Marty Markowitz, Revisionist Historian

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From FansForFairPlay.com

Marty Markowitz, Revisionist Historian

So far, everything that Bruce Ratner’s attempted to sell his Atlantic Yards project to a suspicious, fed-up-with-wealthy-developers public has failed.

* “Look, I bought the Nets! I’m bringing sports back to Brooklyn!” Yeah, well, we’ve gotten on for nearly 50 years without a major league sports team just fine. Fact is, we’ve spent our spare time rebuilding Brooklyn after the Great White Flight in the ‘50s and ‘60s. When we need sports, we root for one of the ten major-league teams in our area, or play a game ourselves.

* “Look, look! I’ve got Frank Gehry designing the buildings!” Right now, Frank Gehry’s a laughingstock in Brooklyn. Forest City Ratner’s most recent renderings of Gehry’s Batman Gotham skyscraper-scape turned a lot of Brooklynites against the project.

* “I love Brooklyn!” Ratner lives in a fancy building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and only come to Brooklyn for his job.

* “Hey, everyone, I hired basketball legend Bernard King, who grew up in Brooklyn, to tout the project!” Right. A guy for whom Brooklyn is so beloved that he prefers to live in Atlanta. A guy who also likes beating up his wife. How’s that Bernard King spokesmanship working out for you, Bruce?

* “Have you seen my bonafide civil-rights-marchin’ reverend, Herbert Daughtry? He loves the project!” Maybe that’s because the Reverend Daughtry lives in Teaneck, New Jersey, far from ten-plus years of construction, pollution, shadows, traffic-jams, crowded subway platforms and box stores that would choke Brooklyn to death. That’s okay...Ratner’s skyscraping city is so big, maybe the Reverend D can see it from the top floor of his home far across the Hudson.

* “Hey, Brooklyn poor people! I’m gonna give you 10,000 jobs to fill! Ten thousand!!!” Yeah, well, that was before the fiscal realities bit Ratner hard. The number’s down to 3,900, based on FCR’s current environmental scoping document. On top of that, few of these jobs will go to local residents -- they’re already filled by office workers in midtown and lower Manhattan, the latter being Sheldon Silver’s district.

* “50% of all the housing is going to poor people in the immediate neighborhood, yessiree!” Well, the number’s more like 18%. That’s how much will be affordable for people making the median income in the areas surrounding the development. There will be no affordable units for sale, either. For Ratner, ownership is only for the wealthy, like himself.

* “My best buds are community groups like BUILD! They love me, yes they do!” Well, for the $5 million dollars you’ve earmarked for their coffers, surely they do. Their officers are all scheduled to make annual salaries of over $100,000 each, and one of ‘em’s driving around in a sparkling new silver Cadillac.

* “I’ve bought everyone out at terrifically generous prices, so no need for that pesky eminent domain!” Uh, except for the dozens who didn’t take Bruce’s blood-money and have stood up to his eminent domain threats. With new laws being drawn up to prevent the confiscation of people’s properties for a private developer’s profit-rich projects, and a Supreme Court decision that says such confiscations must be corruption free, Ratner’s a long way away from getting that first shovel into the ground.

* “Dude, the MTA sold me the Vanderbilt Yards! I’m sky-high now!!” Except for the part where there will be court cases, judicial reviews and investor-frightening delays that prevent the fast and shady taking of a huge parcel of taxpayer-owned land for Ratner’s stoop-sale offer.

* “Hey, you like my free mailers? Sure I’m flooding your mailboxes, Brooklyn, but there’s a free prize if you mail in the coupon!” There’s also the likelihood Ratner violated state gaming laws with his giveaway. On top of that, the return on Ratner’s coupons was abysmally miniscule. The prize -- free New Jersey Nets tickets -- continues to go wanting.

Which brings us to the October 3, 2005 guest op-ed by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz in the New York Daily News.

“The day Brooklyn conquered the World (Series),” screams the headline. There’s a photo of Dodger pitcher Johnny Podres being mobbed by teammates after the last out of the 1955 World Series, Brooklyn’s only ever baseball championship. October 4th, is the 50th anniversary of the big win.

Markowitz is using the anniversary in his usual misbegotten, ill-informed, mouth-foaming, exploitive and insulting manner to sell the Ratner project.

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