Atlantic Yards on Brian Lehrer Today

troll.

And, maybe I'm missing something here, but what does Jed (oh, yea JEB :shock: ) Bush's tenure in office (assuming he means as Gov. of Florida) have anything to do with this? Or does this person actually think old Jed with HIS baggage is a viable candidate for Shrub in Chief? Or has he mistaken Jeb for George, which is unfortunate. Or, maybe he was thinking of Jed Clampett, now THAT would make sense. Although, I think JC's dead.

But ... I guess that's a whole 'nother issue. But stranger things have happened. :?

Subject: Don't be part of the problem.

Anonymous wrote: This plan (Atlantic rail yards project) is going through. Excell's bid will invariably be way too low, and embarrasing because their proposal calls for less apartments and no arena = a very low profit margin. So they'll have to bid lower because the banking system says so. You must own your land before you can be funded for a development (Equity).
On the other hand Ratnerville is planning on twice the amount of realestate along with an arena. His bid will dwarf the competition because his profits will be greater.

You really should do some more reading before spouting off on this important issue, "Guest." You have no clue as to what the bids are--and neither does anyone else not directly involved in the process--because they aren't public. The bids are chasing the same piece of MTA land, even though FCR plans to develop private land as well as part of its project, through eminent domain if need be. Since Extell (get some spelling involved as well, please) is quite experienced with the bidding game, you can believe that it will be very competitive with FCR. This is an established firm, which owns the W among other major buildings, and was just part of a $1.8 billion purchase on the West Side from Trump. Extell is not small fry, and will not be making an "embarassingly low" bid. One would guess that FCR also would not have overbid on the land itself as a sort of pre-emptive strike, because it didn't know that any other firm would even be bidding--and Extell's bid came in at 4:45pm on day of deadline, so there's no way FCR could have changed its bid at that point.

The real question to me is whether or not the bidding system itself is equitable, and how much the MTA will weight future tax revenue/*permanent* job creation, overall community benefit and the like when considering the bids. The future revenue question is legitimate, but when we're talking about just the MTA land parcel (and for the bid, we are), given that the arena likely will be a loss leader, that's not so obvious either. If the bidding system is equitable, then Extell's bid will have to be given serious consideration. If it isn't, then that's a whole extra round of conflict.

Your defeatist attitude is part of the reason the Dems are having such fits these days. Please don't "help" the debate in my backyard if that's what you bring to the table.