Ratner, 2003: "I have never, ever seen a project get less protest than this"

Beyond his dubious statements about not touching the tax base and office jobs made during a 12/12/03 interview on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, Forest City Ratner CEO Bruce Ratner's interview deserves some more scrutiny, as it gives a flavor of his debating style and highlights some questionable spinning, notably his rather premature assessment that the long-under-wraps, just-announced project had generated minimal protest.

Hoops above housing

Initially, at least, the project was about hoops, though later the developer latched onto the importance of housing, which now dominates the narrative.

(Brian Lehrer) BL: It would transform the face of Downtown Brooklyn hand has people like the New York Times architecture critic [Herbert Muschamp] and fans very excited…. Residents of the neighborhood are less enthusiastic…yesterday we got dozens of e-mails from people telling us why they thought it was a bad idea… not wanting to lose the residential flavor of the neighborhood to the prospect of tax dollars used to subsidize another big business venture by a developer who has at least one that’s failed in the neighborhood... Tell us your vision for what you’d like to build there.

(Bruce Ratner) BR: I don’t like to call things visions, particularly, y’know, ideas and so on. I think the first concept is really the importance of bringing professional sports, and in particular basketball, to Brooklyn. Brooklyn really is a sports town, basketball grew up in Brooklyn. It’s very important for the young people of Brooklyn. There’s a tremendous fan base. There’s a tremendous pride of place in Brooklyn that few cities have in this country, if not this world. Sports is so important to so many people. So the concept of bringing a team like the Nets, the New Jersey Nets to Brooklyn, is the first idea. It’s met with enormous positive reaction from huge numbers of people. I’m surprised myself at the kind of interest and--everyone just says, ‘Y’know what, this fits, it makes sense.' So that’s the first way this sort of started.

As for the importance of bringing professional sports to Brooklyn, consider Newsweek's 12/17/07 profile of Nets CEO Brett Yormark and his twin brother Michael, president of the Florida Panthers hockey team:

Where fans see a stadium, Brett and Michael see acres of monetizable space—or, as they say on Madison Avenue, "inventory."
...

Site a scar?

BR: If you look at the area, it’s zoned industrial, right in the middle of neighborhoods, and it looks godawful. It’s got train tracks, it’s got industrial buildings, and it’s extremely unattractive, it’s like a scar in the middle of two neighborhoods. I’ve heard it described as a ditch.

Note that Ratner seems to be using the 8.5-acre railyard for the project site as a whole, and leaves out the city streets and city property he needs. Also note that parent Forest City Enterprises, in cities like Richmond, VA, (right) has restored industrial properties.

Lehrer interrupted.

BL: Certainly the residents who were howling yesterday… don’t feel like they live on a scar or ditch, they feel like it’s their home, they feel like it’s a nice... accessible place from Manhattan that’s still a refuge from Manhattan which it wouldn’t be…so do you want to stand by those words, scar and ditch?

Only a few protesters?

BR: Yes, I do, because you know what, the thing is Brian, I don’t know if you were at the press conference there are about 15-20 people, that’s all, in a borough of 2.5 million, the same 15-20 people, who live—I respect it, I really do, they live in an adjoining neighborhood. You have to really—y’know, it’s important for news of course, to listen to all sides, you can’t let 15-20 or people decide something like this. The UN had protesters, Rockefellers Center had protesters. So you have to really look at it I have never, ever--I’ve done a lot of projects, I have never, ever seen a project get less protest than this. Here you have a major project, you have 25 news people at a press conference, and there are about 15 people with homemade signs out in front, in a borough of two and a half million people, at a press conference.
(Emphasis added)

First, the number of protesters grew considerably once area residents got a clearer sense of the proposed project as well as the bypass of community input. That's why Atlantic Yards now serves as a poster child for bad planning, perhaps the Penn Station of this generation.

Also, only seven government officials got to vote--and quite swiftly--on the Atlantic Yards project: four appointed members of the Empire State Development Corporation board and the three members of the Public Authorities Control Board, the governor, Assembly Speaker, and Senate Majority Leader.
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BL: What’s the process?

BR: My guess is that, in the next 30 to 60 days, they will pick a winner, and at that point it will take about two months to pass the necessary, the (National) Basketball Association, it will take a year to go through different processes and plans for the arena. And in about three to three and a half years, I hope to have an arena up and the start of some residential development.

That meant he expected approval by end of 2004 rather than 2006, as it turned out, and an arena up by 2006 or 2007, instead of 2010 or 2011, as the best-case scenario now suggests.

And, as I noted yesterday, he was already hinting at a switch from office space to housing.

Hurdles to come?

BL: Does the city have to approve the project, are there hurdles yet?

BR: It’s on state land, being the Long Island Rail Road,, so it’s a state process, and yes, there’s a whole approval process, the state.

No, less than 40 percent of the site is state land, so the state process was not required. After all, the West Side yards project in Manhattan is going through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP...

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