Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

From the New York Times's Week in Review today: THE HOLDOUT The News Daniel Goldstein, above, the last holdout standing in the way of the giant Atlantic Yards redevelopment in Brooklyn, agreed to accept $3 million in return for surrendering his apartment and ending his active opposition. Behind the News Mr. Goldstein, who paid $590,000 for his condominium in 2003, became the standard-bearer for opponents of the $4.9 billion mixed-use project when he refused to move. If he had not reached a deal with the developer, Forest City Ratner, he faced eviction by the state government, which had lost patience with the delays and had condemned his property. The annotations He was the last residential holdout. Atlantic Yards isn't re development. He agreed to accept $3 million in return for surrendering his apartment in about two weeks, and because a judge pressured both sides to make a deal that day, thus leaving Goldstein vulnerable to a lowball payout and a fairly swift eviction date ...

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.)

The New York Daily News, which has supported Atlantic Yards to the hilt (remember A super design for a great project , touting the now-phantom "green roof,") today slams former Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) spokesman Daniel Goldstein in an editorial headlined A great big sellout: Atlantic Yards opponent made out like a bandit : The community activist who led the long, doomed and destructive fight against Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards project has made out like a bandit. Daniel Goldstein settled with the project's developer for a whopping $3 million. After all of Goldstein's costly obstructionism, it is a wonder builder Bruce Ratner agreed to give him a penny more than Goldstein would be legally due on eviction from the condo he bought in 2003 for $595,000. Instead, Goldstein walked away with five times his purchase price while portraying himself as a noble victim of evil forces who would never be silenced and blah, blah, blah. "Thank you, kind sir...

Not long ago, I got a call from a tabloid reporter about a non-Atlantic Yards matter about which I had some expertise. I told the reporter that the information they sought maybe wasn't the appropriate approach, that they should pursue a more complicated but incisive take on the case. I was ignored. The story line had already been set by an editor. The neighbors at 636 Pacific Not dissimilarly, both the New York Daily News and the New York Post thought the proper way to contextualize the settlement reached by Atlantic Yards condemnee Daniel Goldstein and Developer Forest City Ratner was to compare that settlement to ones made by Goldstein's neighbors in 2004 . (It was unmentioned that those settlements, unlike that of Goldstein, included full gag orders.) The New York Post The Post reported, in a 4/23/10 article headlined Last shot $cores: 7th-floor arena holdout beat penthouse deal: The owner of the penthouse in the last building standing in the way of the planned Nets aren...

If anyone going to the hearing last Wednesday in Kings County Supreme Court thought Justice Abraham Gerges was going to look incisively into the Atlantic Yards condemnation case, there was a small but telling reason for doubt even before the hearing started. Gerges referred to the case not as Atlantic Yards but Atlantic Terminal , just as he had at a 1/29/10 hearing in which those facing condemnation attempted to block it. Atlantic Terminal refers to (take your pick) a longstanding urban renewal area (of which the Atlantic Yards site contains a part), a train terminal, and a mall, not a complicated and controversial development project. Gerges's goal, apparently, was to ensure that the condemnation case was resolved that day , with no more expenditure of judicial resources nor the bad publicity of an actual eviction. "Just compensation" An appraiser working for the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) had made Goldstein a lowball offer of $510,000 for an apartm...

The Brooklyn Eagle's Dennis Holt, in a Brooklyn Broadside headlined In Atlantic Yards Delays, State, City, Community Were the Losers , offers some very shallow analysis: I have been asked if I begrudge the project’s lead opponent, Daniel Goldstein, netting $3 million from a final deal with Forest City Ratner. No, I don’t. If you assume a seven-year time span for this project to date — 84 months – and subtract what he paid for his home — $590,000 — from the $3 million he is receiving, that comes out to about $28,000 per month. No, that's not even close. First, subtract more than $600,000 in legal fees. Then double the value of his home, at least, to find a comparable place. Who wins? Holt observes: And it’s not so much that Goldstein is a big winner, there are two losers. One is the city and the state, the other is the community. The latter first. The approach followed by the project’s opponents was a take-no-prisoners one, winner take all. The opponents did not attempt to barga...

Of all the doofus coverage of the judge-pushed settlement in the condemnation case involving Daniel Goldstein, Adam Bonislawski's post in the New York Post real estate blog, headlined New York State not such a great negotiator actually tops the Times's CityRoom post about how Goldstein might move to places like New London, CT. Wrote Bonislawski: We were actually all set to write a sympathetic post about how Atlantic Yards holdout Daniel Goldstein was getting screwed by the state , which was lowballing him with a $510,000 offer on the 1,290-square-foot Prospect Heights condo he bought for $590,000 in 2003. And, well, then this happened -- the state upped its offer to $3 million, an offer that Goldstein, not being insane, quickly agreed to. And while we're happy to see the whole business resolved, it does make us wonder if maybe the state is not so good at the whole bargaining thing, and if maybe this is part of why we pay so much in taxes. Seriously, how did those negot...

Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn's leadership, without former spokesman and steering committee member Daniel Goldstein, has issued a statement of unequivocal support for Goldstein's decision to reach a settlement regarding property he had already lost by eminent domain. According to the statement, DDDB is not giving up what has "never been a fair fight." The statement suggests business as usual: That's why we will continue to press the fight in court, pursuing the Article 78 lawsuit seeking to compel the Empire State Development Corporation to issue new Determinations and Findings for the Atlantic Yards project, along with the suit seeking to overturn state approval of the Modified General Project Plan, for which we filed a motion to reconsider on April 8th based on clear evidence that the state intentionally omitted critical evidence from the public record. And it's why we will continue to push state and city officials to find the polit...

The John Gambling Show on WOR/710, home to Mayor Mike Bloomberg's weekly softball radio interview, was not going to be a terribly sympathetic forum this morning for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn's Daniel Goldstein, given this summary: The founder of the anti-Atlantic Yards group Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn and plaintiff in numerous unsuccessful suits against the $4.9 billion project — has reached an agreement to move out of his condo on Pacific Street in Prospect Heights. Why? But Goldstein made a lot of points in just six minutes. No-bid deal "Forest City Ratner owns 22 acres in the heart of Brooklym that it got through a no-bid deal and the use of eminent domain," he said, correcting Gambling's description of an "arena project" by saying that the developer claims it will build 6430 units of housing. "Supposedly it's a project about affordable housing," Goldstein said, noting that there are no designs for any of the towers. "...

Developer Forest City Ratner spent $1,127,598 in 2009 on city and state lobbying, just outside the top ten spenders in the state and perhaps the largest sum for any real estate developer. Forest City Ratner's spending, almost exclusively through the Atlantic Yards Development Co., includes what the New York State Commission on Public Integrity calls the second-largest lobbying contract in the state, $466,421 with the law firm Fried Frank. (In 2008, as the graphic shows, it had the third-largest lobbying contract. Click on graphics to enlarge.) However, my analysis of the underlying data (screenshots at left, below) shows that AYDC actually paid $812,528 to Fried Frank for lobbying, with nearly $690,000 in the second half of the year. That would make it easily the largest contract. (I'll contact the Commission and see if they revise their data.) Focus of coverage The main news from the Commission's annual report, according to the official press release and coverage in th...

New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez, in a sympathetic column headlined After 6 years against Atlantic Yards, Daniel Goldstein takes the money and leaves , connects Daniel Goldstein to Jane Jacobs: Goldstein, a Web designer, was refusing to move. Only two years earlier, he had bought a new condo in the neighborhood for $590,000. He had this wild-eyed idea that the people of a community should be consulted before the government condemns their property to make a rich developer even richer. Goldstein was a tireless organizer of his neighbors in Prospect Heights. He urged them to resist Ratner and his powerful backers, Mayor Bloomberg, former Govs. George Pataki and Eliot Spitzer and Gov. Paterson. The group those neighbors founded, Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, became an amazing grassroots movement. Back in the 1960s, a little old lady named Jane Jacobs fought Robert Moses, when the legendary masterbuilder sought to bulldoze the Lower Manhattan Expressway through the heart of...

A notably trivial post on the New York Times's City Room blog, headlined For Developers’ Foe, Suggestions for the Next Battleground , whimsically suggests that Atlantic Yards opponent Daniel Goldstein might want to move into a development fight elsewhere, such as Manhattanville; New London, CT; and New York University. The post is so sloppy that, regarding Willets Point, Queens, it claims that "[t]he city headed off an eminent-domain squabble." It hasn't, as a glance at the Willets Point United site would show. My comment, not yet approved, as at right.

While we're waiting to learn what Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn plans to do in the wake of the Daniel Goldstein's agreement to reach a settlement and stop serving as the group's spokesman, BrooklynSpeaks has issued a statement headlined Still early in the fight for Atlantic Yards accountability . The statement: "Daniel Goldstein has made a tremendous contribution to increasing public awareness of the issues of process, transparency and equity associated with the Atlantic Yards project. It is regrettable that he and many others have been forced to leave their homes. "The struggle for reform of Atlantic Yards oversight, however, is just beginning. Before the project even broke ground, the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) had negotiated away most of the public benefits promised at the time of Atlantic Yards’ approval in 2006. And the agency agreed to allow the developer 25 years to build the project, tremendously magnifying the impact of its constr...

Bertha Lewis, Forest City Ratner's partner in the Atlantic Yards affordable housing agreement, on Wednesday night "unleashed a vitriolic diatribe against Mr. [Daniel] Goldstein, the public face of opposition group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, painting him as an obstructionist who masked self-interest with local activism," to quote Eliot Brown in the Observer. It's a far cry from the tame excerpt quoted in the New York Times today. There's a thread of logic--Goldstein will continue to be asked, even by some Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn supporters , whether he'll contribute some of his seemingly generous settlement to the larger cause he has represented. And until he does that, he'll be vulnerable to criticism that he was representing only himself. (Others, of course, don't question his decision.) Credibility questions But Lewis is hardly credible in claiming she represents "low and moderate income people" ( perhaps 40% of the...

From John Brennan's coverage in the Record, headlined Holdouts' deal clears way for Nets arena in Brooklyn , of the scene outside the courtroom yesterday. Daniel Goldstein of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn was describing the settlement he'd reached with Forest City Ratner: During the interview, Goldstein’s attorney, Michael Rikon, asked for the identity of a man lurking nearby and who appeared to be taking notes electronically via a hand-held device. The man said he was Michael Rapfogel, a vice president with Forest City Ratner Companies, the developer. When Rikon asked the reporters to move down the hall, Rapfogel followed and continued to eavesdrop. A Michael Rapfogel is son of William E. Rapfogel , Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty , a powerhouse social service organization. William Rapfogel is a longtime friend of Assembly S...

It is dismaying but unsurprising that the news coverage about Daniel Goldstein's settlement to vacate the apartment he and his family occupies focuses mainly on the $3 million payment by Forest City Ratner (worth considerably less to him), but does not mention the $131 million that city taxpayers have contributed to pay for nearly half the property the developer has purchased or the Development Agreement that sets a 25-year deadline for the project, rather than the ten years promised by the developer and the state. Yes, the surprising settlement is news, and worthy of debate . But so is the larger context.

While the news, according to the Daily News's tabloid non-analysis , is that Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) spokesman Daniel Goldstein "scored" $3 million--actually, much less after attorney's fees, as I explained --the bigger questions are both answered and left open in a long statement Goldstein released late last night. Goldstein noted that he hadn't expected a settlement nor thought of the press implications but "I should have known better because clearly Forest City Ratner saw it as a big press event and sent out a press release immediately." The full statement is below, but let me focus on three things: what drove the settlement the impact on pending court cases the impact on the Atlantic Yards fight The bottom line: a bargain for FCR? The bottom line, as I see it, is that, while Goldstein may have made an understandable and defensible decision, Forest City Ratner will have gotten a bargain if it has not only removed a physi...

From the New York Times's coverage today, $3 Million Deal Ends a Holdout in Brooklyn : Mr. [Daniel Goldstein] Goldstein helped build a coalition of 21 groups that said the project’s high-rises and density would overwhelm the neighborhood and make its clogged streets virtually impassable. From Mr. Goldstein, 3/12/10: What Is Atlantic Yards? A Complete Failure of Democracy : The sad and depraved history of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project was celebrated yesterday with a ceremonial groundbreaking attended by the elected officials most responsible for greasing its skids. It is nothing to celebrate. What have they made happen? A bait and switch of epic proportions and a failure of democracy, mixed with corruption, notable even in New York State. Each branch of government--judicial, executive and legislative--has passed the buck to the other. None have acting responsibly or with principle or courage to stop the largest project proposed in Brooklyn's history, whi...

From the New York Times's coverage of Daniel Goldstein's settlement: The developer has already started work on a $1 billion basketball arena for the Nets, the centerpiece of Atlantic Yards, and eventually plans to build 6,000 apartments, office space and possibly a hotel in 16 towers. At least 30 percent of the units are to be for moderate and middle income tenants. (Emphasis added) That's completely speculative and highly unlikely. That's the announced plan, as approved by the state. We have no idea what the developer plans. But the Development Agreement allows a project to be far, far smaller, with no penalty. And Forest City Ratner now plans four buildings (including the arena) in Phase 1, rather than six. That won't add up to 16 towers. Update I sent a complaint to the Times and, while I can't prove cause-and-effect, the text later changed: The developer has started work on a $1 billion basketball arena for the Nets, the centerpiece of Atlantic Yards,...

From the New York Times's front-page article, $3 Million Deal Ends a Holdout in Brooklyn : Bertha Lewis, a housing advocate who supported the project, bid Mr. Goldstein “good riddance.” “Low- and moderate-income people had to wait years for housing while he obstructed the Atlantic Yards project,” she said. Hold on. Affordable housing depends on subsidies, not this project; that's why the Development Agreement, which the Times has chosen to ignore, offers the option to cite an Affordable Housing Subsidy Unavailability . And since when is Bertha Lewis merely a "housing advocate"? She represented ACORN when it signed the Affordable Housing Memorandum of Understanding with Forest City Ratner. And FCR later bailed out ACORN with a $1.5 million grant/loan .