NYT article on the stadium

amyg

Here's an article on the bkln stadium from today's NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/09/nyregion/09stadium.html?adxnnl=1&oref=login&adxnnlx=1118325617-E/nRi+xJJjtBfLcrXgXd6g


And a related article from Fans for Fair Play

And I quote, "But by the time you read this, the New York Times' June 9th edition will have hit the stands with the same resounding thud a big pile of horse manure makes."
http://www.fansforfairplay.com/2005/06/you-can-smell-new-york-times-all-over.html

anonymous

Subject: here's an email conversation with the "reporter"

from the reporter:

Hey Daniel,
As I'm sure you know, we've gotten a lot of response to that piece. Jim wrote up the following in response to one particularly strongly worded critique, and I agree with it. I would just add in response to your concerns that, yes, I interviewed a whole lot of people, including a whole lot of the project's staunchest opponents, and I will again any time I write about it. This was a space-constrained newspaper story about the politics, so there you go:


this project has Silver and Bruno and Miller saying favorable things about it -- the stadium plan for West Side did not, and Ratner has seemed to have done the political work to make that so. That was the point of the story, how the Jets played it compared to how Ratner has played it -- and the differences in how the projects are progressing. By writing an article about that does not mean we are saying it is a good or a bad project, or that it does not still have a ways to go for approval. Nor are we negating the community concerns -- there appears to be plenty of time to address and highlight them. I couldn't help but notice that at least a couple of points made in that link address assertions by lawmakers. I suggest you take those up with them. In the meantime, please keep us posted on developments as the fight continues.

------ my response, which deconstructs his puffery.

Michael, i believe you came out to cover a march and rally. You and I discussed Silver etc for about 15 minutes. You spoke with Norman Siegel and others.
And instead describing the march and rally (not sure if you were there for any of the rally) you describe a borough hall press conference as a "boisterous rally." I've never heard a press conference describe as boisterous, let alone a rally. But you attended on Tuesday was certainly a boisterous rally attended by about 500 people on a sultry tuesday afternoon. Yet not one description of that.

Let me go through a few things, based on parts of the article.

"In the Brooklyn project, backers have aggressively courted the local community since the project's inception, trying to placate those who could be its most aggressive foes."

Really? What is that based on? What community and community groups and leaders have they courted, beyond ACORN, Rev. Daughtry, one housing association and some unions? did they court even 1 of the 47 groups and leaders listed as rally supporters? No.
Have they ever appeared on a panel in the community discussing the project with dissenters on that panel? Yes, once, 15 months ago. So there is no factual basis to that statement.


"Like the ill-fated football stadium plan for the Jets, the Brooklyn basketball arena, planned for the Nets by its team owner, the developer Bruce Ratner, would be subsidized by hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars and include ambitious redevelopment projects in the surrounding area."

Brooklyn basketball arena? The proposal is for 7.8 million sq. ft. of development, the arena is 10% of that, yet you describe it as an arena and "redevelopment projects in the surrounding area," as if they are somehow two different project, which of course they are not.

"Subsidized by hundreds of millions..." We believe its at least 1.6 billion, but if you want to reject our number or ignore our study at www.dddb.net/dummies, fine, don't take our word for it. Taker FCR's. At the council hearing they said it would be a $1.1 billion subsidy. Thats FCR's number.

"Yet, in a reflection of the relatively smooth sailing the Brooklyn project has enjoyed, one of two men on that board who scuttled the West Side plan this week, Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, indicated yesterday that he would support the new arena for the Nets, who would move to Brooklyn from New Jersey. The other, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, said yesterday that he would be far less likely to stand in its way, since it would not hurt business in his Lower Manhattan district."

They said this? Where's the quotes? Where the mention that there is not even a General Project Plan, Financial Plan or that an approval process has not even begun?


"They worked more cooperatively and openly with elected officials and community leaders," said City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, a mayoral candidate who supports the Brooklyn plan and had become an ardent critic of the West Side stadium plan. "Rather than just saying, look, here it is, now we're going to bring everything we can to bear on you to agree," Mr. Miller said, "I think there was more of a give and take."

If Giff wants to lie like that, thats Giff's doing. But if you check the facts 3 of our 4 local reps oppose the project, and FCR has not worked openly with them in anyway. And the one who supports the project, Roger Greene, has barely been seen by the community in the past 2 years. Is "cooperating" and working "openly"? What Ratner did is exactly what Giff is saying he didn't do. FCR unveiled a massive development proposal in December 2003 as a fait accompli and it was an absolute surprise to our 3 reps, perhaps not to Mr. Greene. Give and take? Where has that been. The project has only gotten BIGGER over time. They've done an end-run around 3 community boards, 2,6,8 and around the city council. Very cooperative.

"As soon as it (FCR) set about devising its plan in early 2002, it brought aboard a seasoned team of lobbyists who immediately went to work building support among political leaders, especially Mr. Silver."

That surely is the way billion dollar corporations do business in Albany, but its got nothing to do with working with local elected officials or communities. As the passage reads "set about devising its plan in early 2002" and they went lobbying, the forgot one thing, for nearly two years apparently they didn't tell anybody about it except their lobbyists and some selected officials. They certainly didn't tell the ones representing the district, except perhaps Mr. Greene.

" The developers went public with their plan in December 2003. In announcing the plan, Mr. Ratner described a $2.5 billion project designed by Frank Gehry atop the Atlantic Terminal railway hub."

Maybe here it would have been appropriate to state the project cost has now ballooned to $3.5 billion according to FCR. Or to clarify that the project actually takes up 6 city blocks with approximately 66% over private property and city streets.

"Opposition to Mr. Ratner's plan emerged quickly, with preservationists and neighborhood groups forming organizations including the Prospect Heights Action Coalition and Develop Don't Destroy. They called rallies, they covered brownstone Brooklyn with fliers and they drafted alternate development plans, arguing the Ratner plan would flood the neighborhood with traffic and overwhelm a low-density are"

As I asked yesterday, "preservationists"? Have you ever bothered to look at our position statement? I've not seen that word in there, and we all know that that is a derogatory term in today's atmosphere. we covered "brownstone brooklyn." Really? We covered from downtown Brooklyn to Crown Heights, to Sunset Park and Red hook and on and on.

"Mr. Stuckey is a former president of the Public Development Corporation and a longtime adviser to Mr. Giuliani."

Thats just factually wrong, He was on the Board of the Economic Development Corporation, I don't know what the Public Development Corp is, do you?

"Using jealousy as a wedge, the developers enlisted the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that has fought for low-cost housing. They also courted groups like Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development, an employment advocacy group formed by James E. Caldwell, the president of the 77th Precinct Community Council, with promises of community involvement in the planning and a sizable share of the jobs."

Jealousy as a wedge? How can you write such a thing without stating clearly what it means? Who were the jealous parties? Courted groups like BUILD? BUILD only came into existence after the project was announced and one of its founders, Darnell Canada, left the group when he realized, according to him, that folks were too much out to get something for themselves. So they courted 2 community groups according to this. And that is something special?
By the way, you might be interested to know that Mr. Caldwell and BUILD member Michael Wise have mysteriously shown up in Bloomberg campaign advertisements no running on TV. They play black "men on the street" with sound bites. I wonder how these guys ended up speaking in a Bloomberg campaign ad, might it have something to do with Ratner's access to the Mayor?


" They drafted an agreement covering minority contracting, job training and community use of the arena, negotiating with the Rev. Dr. Herbert Daughtry, an influential pastor of the House of the Lord Pentecostal Church, and Mr. Caldwell."

They have? Where is that agreement? Has it been signed? Is it binding? If that is what they want to call a CBA, how come the Community, the C of that CBA doesn't have access to those agreements?

How about the majority of the clergy in the surrounding churches. What have they done? Here is what they've done, they published 20,000 copies of this:
http://www.dddb.net/aynews
Or how about the fact that Rev. Daughtry lives in Teaneck, NJ and won't be living with this development and construction for the next 20 years?
Or that Mr. Caldwell at the council hearing called Bruce Ratner "an angel sent from God" or then made a most obnoxious, insulting and racist remark a that hearing, "White people complain about the traffic this project would bring. There is a joke in the Black community that 'we wished we had a car so we can sit in traffic.'" The Black people that I spoke with who heard about this, outside of that hearing room were deeply offended by that remark. One, it says black people can't afford cars, and that traffic is just a nuisance not an environmental and safety issue. It furthers this disgusting idea that environment and quality of life are somehow issues only white people care about. Or how about the fact that Mr. Caldwell himself drives a Cadillac?

" Slowly, they carved a base of support in downtown Brooklyn, which seemed more inclined to oppose the project, and those allies began doing much of the work for them."

Really? who, besides ACORN (a national organization), BUILD and Daughtry, all of whom know have business contracts with FCR.

"Acorn knocked on doors in East New York, Bed-Stuy, Brownsville to find out what they knew about the project," said Bertha Lewis, the executive director of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. "The opposition seemed to be sucking up the press."

And what did ACORN tell these people when they knocked on their doors?


"The opposition remained publicly united. But the Ratner group, working closely with Mr. Bloomberg's housing aides, worked out a crucial agreement to undercut concerns that the project would drive out poorer long-term residents. Last month, in a boisterous rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall, Mayor Bloomberg, Mr. Ratner and Ms. Lewis announced an agreement to build thousands of units of low-cost housing.

The agreement was a milestone, and the moment was indicative of the differences between the Brooklyn plan and the West Side effort.

"It's when Ratner agreed to the housing that opportunity turned to support in low-income and working-class parts of the area," said Dan Cantor, executive director of the Working Families Party, which derives its support largely from housing and labor groups and has its headquarters in Brooklyn.

But Mr. Cantor added: "In Manhattan, community opposition stayed that way because the benefits were too abstract and the downsides were too concrete. In a way, Ratner was a better politician than Doctoroff and the mayor."

Boisterous rally, I already commented on that. but how about this, which was published in the NY Sun today:

Dear Editors:

Regarding Monday's editorial, "Brooklyn Fairy Tale," the most insidious aspect of the non-binding, "affordable" housing deal between Forest City Ratner (FCR) and ACORN, trumpeted by Mayor Bloomberg, is this: the Mayor, Marty Markowitz and Bertha Lewis made big hoopla about a 50-50 housing deal, at a Brooklyn Borough Hall press conference about two weeks ago. One week later at a City Council hearing on the Atlantic Yards proposal, FCR announced that what was once 4,500 proposed housing units is now 7,300 housing units, with no commitment at all to make any of those 2,800 additional units "affordable." So what was loudly called a "groundbreaking" 50-50 agreement is now, in reality, a non-binding agreement that would include a miniscule 6% of housing for truly low-income earners and 24% for "moderate" earners, leaving 70% luxury. That's called bait and switch. And guess what? Half of the rents of the so called "affordable" units are market rate rents that you could find walking into any real estate office in the areas surrounding the proposed development in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. We, the taxpayers of New York City and State, are subsidizing Ratner's market and luxury rate housing–as well as the most expensive private sports arena ever built–to the tune of $1.6 billion, and rising, in public subsidies. Why?

Am I lying or is the Mayor, Bertha Lewis and Mr. Cantor?

"City officials pointed out, however, that Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Doctoroff have been deeply involved in Mr. Ratner's project from its inception and are pleased with its progress."

They have? How so? giving it the red carpet and giving up the City's ability to oversee the project? Thats abdication not involvement.


"Manhattan also has an especially practiced antidevelopment movement on its West Side and is already home to Madison Square Garden and countless world-renown cultural institutions. Brooklyn, still smarting from the loss of the Dodgers nearly 50 years ago, is generally more welcoming to projects that could help put it on the national map."

This implies that those opposing Ratner's proposal are anti-development. One of the main groups leading the effort is called Develop Don't Destroy. Does that sound antidevelopment? Every single group opposing the FCR plan wants to see the rail yards developed, and done responsibly and responsively.
"Brooklyn is still smarting from the loss of the Dodgers nearly 50 years ago, and is generally more welcoming to projects that could help put it on the national map." That pablum. What is that based on? Marty Markowitz inferiority complex. Brooklyn is the IT place in the city and tourists come from around the world to se it. And the nation. IT ALREADY IS VERY MUCH ON THE NATIONAL MAP. And you, I believe must be very aware of that. The Financial Times just wrote an article on Brooklyn for god sakes.

and to finish


"There is a lot of community opposition," said Councilman Charles Barron, of East New York. "But I don't have enough money to put television ads on."

Oh gee, there must be one lone opponent, that Black Panther, Charles Barron. No quote from Letitia James? why? no quote from anyone else you talked to at that rally? why?

We were up in Albany two weeks ago. Silver and Bruno's staffs knew barely anything about the project. They all said that a project this big will get scrutiny sooner or later in Albany. Lets see if they were just giving us happy talk.

The point is this. You covered that "boisterous rally" at Borough Hall with ACORN and wrote about it. You came to our boisterous march and rally, and delivered most of FCR's talking points.

I still don't get it.