKERS AND FOREST CITY RATNER ANNOUNCE NEW ROAD MANAGEMENT PLAN AT RIDGE HILL SHOPPING CENTER : Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano and Forest City Ratner Companies (FCRC) today announced that effective immediately, patrons of the Ridge Hill Shopping Center will no longer be required to pay for the use of on-street, metered spaces. This move is made in anticipation ...

A convoluted corruption case reached a charged endpoint yesterday, as former Yonkers Democratic City Council Member Sandy Annabi was sentenced to six years in prison, while her political ally, mentor, and "sugar daddy" benefactor, former Yonkers Republican Chairman Zehy Jereis, was sentenced to four years. Both sentences were significantly less than prosecutors requested , though far more than the defense attorneys sought. U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon, in imposing the sentence from her Lower Manhattan courtroom, stressed the duo's effort to cover up evidence in the case, which involved Annabi's vote flips in 2006 to support Forest City Ratner's giant Ridge Hill retail/residential project and another, unbuilt project known as Longfellow, as well as Annabi's convictions on tax and mortgage fraud counts. Annabi, who chose not to testify in the trial that began last February, made an emotional presentation to the court yesterday, before breaking down,...

Responding to pleas for leniency from a former Yonkers official and her political mentor , federal prosecutors fired back yesterday with some powerful responses to arguments made by the guilty, but left a curious gap regarding the issue of who benefited the most, a persistent issue in the investigation, which spared Ridge Hill developer Forest City Ratner. Prosecutors Jason Halperin and Perry Carbone, in a 46-page memo presaging sentencing Nov. 19, ask U. S. District Judge Colleen McMahon to abide by federal guidelines that would put former Council Member Sandy Annabi in prison for at least 14 years, and Zehy Jereis for at least 11 years. By contrast, Annabi's lawyer has asked for no prison time, while Jereis's attorney proposed a prison term of 10 to 18 months. (Also see coverage in the Journal News.) Writes  Hezi Aris of the Yonkers Tribune, who points out that the judge had raised questions about the strength of the prosecutors' case: Bruce Ratner, the Milio fa...

As sentencing Nov. 19 approaches for a former Yonkers elected official and her political mentor, both convicted in a corruption case involving two real estate projects, the lawyer for the political operative has asked the judge to look at the larger picture. And that picture suggests that neither operative Zehy Jereis nor former Council Member Sandy Annabi were as big winners as Forest City Ratner, developer of the Ridge Hill mall and office project. (The developer was not charged; its behavior , though not criminal, was less than sterling.) A call for leniency Much of the pre-sentencing memo prepared by Jereis's attorney argues for a lighter sentence than guidelines suggest, based on Jereis's character in the community. As the Journal News reported 11/9/12, in Zehy Jereis' lawyer urges leniency in Yonkers corruption sentence : Former Yonkers GOP chairman Zehy Jereis deserves significant leniency when sentenced in his federal corruption case because of his ongoing ...

Bruce Bender and Scott Cantone, Forest City Ratner's top government relations officials until they left earlier this year in the wake of the Ridge Hill corruption trial , have formed Bender Cantone Consulting , which relies in part on relationships begun while at Forest City Ratner. The NYC Lobbyist Search web site  (see screenshot at bottom) indicates five clients, including the Onexim Group , controlled by Brooklyn Nets majority owner Mikhail Prokhorov, which describes itself as "one of Russia’s largest private investment funds, with a focus on mining industry, innovative projects in energy and nanotechnology, real estate and other industries." According to the web site, the consulting firm earned $5,000 from Onexim during July and August. For what isn't clear, but Prokhorov's foundation made a $1 million donation to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Prokhorov held and event at BAM in the run-up to the September 28 opening of the Barclays Center. Another N...

From the New York Times, Judge Upholds Convictions in Yonkers Corruption Case , published online yesterday (and not in print): A federal judge in Manhattan on Wednesday upheld the convictions of a former Yonkers councilwoman, Sandy Annabi, and a political operative who had testified that he had given her gifts out of love and not for corrupt reasons, as the government had charged. Prosecutors had accused Ms. Annabi of taking about $195,000 in secret payments over the years from the operative, Zehy Jereis, in return for dropping her strong opposition to a proposed 81-acre luxury mall and housing complex in Yonkers called Ridge Hill, and a second project. The government had also contended that Ms. Annabi gave Ridge Hill her support in order to help Mr. Jereis obtain a no-show job from the developer, Forest City Ratner. “The jury was entitled to conclude that the thing that changed Sandy Annabi’s mind about the Ridge Hill Project was her benefactor Zehy Jereis’ financial interest in ...

For Bruce Ratner, Brooklyn’s most powerful developer, March 9, 2012 represented a coronation of sorts: he appeared for the first time as the guest of elite interviewer Charlie Rose. The host was ready to fawn over several Forest City Ratner-built projects: the MetroTech office complex in Brooklyn; the residential tower 8 Spruce Street in Lower Manhattan (marketed modestly as “New York By Gehry”), and the in-construction Barclays Center basketball arena in Brooklyn, slated to house the NBA’s Nets this fall. Ratner, beaming at the softball questions floated by the host, suggested that, unlike himself, most other developers eschew “civic” development but “look at more, I think, the economics." To those who know Ratner’s controversial Atlantic Yards project, which includes the arena and 16 planned towers, the developer’s claim was a hoot. Why else would Brooklyn not yet have seen the much-promised Atlantic Yards affordable housing (and most of the jobs) if not for “the econ...

Some keeping watch on the recent Yonkers corruption trial, in which former Council Member Sandy Annabi and her political mentor, Zehy Jereis, were convicted , had to wonder why developer Forest City Ratner, the beneficiary of Annabi's vote flip to enable its huge Ridge Hill retail/residential project, went unscathed. After all, while Annabi got nearly $200,000 from Jereis over eight years, and he got a far smaller sum from the two developers he worked with, Forest City's gain, in exchange for a no-show job it gave Jereis after the vote, was surely far greater. Annabi's vote unlocked progress on a project on which Forest City had already spent some $70 million. Forest City's potential losses, from delay, from selling Ridge Hill to other investors, or from shrinking the project, could have been huge. And it only cost Forest City a commitment of $60,000 to Jereis, who ultimately was paid only for three months: $15,000. So, why didn't prosecutors target the bigge...

Bruce Ratner can't be all that thrilled about his plummet in the latest iteration of the New York Observer's Real Estate Power 100 ,  from  last year's #48  to this year's #72. And, wouldja believe it, I think the Observer went too far. Sure, Ratner deserves a downgrade because of the continued delays in his plan to build the first Atlantic Yards apartment tower. But if Ratner can pull off modular construction, likely only with help from the city and/or state, you can bet he'll jump in next year's list. And he's opening an arena, no small feat. As for the observation that "the brand, not to mention the family name, has been so blackened in Brooklyn, it will be a wonder if [Ratner] ever builds there again," well, that sounds like the item got outsourced to NoLandGrab , previously un-consulted by the Observer on sunnier Ratner mentions . I agree the brand has been blackened, including by the loss last month in court on the environmental...