Develop-
don't destroy
BROOKLYN Press
Release Main Page
For Immediate
Release: April 7, 2008
Forest City Ratner Says They "Still Need More" Subsidy
for
Heavily Subsidized Atlantic Yards Proposal
NEW YORK, NY— “We still need more” subsidies for the Atlantic Yards project,
Forest City Enterprises president Chuck Ratner said during an investment
analysts conference call last Wednesday. Forest City Enterprises (FCE) is
the publicly traded parent of Bruce Ratner’s Forest City Ratner (FCR). (Journalist
Norman Oder broke
the news of Ratner’s “need” for more cash subsidies on his Atlantic
Yards Report today).
From the conference call transcript it is clear that the Ratner team will
seek more public subsidies; it is not clear if they will seek more city
and state subsidies or just city subsidies. FCR’s Atlantic Yards $4-plus
billion proposal already has been granted $305 million in direct cash from
New York City and State. In total, the developer’s project would be the
recipient of at
least $2 billion in government-backed financing and tax breaks.
The city’s direct cash contribution went from $100 million to $205 almost
immediately after the project received political approval in December 2006.
During the conference call, FCE president Chuck Ratner said, “Just in these past six or eight months, we got the various governmental agencies, state, city, bureau in New York to increase their commitments to Atlantic Yards by $105 million on top of the $200 they had committed. We still need more.”
(It was actually the city that increased its direct subsidy to Ratner.)
How will local elected officials respond to an impending visit by Ratner back to the public subsidy trough? It doesn’t appear that they will welcome more Atlantic Yards subsidy:
Councilman, and Brooklyn Borough Presidential candidate, Bill de Blasio
warned against additional public subsidies for Ratner’s Atlantic Yards in
The Brooklyn Paper. “There has already been very generous public
investment,” de Blasio told The
Brooklyn Paper on March 29th. “I don’t see how we can go any farther.”
“The Atlantic Yards proposal is already subsidized to the hilt. Ratner’s highly profitable development plan should not be bailed out by the taxpayer, especially with budgetary tightening including education cuts,” Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn spokesman Daniel Goldstein said. “If Ratner can’t build his project--with over $300 million in direct cash subsidy, over $2 billion in government-backed financing, a blank city check for ‘extraordinary infrastructure costs,’ free land from the city, a below market rail yard purchase price, and the windfall benefits of eminent domain condemnation--he should not be rewarded with yet more taxpayer funds.
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