MTA agrees to sell to Ratner

Here's the CBA (73 pages of legal love):

http://www.buildbrooklyn.org/pr/cba.pdf


I sincerely hope everything in this CBA will happen, but I am a bit disturbed by page 14 section b. I'm no legal scholar nor do I play one on TV, but I think this is what's called a "loophole".

If I read it correctly (big if). If they don't abide to the terms, they can do a one-time buyout to BUILD for $500,000. Considering the scope of the project, that's a small amount.

Once again, I'm a painter, not a lawyer.

quig wrote: If I read it correctly (big if). If they don't abide to the terms, they can do a one-time buyout to BUILD for $500,000. Considering the scope of the project, that's a small amount.

Once again, I'm a painter, not a lawyer.

Thats funny, I thought FCR had already bought BUILD

NYT article.

High-Rises and Low Standards: A Pattern of Inadequate, Misleading, Mostly Uncritical Coverage (pdf)

qtrain wrote: Something occurred to me today -- for the $100 million the city is handing over to Ratner for the arena, the Independent Budget Office projects that they will get back an additional $28.5 million over the course of 30 years. With the same $100 million, I could produce $25.1 million in 30 years just by depositing it in my savings account. That's competitive, right? And I don't drive or go to school, so the burden on community resources is minimal. Why hasn't anyone contacted me?

You dont have Bloomberg, Markowitz, or Kalikow in your pocket. You also wouldnt give any of those people jobs when they get tossed from their current job. Also, you dont think any of those guys or their flunkys pay the same taxes considering the pay/tax ratio we do, why should they care if taxes go up another 10%.

Does any of this really surprise anyone? I could have told you this would happen years ago when the idea came up. Money talks. However, I would have liked to have seen a park instead of an arena.

Basically, I think most lower income people in the neighborhood are for this.

Rather than a construction school how about an ordinary public school for all the additional children in these projects

Oiseau wrote: [quote=JamesonVandy]
As for most lower income people in the neighborhood being for the arena project, you're flat-out wrong on that one:

http://www.phndc.org/results/income_concerns.php

Here's the full study:

http://www.phndc.org/study.php

None of these studies tell how many people they surveyed, and one is a online survey. Most low income people don't have computers and internet access.



I'm not going to do anymore of your homework for you. The study in question has a methodology page. It's statistically sound, and it's not the online study. As for the separate question of income and 'net access, go to http://www.pewinternet.org and read up.

The clear majority of Prospect Heights residents, of all income levels, have major concerns about multiple aspects of the Atlantic Yards projects. Gainsaying that "lower income people support it" doesn't hold water.

Oiseau wrote: [quote=JamesonVandy]I'm not going to do anymore of your homework for you. The study in question has a methodology page. It's statistically sound, and it's not the online study. As for the separate question of income and 'net access, go to http://www.pewinternet.org and read up.

Yeah, it states thate 49% of the people earning under $30K a year have internet access. So most people (51%) who earn under $30K don't. I wonder how low that percent goes when the demographic is under $20K or less.

The same site has an entire study noting how that access at places other than the home, such as work, school, and libraries, changes the access picture radically.

Again, the original study to which I referred was conducted in person, not online, and it's statistically sound. It can't be dismissed by talking about online access disparities. The majority of Prospect Heights residents are against the project, regardless of income.

Please PM me if you want to continue this as an actual discussion. This has been covered to death on this board.

Jack Krohn wrote: The methodology page of the Atlantic Yards study reveals just how unscientific the study is. The methodology page states that the survey was mailed to “hundreds of people” (how vague is that?) and also made available online. They are specific on the number of respondents (224 online and 188 by mail), but since they do not say how many surveys were initially mailed out and cannot say how many of those who viewed the survey online actually responded, there is no way of knowing the actual response rate. What is also absent from the report, but present on BUILD’s web site, is that 63% of the respondents were white (even though they comprise only 28% of the neighborhood’s population) and 56% earned an annual income of $75,000 or more. While black residents comprise 51% of the neighborhood’s population, they accounted for only 19% of the respondents. In sum, the subjects were *not randomly selected* and do not reflect the demographic makeup of the neighborhood. Hence, the findings should not be held up as representative of how local residents feel about the Atlantic Yards.

Jesus Christ, the BUILD people are coming out of the woodwork with their spin. Now I have to put on my market researcher hat. I did five years with NFO Research, so I've produced my share of crosstabs.

Response rate only matters when you're fielding. As long as you've got enough responses for a representative sample, you could have less than a 1% response rate, and your results still would be valid. Ever seen how less than 1,000 responses in those NYT polls are held up as indicative of how the whole country feels? Same thing. All of your questioning relates to sampling. It's entirely possible to produce a statistically representative sample of half of a given population with less than 19% of your respondents in that population, as long as the n (number of respondents in the group you're viewing) is adequate. Of the 400 respondents to the survey, if 19% of the respondents were black (and you're already equating black with lower income--way to go, dude), 80 or so black respondents can be a valid indicator of black responses (answers or attitudes) within a population the size of Prospect Heights. You don't have to have 51% of your responses equate to 51% of the general population; that's what weighting is for.

Look BUILD, you're getting your way. But don't try to tell us the neighborhood wanted it in the first place.

JamesonVandy wrote: [quote=Oiseau]Does any of this really surprise anyone? I could have told you this would happen years ago when the idea came up. Money talks. However, I would have liked to have seen a park instead of an arena. Basically, I think most lower income people in the neighborhood are for this.

Um, seeing as how this board's been discussing the issue for a long time, surprise isn't a factor, no. Again, searching past posts before speaking out on this issue might serve you well.

As for most lower income people in the neighborhood being for the arena project, you're flat-out wrong on that one:

http://www.phndc.org/results/income_concerns.php

Here's the full study:

http://www.phndc.org/study.php


Again, please search for past discussion of this and other issues before posting. As it is, it's like you're rolling a hand grenade into a room just to find out how people react--it's an act of aggression.




You guys all know where I stand with this project (sucks) but I have to tell you I took this survey and I went to the presentation of the results a PS8 andI found it to be huge disapointment. I remember the total number of people polled was really low (they use all %'s) and their presentation was a bunch of weak pie charts and graphs that failed to really communicate anything more than the individual questions of the survey.