Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

Last week and this one I'll try to compensate slightly for the failure of any metro columnists to show up and glean insights from the rich spectacle of the Barclays Center groundbreaking March 11. It was a brilliant move, Jay-Z front and center, relying on the unsurprising shallowness of a star-struck press. Consider that the New Jersey Nets, the team destined for the Atlantic Yards arena, is contending for the NBA record for losses. And that the majority owner of the team--and owner of nearly half of the arena--should soon be Russia's richest oligarch, Mikhail Prokhorov, a most peculiar beneficiary of significant government subsidies, tax breaks, and the extraordinary power of eminent domain. Solution: heap attention on the celebrity who owns a tiny piece of the team. Was Jay-Z used? Well, maybe, but you can't hustle a hustler who became a world-class celebrity. If Jay-Z can open the new Barclays Center, it all will be worth it--even enduring a discomfiting introduction...

Last week and this one I'll try to compensate slightly for the failure of any metro columnists to show up and glean insights from the rich spectacle of the Barclays Center groundbreaking March 11. As a profession, lawyers get a lousy rap, and the constraints of the field--notably an adversarial system in which winning trumps justice --contribute to depression. At the groundbreaking, however, developer Bruce Ratner, trained as a lawyer, boosted his brethren and, lying, claimed victory in 34 lawsuits. Winning ugly I'll get to the bogus number below, but the key thing to remember is that, while Forest City Ratner and its partner Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) did win, they won ugly. Real ugly. Just this month, Supreme Court Justice Marcy Friedman criticized the ESDC's “deplorable lack of transparency.” In February 2009, Appellate Division Justice James Catterson, while concurring in a decision favoring the ESDC, wrote : I reject the majority's core reasonin...

Eric McClure of NoLandGrab was way ahead of me in rounding up the many news outlets that assigned crucial journalistic resources to the story of a hacked Variable Message Sign. It's believed to be the work of Atlantic Yards "opponents" (though no one's claiming credit). (One interesting aspect: note how the Times , the Post , and the Daily News shielded readers by altering the photo to mask the profanity. Photo by duelin' markers via Flickr.) And McClure beat me to the media criticism: Let us make a prediction (and save Norman Oder the trouble): the hacked-sign story will get more ink than the give-away of naming rights worth hundred of millions of dollars, or the 25-year build-out, or the false hoods about billions of dollars in economic benefit, or... My comment Thus goaded, I did have to post a comment on the Times's City Room blog: Really, NY Times? You consider this a news story, but, say, bogus claims by the developer and the governor about j...

The hapless Nets are still playing in New Jersey, at the antiquated Izod Center, and last night Nets Sports & Entertainment CEO Brett Yormark took exception to a fan wearing a bag over his head sitting behind the Nets' bench, a clash that was noticed by many in the press. Julian Garcia of the New York Daily News reported: The fan claimed that Yormark asked him why he was wearing the bag and that when he sarcastically answered, "Because the Nets are so good," Yormark snapped at him. Forget the present Yormark surely is thinking more about the future--new players and a marketing platform . At the Barclays Center groundbreaking on March 11, there were no current Nets--they were on the road--and no one said that much about basketball. After all, the team is on a path toward breaking the record for annual losses, a path that positions it for the best shot in the lottery for the top draft pick and thus turning the team around when it moves to Brooklyn. "Our goal...

Last week and this one I'll try to compensate slightly for the failure of any metro columnists to show up and glean insights from the rich spectacle of the Barclays Center groundbreaking March 11. One element of the "goodie bag" that guests got to take home was a CD containing samples from Bats, Balls, Nets and Hoops: Stories of Sports in Brooklyn , the latest in a series of educational curriculum kits from the Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS). It was a nice piece of synergy and a sign that the BHS, like the Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Academy of Music , is another elite Brooklyn institution likely to show fealty to Forest City Ratner and Barclays Capital. (The generosity in the form of donations, of course, is far less than the subsidies, tax breaks, and other concessions granted by the public to the donors. Heck, FCR was given the arena naming rights to sell to Barclays.) Albert King front and center On the cover of the CD--custom-produced for the occasion--w...

Last week and this one I'll try to compensate slightly for the failure of any metro columnists to show up and glean insights from the rich spectacle of the Barclays Center groundbreaking March 11. Of all the brutally weird moments in the groundbreaking--the Rev. Herbert Daughtry damning the project site as rat-infested; the Rev. Al Sharpton suggesting that Jay-Z's fractional ownership stake in the team might inspire minority youth; developer Bruce Ratner's shout-out to his-wife-Pam-the-hoops-fan; Gov. David Paterson's epic fantasies about job creation; Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz's creepy fawning over Beyoncé--one was the most brutal. It was brief, very brief. It came during Ratner's 17-minute Commencement Day speech, in which he thanked everybody from labor to lawyers, looping back and forth through the calendar from 2004 to 2010, and waving his hands for occasional emphasis. Government work "In this business, you've got to deal with ...

Not surprisingly, the New York Post's Community Newspaper Group (CNG) has moved toward consolidating its two chains in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Paper and the Courier-Life. The evidence? The departure of the latter's editor and increased sharing of copy among the two chains. As can be seen by a close look at the Courier-Life mastheads from last week (below) and this week, longtime Courier-Life Editor Kenneth Brown has been replaced by Brooklyn Paper Gersh Kuntzman. Moreover, the lead article in at least one edition of the Courier-Life, my local Park Slope Courier, contains the same article on Prospect Park's "meadows of shame" that appeared on the front page of the Brooklyn Paper , written by a Brooklyn Paper reporter. Meanwhile, the Brooklyn Paper prominently features Courier-Life reporter Stephen Witt's questionable coverage of the seemingly dubious lawsuit filed by City Council Member Letitia James. (More on that below.) What does it mean? What does it all ...

One of the enduring questions regarding Atlantic Yards regards the failure of longstanding good-government organizations to make a difference. The Municipal Art Society has played a careful role, calling for major changes in design but not opposing a process critics consider fundamentally skewed. The Citizens Union (CU), responding in December 2006 to a drastic decline in estimated tax revenues--first revealed by AYR, then picked up by the New York Times-- called for a “limited delay” in the process and noted that it “does not align itself with those who oppose the project and wish to use the process of delay to kill the project, because we believe that economic development is needed so that the city can continue to be a dynamic place of business and meet the needs of a growing population.” Of course the economic development figures remained questionable, but the CU thereafter remained silent, despite cogent criticism by not-so-radical representatives of local community boards. The ...

Today, in a remarkable but late mea/nostra culpa headlined The Acorn Sting Revisited , New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt agrees that the paper misled readers by describing James O'Keefe as presenting himself as a pimp in some heavily edited videos. Hoyt writes: Here is what I found: O’Keefe almost certainly did not go into the Acorn offices in the outlandish costume — fur coat, goggle-like sunglasses, walking stick and broad-brimmed hat — in which he appeared at the beginning and end of most of his videos. It is easy to see why The Times and other news organizations got a different impression. ...But I am satisfied that The Times was wrong on this point, and I have been wrong in defending the paper’s phrasing. Editors say they are considering a correction. (Hoyt, of course, has never addressed the Times's failure to cover--and later, minimal coverage--of ACORN's bailout by Forest City Ratner.) Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog takes issue with Hoyt's conclusion tha...

When I wrote Friday about Comptroller John Liu's Task Force on Public Benefit Agreements, I somehow missed the list of members (as noted in the Observer). The Observer's Eliot Brown writes: While the chairs on the task force represent an array of interests, the membership of the broader commission has a lefty bent, with representation from all the major unions on development issues (the Hotel and Motel Trades, SEIU 32BJ, the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union, and the Building Trades); affordable housing groups such as the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development; and small business advocates such as lobbyist Richard Lipsky. Lefty bent? Maybe. Through an AY lens I'll point out that the task force contains three advocates for the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement (CBA): Scott Cantone of Forest City Ratner; Richard Lipsky of the Neighborhood Retail Alliance (and an FCR lobbyist); and Roger Green, the former Assemblyman and head of the ...