TimesRatnerReport

Very early in the first mayoral debate (go to 9:08; my transcript is below), Democratic candidate Freddy Ferrer was asked what initiatives of Mayor Mike Bloomberg's administration he'd undo. He gave one answer: Atlantic Yards. It was a spirited exchange, despite lapses from both candidates, as it delineated differences over affordable housing and the transparency of the approval process.

Did it gain prominent press coverage and factchecking? No. One version (for the national edition?) of the lengthy 10/31/05 New York Times account of the debate, headlined Ferrer Is Testy and Feisty in First Debate With Mayor, failed to mention the exchange. Did Times reporters and editors think the deeply flawed account in the 10/29/05 paper constituted sufficient coverage? Nope, it was just a question of space. An earlier version of the article, headlined In Debate, Candidates Offer Different Visions of City and dated 10/30/05, had four additional paragraphs at the end. And so did the final version, headlined In Equal Footing of a Debate, Ferrer Gets Feisty. The final paragraph:
Mr. Ferrer said... he would put an immediate stop to plans to build a Nets arena and several residential buildings in downtown Brooklyn, a plea that his campaign hopes will resonate in a politically important part of that borough.

Several residential buildings? How about 16 towers, nearly all residential? And, yet again, it's not downtown Brooklyn. (See Chapter 11 of my report.) And, if Ferrer wants to be mayor, he should hope his plans resonate with all New Yorkers, since they'd be paying for Atlantic Yards.

A vigorous Times effort to factcheck the debate, headlined In Excitement of Encounter, Exaggerations Join Debate, ignored the Atlantic Yards issue. The article stated:
While the candidates committed no outrageous whoppers, they may have served up some junior whoppers, as well as offered several other assertions that looked threadbare when held up to the light.
Indeed--see below.

A Times news analysis, headlined Ferrer Makes His Candidacy Look Stronger Than the Polls Suggest, noted that Ferrer hinted darkly at "back-room deals" in the proposed Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn.
Well, Ferrer didn't offer specifics, but wouldn't the MTA's decision to negotiate solely with Forest City Ratner (see Chapter 6 of my report) and then accept less than half the appraised value qualify?

Ferrer focused on the issue of affordable housing--once 50% affordable, now 31% affordable, or little more than 12% for average Brooklynites. Actually, project supporters could say--following the letter, rather than the spirit of previous statements--that Forest City Ratner promised 50% affordability only for the first 4,500 rentals. (Check the Memorandum of Understanding.) The additional 2,800 condos were not mentioned in the initial 5/19/05 press conference, because they hadn't been announced yet. A week later, at a City Council hearing, Forest City Ratner announced plans to increase market-rate housing, though it wasn't clear until September whether it would be 1,500 or 2,800 units. And ACORN's Bertha Lewis is still claiming 50% affordable housing.

Ferrer's answer wasn't completely coherent. He mistakenly placed the proposed arena in Manhattan, not Brooklyn. He said "26- to 2,800 units of luxury housing," when, to be precise it's 2800 condo units added on top of the initial 2,250 market-rate (luxury) rentals. He cited a "secret memo" about condemning businesses--which I wish he'd proffer. And he praised the Community Benefits Agreement, apparently not recognizing that experts don't consider it legitimate.

But Bloomberg's defense was much weaker. First, he relied on Al Sharpton's unsupported claim that the project would bring jobs and housing to "the people in that community." (Sharpton used the term "communities of color," which the Times paraphrased as "minorities"--neither of which are necessarily "that community," whatever Bloomberg meant.) Bloomberg said the project had scrutiny from community boards, even though it specifically bypasses City Countil, and the community boards have little power over a state-run project.

Bloomberg also claimed the project had received scrutiny from the press. Well, this blog and my report began because of inadequate press coverage. Quick: how many articles have started from the premise that this would the most expensive arena ever, or that the project would cost the public more than $1 billion? The Times has mentioned these as asides. How many articles have analyzed how the 10,000 office jobs originally promised has been cut by more than two-thirds? How many articles have reported the true percentage of affordable housing?

Bloomberg also said the project involves "a place that's been vacant for decades." But the MTA's Vanderbilt Yard is little more than one-third of the proposed 22-acre Atlantic Yards project site. And, given that this is a crucial place for development, why did the MTA negotiate exclusively with Ratner accept a bid for less than half the appraised value?

The Post didn't analyze the content but simply relied on Bloomberg's Sharpton defense:
Bloomberg defended them as worthy projects, and criticized Ferrer for opposing the Nets arena-Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn — noting that even the Rev. Al Sharpton, a Ferrer supporter — backs the project.

New York Newsday similarly punted:
Bloomberg cited a statement from the Rev. Al Sharpton, who endorsed Ferrer, in favor of a massive Brooklyn building project that Ferrer calls "the twin brother" of the mayor's defunct West Side stadium "boondoggle."

Post columnist Andrea Peyser chided Ferrer for being out of touch--mistakenly saying the arena would be in Manhattan--while herself calling it the "Nets stadium."

The New York Sun gave it a little more coverage, but was still inaccurate:
When asked whether he would undo any of Mr. Bloomberg's initiatives if he were elected mayor, Mr. Ferrer said he would "halt" and "re-evaluate" the Atlantic Yards project, Forest City Ratner's $3.5 billion proposal to erect more than a dozen offices, residential towers, a hotel, and a basketball arena in Brooklyn.
"I object to the lack of transparency, I object to the backroom deals, I object to the things we're beginning to see emerge about a project that is becoming the twin brother of the West Side boondoggle," he said, referring to the fight over the Jets Stadium on the far West Side of Manhattan.
Mr. Bloomberg snapped back that Mr. Ferrer's stance countered that of an unsuccessful 2004 presidential candidate, the Reverend Al Sharpton.
"I couldn't disagree more, and I think Al Sharpton, who supported my opponent, said it very well: This is about jobs for people in that community, this is about housing for people in that community, this is a project that has had enough scrutiny as anything," Mr. Bloomberg said.

More than a dozen? It would be 16 towers plus an arena. "A dozen offices"? According to the project description by the Empire State Development Corporation, there would be 628,000 square feet of office space and 7.2 million square feet of residential space. This is a housing project most of all, and a luxury housing project (5,050 of 7,300 units) at that.



TRANSCRIPT

Errol Louis of the Daily News editorial board: Mr. Ferrer, in the first few weeks of his administration, Mr. Bloomberg undid many of the initiatives of his predecessor. If you’re elected mayor, which, if any, of the initiatives of the Bloomberg administration would you plan to undo?

Freddy Ferrer: Well, there’s one important one that I will undo and that’s Atlantic Yards. I will call a halt to that project and reevaluate it. Look, as we’re beginning to scratch under the surface of a Nets arena in Manhattan and the construction of thousands of units of housing. The original promise was 50% affordability. Now we’re finding secret memos emerging that talk about condemning businesses that are ongoing and building then 26- to 2800 units of luxury housing. Those are things I think that deserve full view and a full review of the people who live there. Now I supported, and I felt strongly about the powerful aspects of 50% housing affordability, and the Community Benefits Agreement that would bring small businesses and community people into the full life of the project. But I object to the lack of transparency. I object to the backroom deals. I object to the things we are beginning to see emerge about a project that is becoming the twin brother of the West Side boondoggle.

Mike Bloomberg: Well, I couldn’t disagree more. And I think Al Sharpton who supported my opponent said it very well: this is about jobs for people in that community, this is about housing for people in that community. This is a project that has had as much scrutiny as anything: community boards, and scrutiny from the newspapers, and scrutiny from every single state agency that’s involved. This is the right kind of project for the city, builds houses, creates jobs, helps the spirit of Brooklyn, and takes a place that’s been vacant for decades--50 years or more—and does something with it that will help this city.

After I posted my criticism of the recent Pace Poll on Atlantic Yards, I decided to query poll director Jonathan Trichter. I wrote:
While I appreciate your effort to go beyond simple yes/no questions, I dispute your statement [in the New York Observer] that the poll regarding the proposed Atlantic Yards project was conducted "in such a way to get a good sense of where New Yorkers would be if they were well informed." While those polled were given both "pro" and "con" arguments, the arguments were hardly comprehensive.

Here are some unmentioned "con" facts. Forest City Ratner officials acknowledge that the public cost of the project would be at least $1.1 billion over 30 years. The arena would be the most expensive ever built. The promised public park on the arena roof now would be private space. The number of construction jobs would be one-tenth the number used in most media reports. Since the project was announced, the amount of luxury housing has more than doubled and the amount of proposed office space has been cut by more than half. [I erred: it would be cut by more than two-thirds.]

See more criticisms/citations here.

So I'd like to know:
--who was responsible for designing those poll questions and pro/con statements?
--did you know of the additional "con" facts I cite?
--if yes, then why not choose to include at least some of them?
--if no, then do you think they should have been included?

Trichter wrote back promptly and cordially:
Thank you for your note. To answer your questions, although I do receive some input from our media partners in this study (The New York Observer, WCBS 2 News, and WNYC Radio), ultimately I design all the surveys and all the questions. I was aware of some of the arguments against the project that you illustrate, but not all. After reading them, I am impressed, of course, with your knowledge of the project; it vastly exceeds mine. Still, in my judgment, I do not believe the valid arguments you highlight are better than the ones we chose. Unfortunately, the confines of a poll make it impossible to list all the arguments for and against an item. And I used my best judgment to select those I thought made the strongest case both before and against the Atlantic Yards project. If we poll on this project in the future, I will revisit all of the arguments both for and against the project, including yours.

So I decided to try to write different versions of both "con" paragraphs read to those polled. These were characterized as some of the best arguments against the project:
Statement B: Some/Other people say the proposal to bring the Nets to central Brooklyn will waste $200 million dollars in taxpayer money on a sports stadium. These people also say that the 16 new mixed-use hi-rises that are part of the proposal will overwhelm our already overcrowded schools, subways, buses, and neighborhoods. And they say that the project can’t be built without evicting current residents.

Here's a much stronger alternative, just two words longer:
Some/Other people say the proposal to bring the Nets to central Brooklyn will waste more than $1 billion on a project that’s mostly luxury housing, with one-tenth of the new office jobs once promised. These people also say that the arena and 16 hi-rises near Brooklyn’s busiest intersection will compound existing traffic problems. And they say that the project depends on evictions through eminent domain.

These were characterized as some of the best arguments against the city and state's proposed investment in the project:
Statement B: Some/Other people say that the City and State should not spend $200 million dollars to help a rich sports team like the Nets build an arena in Brooklyn because every other government that has invested taxpayer money in sports arenas has lost money and because the team and its supporters are exaggerating how much money the City and State will make from the arena. And they say it would be better to spend the $200 million dollars on schools, police, and other vital services.

Here's a much stronger alternative, three words shorter:
Some/Other people say that the City and State should not spend $200 million dollars immediately and $1 billion over 30 years because the arena is a Trojan Horse for a project that’s mostly luxury housing. Project supporters have relied on a biased study that claims, for example, that the arena would not increase police costs. Critics say it would be better to spend the millions on vital services and developments that are accountable to the City Council, which has been bypassed.

I do think the alternatives would have made a difference. I don't blame the Pace Poll so much as the generally weak press coverage that has failed, for example, to analyze the changes in housing and jobs.

So, is the Community Benefits Agreement regarding Atlantic Yards supposed to help the local "community" or the minority "community"? There's an interesting tension there, because the signatories are local (and minority), but several beneficiaries are hardly local, with none based on Brooklyn and some outside New York City.

So a 10/28/2005 story in the Courier-Life chain headlined Forest City Ratner Hires Design & Construction Firm reported:
Forest City Ratner hired the nation’s oldest minority-owned design and construction firm to oversee the reconfiguration of the Atlantic Rail Yards.
“We’re extremely excited. The fact that FCRC has entrusted us with the whole infrastructure piece alone is significant,” said Cheryl McKissack Felder, president of McKissack & McKissack, the firm tapped to do the job.
...FCRC Executive Vice President James Stuckey said the firm was tabbed to oversee the $182 million rail yard portion of the overall project in part to fulfill the CBA commitment to hire minority and women-owned contactors.
However, mainly McKissack & McKissack was picked because they have a rock-solid reputation in the construction industry, he said.

The Brooklyn Eagle added a detail: In response to a question, the Forest City executive [Jim Stuckey] didn’t know whether McKissack was chosen by a bidding process, but stressed that his firm has known of McKissack’s rail experience for quite some time.
He didn't know whether the contract was bid?

The Courier-Life article adds some details on how FCR has begun to fulfill the CBA:
The CBA also requires that at least five percent of pre-construction contract dollars will go to minority-owned firms and three percent to women-owned firms.
During the construction phase, at least 20 percent of construction contract dollars will go to minority firms and 10 percent to women-owned businesses.
Thus far, FCRC has hired several minority and women-owned firms to do consulting, bookkeeping and public relations work.
These include Ishmael Leyva Architects as a residential design consultant, Domingo Gonzales Associates as a lighting consultant, the Quantum Partners for financial services, and the Terrie Williams Agency for public relations.

The CBA was signed by the All-Faith Council of Brooklyn, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development (BUILD), the Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Alliance, the Downtown Brooklyn Educational Consortium, the First Atlantic Terminal Housing Committee, the New York State Association of Minority Contractors (NYSAMC), and Public Housing Communities. While groups like ACORN and NYSAMC are long-established, BUILD was formed to negotiate the CBA, and it's not clear how many of the other groups have a history before the CBA.

The CBA they endorsed includes this passage (p. 2):
Whereas, the Coalition and the Developers seek to maximize the benefits of the Project to residents of Brooklyn, as well as minority and women construction, professional and operational workers and business owners and thereby to encourage systemic changes in the traditional ways of doing business on large urban development projects...

It's not clear how much engaging these companies encourages systemic changes. McKissack and McKissack is already doing pretty well. It has offices in New York and Philadelphia, but its web site defaults to Philadelphia, so it's not exactly local (though local subcontractors will be hired). Ismael Leyva Architects is based in Manhattan, as are lighting consultant Domingo Gonzales Associates and the Terrie Williams Agency--all apparently thriving firms. As for the Quantum Partners, the trail is murky, an 11/1/04 Federal Communications Commission notice indicates that a firm with that name is connected to the hardly-impoverished George Soros:
Quantum Partners LDC... Quantum LDC, a Cayman Islands company, is wholly-owned by Quantum Emerging Growth Partners C.V. (“Quantum EGP”)...
Quantum Endowment Fund N.V. (“QEF NV”) is a limited partner of Quantum EGP with an equity interest of over 50%. No entity has an ownership or voting interest of 10% or more in QEF NV. Emerging Growth Fund Management C.V. (“Emerging Growth”) is the managing general partner of Quantum EGP. Quastro N.V., wholly-owned by George Soros, is the managing general partner of Emerging Growth. George Soros also owns Soros Fund Management LLC.

The role of the Terrie Williams Agency deserves a closer look. The agency represents BUILD and the CBA, though BUILD's James Caldwell first claimed to the New York Observer that he didn't know who was paying the agency. The agency then spoke for BUILD, explaining away BUILD's lies about not receiving payments.

So BUILD--an astroturf group founded by Assemblyman Roger Green, whose top aide Randall Toure went to work for Forest City Ratner (see Chapter 4 of my report)--helped negotiate an illegitimate CBA. [Addendum: while there's evidence that BUILD did very little before the Forest City Ratner plan was announced, cofounder Darnell Canada told the Brooklyn Downtown Star that "BUILD was created back in August 2003 to address the unemployment situation in the Ingersoll, Whitman, and Farragut housing developments."]

The group received money from Ratner but lied about it. Ratner also hired BUILD to distribute the propagandistic Brooklyn Standard--much more of a political job than long-term job training. The CBA is supposed to foster "systemic changes in the traditional ways of doing business on large urban development projects." Does helping to create a "grassroots" group, funding it to distribute your public relations material, and also supplying a press spokesperson for the group constitute systemic change? Is this part of the "modern blueprint"?

So Democratic Mayoral candidate Freddy Ferrer held a press conference yesterday in which he made his most forceful statement in opposition to the Atlantic Yards project, offering specific criticisms about the amount of affordable housing, the lack of community review, and the prospect of "nearly a billion dollars" (actually, more, according to the developer--see Chapter 3 of my report) in subsidies. But the lead in all the coverage is that the Rev. Al Sharpton disagrees with him, with no effort to factcheck Sharpton.

Now Sharpton's comments were newsworthy, but they need to be examined, and they shouldn't overshadow Ferrer's pointed criticism--showing a real difference with Mayor Bloomberg, who has backed the plan unquestioningly--which the press hardly cited. The New York Times's 10/29/05 story was headlined Ferrer Is Chided Over Atlantic Yards and, in the print edition, the deck stated "Sharpton Says Plan Could Mean Thousands of Minority Jobs." The article began:
Seeking to build support for his mayoral bid in brownstone Brooklyn, Fernando Ferrer said yesterday that he would stop the huge Atlantic Yards development project, but a major supporter, the Rev. Al Sharpton, sharply rebuked him for playing politics with a project that could create thousands of jobs for minority workers.

Thousands of jobs for minority workers? How does Sharpton know? As City Council Member Charles Barron (unlike Sharpton, an elected voice for a minority community, unlike Sharpton) pointed out in questioning Forest City Ratner's Jim Stuckey at a City Council hearing, no office jobs could be guaranteed to minority workers. As for the construction jobs, estimated by Ratner at 1,500 a year for ten years, and by Mayor Bloomberg at 1,200 a year, the Community Benefits Agreement (p. 13ff.) refers to pre-apprentice training for construction jobs, lists of unemployed local construction workers, customized job training for project tenants, retail leasing preferences for local businesses, and internships. It states:
The Developers will use good faith efforts to meet the overall goal during construction of the arena and the project by employing, or causing to be employed, not less than 35% Minority and 10% women construction workers, of which 35% of each category should have the status of journey-level worker.

If we're talking construction jobs, 35% of 1,500 is 525, and 35% of 1,200 is 420. Add a few hundred in the other categories and the term "thousands of minority jobs" is hardly appropriate. Why didn't Sharpton--or the press--mention that the promised 10,000 permanent office jobs at the project have been cut by at least two thirds, and the actual new office jobs could be under 700?

The Times article continued by quoting Sharpton:
In a statement sent by e-mail to reporters, Mr. Sharpton said that he and Mr. Ferrer "strongly disagree" on the project, which would place a ridge of skyscrapers and a basketball arena at a major Brooklyn intersection and straddle several low-scale neighborhoods where opposition to the project has recently intensified. Mr. Ferrer, he said, "needs to realize that failure to get projects like this done would be a terrible loss for communities of color throughout this city."

Yet the Times article--as did the Times article announcing Sharpton's support for the Atlantic Yards project (see my report, Chapter 4)--did not see fit to quote any other spokespeople for communities of color. The Daily News coverage of Sharpton's original announcement quoted a minister, the Rev. Clinton Miller, who, unlike Sharpton, is based in the community. And, of course, the elected official most prominently against the project is City Council Member Letitia James, who is far closer to the local communities of color than is Sharpton.

The Times article proceeded to sketch the backdrop without filling in some details:
In another sign of how aggressively the Bloomberg forces are campaigning to keep him in office, some of his supporters found a different way to overshadow Mr. Ferrer. Chanting "Jobs, housing, hoops," a group of union members who support the Atlantic Yards project disrupted Mr. Ferrer's news conference.

The Bloomberg forces? Given that Forest City Ratner representatives were present at the press conference, they were likely just as responsible.

The Times article continued:
Mr. Ferrer stood with several supporters on Pacific Street and cast the project as "the twin brother of Mike Bloomberg's West Side stadium boondoggle." But the larger group of union members, inflatable rats in tow, whistled and chanted while Tony Herbert, a Republican candidate for City Council who helped organize the protest, yelled, "Don't sell out the minorities, Freddy."

Tony Herbert is running against Letitia James. James already trounced an Atlantic Yards supporter in the Democratic primary. In a heavily Democratic district, she will undoubtedly defeat Herbert. So Herbert's credibility should be contextualized.

The last three paragraphs of the Times article finally touched on Ferrer's critique:
Mr. Ferrer, who said he saw the hand of the Bloomberg campaign in the disruption, has long complained that the development, which is subject to state review rather than to the city's rigorous approval process, was planned in secret. Still, he had supported the developer's promises that 50 percent of the new homes would be subsidized for low- and middle-income residents and that minorities and female-owned contracting companies would be hired.
But it was only recently that he said that the development, proposed by Forest City Ratner, should be halted altogether and its scope reassessed because the project has expanded since it was first announced, raising questions about how many apartments would be subsidized and who would be able to afford them. "Recently it's come to light that this proposal is not what we all thought it would be," Mr. Ferrer said. "Along with my concerns about infrastructure and total lack of community participation it's clear that this project just cannot go forward as it's currently structured."
But Mr. Ferrer drew fire from other supporters, including Assemblyman Roger Green and Bertha Lewis, leader of the housing advocacy group Acorn. Bruce Bender, an executive at Forest City Ratner, the development partner in building a new Midtown headquarters for the New York Times Company, accused Mr. Ferrer of misrepresenting the facts.

Raising questions about how many apartments would be subsidized? The Times didn't point out Ferrer's answers, but they come from the ESDC's project description. While 50% of the first 4,500 rental units would be "affordable," Forest City Ratner subsequently added 2,800 market-rate units. As Ferrer said accurately at the press conference, "fewer than 15%" would be truly affordable, aimed at people under Brooklyn's median income. Why couldn't the Times report this?

Roger Green and Bertha Lewis might be expected to criticize Ferrer, since they could also be described as partners with Forest City Ratner. Green helped develop the Community Benefits Agreement (see Chapter 4 of my report) and Lewis's group, which gave Ratner street cred after the 50-50 affordable housing plan was announced (for the first 4,500 rental units only), is contractually obligated to support the Atlantic Yards development (see Chapter 7 of my report).

Bruce Bender, an executive at Forest City Ratner, the development partner in building a new Midtown headquarters for the New York Times Company, accused Mr. Ferrer of misrepresenting the facts. The article ends with an unspecified accusation. What facts were misrepresented? And couldn't Forest City Ratner itself be accused of misrepresenting facts? Let's take, for example, the company's Brooklyn Standard.

The coverage elsewhere similarly featured Sharpton, with even fewer details. The New York Post also led with Sharpton, with the headline REV. TURNS ON FERRER. Here's the Post's paltry attempt at details:
Ferrer spoke out against the massive project — which includes some units of "affordable" housing — as "the twin brother of Mike Bloomberg's West Side stadium boondoggle."
...Hours later, Sharpton — who supports the project — issued a statement blasting Ferrer for campaigning against a project that would produce jobs and housing.

The New York Daily News offered the headline, Freddy gets slap from his pal Rev. Al. The article stated:
Sharpton is on record supporting the Atlantic Yards, where developer Bruce Ratner has promised to set aside 45% of construction jobs to minorities and women and market 50% of rental units as affordable.

Unmentioned were the total number of housing units. Also, as I've noted before, if 35% of construction jobs would go to minorities and 10% to women, the only way they could add up to 45% would be if all the women were white--an untenable scenario.

Newsday, in a story headlined Just call it flashback Friday, also treated it as a story about campaign tactics:
The Rev. Al Sharpton did so by registering his disagreement with the man he endorsed for mayor, Democrat Fernando Ferrer, over a controversial Brooklyn development plan.
Ferrer has said he opposes the Atlantic Yards development project in Brooklyn, which would include an arena as well as high-rise housing and commercial space. Sharpton, in a letter circulated by his publicist, said, "Freddy and I agree on a lot, but we strongly disagree when it comes to the importance of the Atlantic Yards project, [which is] exactly what we need in Brooklyn."

Sharpton's statements deserve scrutiny, not stenography. With relatively little effort, reporters could have both factchecked his assertions as well as found elected minority representatives from Brooklyn who could argue why Sharpton is wrong.

In a 10/28/05 New York Daily News story headlined Beep's downsize call, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz again called for the Atlantic Yards project to be downsized, but again would not offer specifics:
Plans for the 22-acre miniature city proposed for Brooklyn call for an NBA arena and 16 towers up to 620 feet high.
Nine million square feet of new office and residential space would dwarf surrounding structures, including the iconic Williamsburgh Savings Bank building, currently Brooklyn's tallest.
Markowitz told the Daily News that benefits from the $3.5 billion project such as jobs, affordable housing and park space should be preserved while building heights are reduced.
"The urban design challenge is how do we [preserve] the benefits and downscale the heights of the buildings proposed," Markowitz said.
He didn't offer a specific reduction, however.
..."Now listen, we've got to downscale it," Markowitz said on the TV show [NY1]. "There's no question that the community is right when they call for downscaling the size, and they're right on that."

First, note that calling it "office and residential space" obscures the fact that the vast majority would be residential space, and luxury housing at that.

The original plan, in December 2003, proposed 7.6 million zoning square feet (though Forest City Ratner says 7.7):
While the final details of the plan are still subject to an agreement among the City , the State, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Forest City Ratner Companies, the proposed 7.7 million zoning square feet at Brooklyn Atlantic Yards would be divided into approximately:
· 800,000 square feet for the sports arena – with 19,000 seats for basketball games and 20,000 as configured for other events, such as concerts;
· six acres of publicly accessible open space;
· 4.4 million square feet of residential, in approximately 4,500 units
· 2.1 million square feet of commercial office space;
· 300,000 square feet of retail space;
· 3,000 parking spaces.

On 9/16/05, the scoping document from the Empire State Development Corporation, proposed 9,132,000 gross square feet:
The development program currently includes, at full build-out, approximately 628,000 gross square feet (gsf) of commercial office space, 196,000 gsf of hotel use, 256,000 gsf of retail, up to 7.2 million gsf of residential use (approximately 7,300 residential units), approximately 4,000 parking spaces, more than 7 acres of publicly-accessible open space, and the proposed 850,000 gsf arena.... As part of the proposed project, a portion of the parcel identified as Site 5 of the Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Plan would be developed with approximately 356,000 gsf of residential use and 347,000 gsf of office use in addition to the existing approximately 47,000 gsf of retail.

I'm told--though I don't yet have a document confirming it--that the original plan was actually 8 million gross square feet, so the appropriate comparison would be 8 million and 9.132 million.

Some percentages regarding the current plan:
--7.2 million square feet for residential use represents 78.8% of the total 9.132 million square feet. That makes this by far a residential project, so any description of it as "mixed-use" or "office-retail-residential" should acknowledge that it is hardly balanced among those uses.
--5,050 of 7,300 housing units, or 69.2% of the total, would be market rate. Of 7.2 million square feet, 69.2% would represent 4.98 million square feet. That would represent 50.1% of the total project square footage. In other words, it's not just planned as a residential project, it's a luxury housing project.

Some percentages regarding the difference between current plan and the one originally announced:
--9.132 million square feet represents a 14.1% increase over 8 million square feet.
--a 10% cut from 9.132 million square feet would be .913 million square feet, reducing the project to 8.21 million square feet, still larger than originally planned.
--a 15% cut from 9.132 million square feet would be 1.37 million square feet, reducing the project to 7.76 million square feet, only slightly smaller than originally planned.

In other words, even a 15% reduction would bring Atlantic Yards just past its starting point, the largest development in Brooklyn's history.

In an interview with the Daily News, in a 10/27/05 article headlined Freddy fires Net salvo, Democratic mayoral candidate Freddy Ferrer called for the Atlantic Yards project to be reduced significantly, though he didn't offer specifics.

The article stated:
Ferrer told the Editorial Board that he supported the project's affordable housing and other benefits it would bring to the community, but he lambasted the overall "secrecy and lack of transparency" surrounding the development.
He also rebuked what he called "apparent abuses of eminent domain," citing a secret memo that recently emerged about two businesses that could be evicted if a site were not made available by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Secret memo? I'd like to know more.

Ferrer said:
"We're talking about a lot of mass in that project, a lot of mass. And if we don't deal with a lot of the other issues - like traffic, like schools, like police protection, like sanitation and health care - I think we have a problem," Ferrer said.
"We've got to make this human-size now," he concluded. "This can't be the mother of all real estate deals. If it is that, then, I think it's wrong."
Ferrer declined to specify precisely what part of the project he intended to scale back. He said he would only support eminent domain for businesses that were "unperforming."

Unperforming? The standard for eminent domain is supposed to be "public purpose,' though the proponents' interpretation is that the project would yield more revenues. But there are certainly some "performing" businesses within the potential project footprint, such as Simon Liu's art supply company.

Supporters of the Atlantic Yards project fired back at Ferrer:
Stu Loeser, a Bloomberg campaign spokesman, said Ferrer's proposal "means less affordable housing, less jobs, and less economic development for Brooklyn and the city."
...Joe DePlasco, who represents the project's developer, said the development team disagrees with Ferrer and welcomes the opportunity to explain the project to him.
"We have generated so much support and excitement because the project will also generate thousands of jobs and thousands of affordable apartments in an area with a dire need for housing and jobs."

Again, this is an example of lazy reporting. A smaller project may mean fewer jobs and less housing, but Forest City Ratner has already cut the amount of proposed office space by two-thirds--thus already cutting promised jobs, with less than 700 new office jobs to be added to a few hundred arena/hotel jobs and 1,500 (or 1,200) construction jobs a year over ten years. Also, the amount of luxury housing more than doubled after Ratner announced a 50-50 "affordable" housing plan.

So support has been generated because of promises about housing and jobs, but the public has not been informed how the developer hasn't kept those promises.

A poll commissioned by the New York Observer, cosponsored by WNYC Radio and WCBS-TV, and conducted by Pace University suggests that, in comparison with previous surveys, the tide has shifted, and a majority of New Yorkers favor Forest City Ratner's proposed Atlantic Yards complex. (Previous polls by the New York Times--which didn't publish the results--and Quinnipiac University showed respondents opposed a taxpayer-funded arena, though they didn't deal with the whole project.)

The Observer article accompanying the poll states:
“The poll shows a low level of public awareness, but we conducted it in such a way to get a good sense of where New Yorkers would be if they were well informed,” said Jonathan Trichter, the director of the Pace Poll. “There are plenty of tools that the opposition can use to derail this project, but public opinion is not one of them.”

Public opinion is fixed? I think the issue is vastly more complicated, since the "additional information" provided to flesh out the poll was vastly inadequate, and that different results may have been obtained with more complete information about cuts in promised jobs, increases in luxury housing, the actual cost of the project, and the effect on traffic.

The 10/31/05 article, headlined Observer Poll: Nets Stadium Gets Nod From Brooklynites, cites evidence that criticism may be rising against the project, including Marty Markowitz's call for the project to be scaled down and the hearing on October that "turned into a talent show for Mr. Ratner’s opponents." However, it suggests the tide goes in the other direction:
A poll commissioned by The New York Observer and conducted by Pace University finds that more New Yorkers support the plan to bring the Nets to Brooklyn than oppose it—and the trend remains even when people find out more about the project.
Asked outright what they think about the plan, 39 percent of the 538 voters polled said they support it, 23 percent oppose it, and the rest were undecided. Support was even stronger among Brooklynites (50 percent) and black men (59 percent). A set of follow-up questions gave the best arguments in favor (jobs, housing, civic spirit) and against (the large size, a $200 million taxpayer subsidy, use of eminent domain) and then asked respondents to rate their support: 46 percent were somewhat or strongly for it.
Between 30 percent and 36 percent of the public opposed it, depending on how the question was worded.

The Observer gives a Ratner official a chance to comment:
“Many times, people have very visceral reactions to real-estate development, and what I’m pleased about is that people in Brooklyn have obviously been paying attention and understand the concept and the issues,” said Jim Stuckey, executive vice president for Mr. Ratner’s company, Forest City Ratner. “Obviously there are questions, and obviously there are concerns—and there should be. And we will be addressing those.”

And here's the comment from an opponent:
Daniel Goldstein, spokesman for Develop—Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, criticized the Observer survey for low-balling the total cost of the project to taxpayers, which has been estimated to reach $1 billion, everything included. Nonetheless, Mr. Goldstein said the poll results show there is substantial opposition—and not just from neighbors.
...He added: “Still, considering that the developer is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, on lobbying and on public relations, including two newspapers—and grassroots activists just can’t match that—the results are pretty good.”

Let's look at the actual poll results (p. 21-22), with careful attention to the pro and con arguments cited by the pollsters:
We asked voters to assess Forest City Ratner’s plan to develop an arena for the Nets and 16 mixed-use towers in central Brooklyn. Based solely on what they know now and without providing any new information, 39% of voters support the proposal either strongly (21%) or somewhat (18%). In contrast, 23% oppose the proposal either strongly (16%) or somewhat (7%). Nevertheless, more than a third (36%) have not made up their minds about the project. At the moment, the groups most likely to support the Atlantic Yards project are Black men (59%), Brooklyn Residents (50%), and men (49%).
Although some have suggested that opposition to the project will grow as people learn more about it, we found that providing voters with additional information has mixed results. Splitting voters into two groups, we presented one group of voters with some of the best arguments both for and against the project.

Statement A: Some/Other people say that the proposal to bring the Nets to central Brooklyn will create thousands of new jobs and raise Brooklyn’s civic spirit. These people also say that the 16 residential and commercial towers that are part of the proposal will add more than 2,000 new affordable apartments to the area. And they say the project will create new public spaces, like a new community center.

Statement B: Some/Other people say the proposal to bring the Nets to central Brooklyn will waste $200 million dollars in taxpayer money on a sports stadium. These people also say that the 16 new mixed-use hi-rises that are part of the proposal will overwhelm our already overcrowded schools, subways, buses, and neighborhoods. And they say that the project can’t be built without evicting current residents.

What we found is that learning more about the project from both of the above arguments increases support for the plan from 39% to 46% while opposition grows from 23% to 30%. That is, after we presented voters with arguments both for and against the project, 46% support the proposal either strongly (25%) or somewhat (21%) and 30% oppose it either strongly (17%) or somewhat (13%). Most relevant, a majority of Brooklyn Residents (56%) support the project, only 35% oppose it.

[Note that 24% remain undecided.]

In addition, we presented the other group of voters with, specifically, the best arguments both for and against the City’s and State’s proposed investment in the project. Here are the arguments this second group of voters heard:

Statement A: Some/Other people say that the City and State should invest $200 million dollars to build the infrastructure for the Nets arena in Brooklyn because an independent analysis concludes that the City and State will earn back all of their original investment plus another $100 million dollars through the jobs and sales generated by the arena. These people also say that the government’s $100 million dollar profit on their investment can help the City and State pay for schools, police, and other vital services.

Statement B: Some/Other people say that the City and State should not spend $200 million dollars to help a rich sports team like the Nets build an arena in Brooklyn because every other government that has invested taxpayer money in sports arenas has lost money and because the team and its supporters are exaggerating how much money the City and State will make from the arena. And they say it would be better to spend the $200 million dollars on schools, police, and other vital services.

After hearing this different set of both pro and con arguments, voters also support the project and the proposed City and State investment: 46% support it either strongly (28%) or somewhat (18%), while 36% oppose it either strongly (24%) or somewhat (12%). Again, most relevant, the majority of Brooklyn Residents (52%) support the City’s and State’s investment in the project, only 31% oppose it.

[Note that 18% remain undecided.]

Here are some unmentioned facts that might cause supporters and fence-sitters to think twice. Even Forest City Ratner officials acknowledge that the public cost of the project would be at least $1.1 billion over 30 years. (See my report, p. 29, or p. 54 of PDF). The arena would be the most expensive ever built. The company's promised public park on the arena roof would be private space. Forest City Ratner produces a "publication," the Brooklyn Standard, which is full of misleading statements, credits stories to someone who didn't write them, and may be using fake bylines. The number of construction jobs would be one-tenth the number used in most media reports.

The amount of luxury housing has more than doubled and the amount of promised office space has been cut by two thirds. In fact, Forest City Ratner originally promised 10,000 office jobs. For the same amount of office space, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) estimated 7,100 jobs. The amount of office space has been cut from 2 million square feet to 628,000 square feet, which, under Ratner's calcuations, would be space for 3,140 jobs. If you follow the NYCEDC's projections--fewer jobs for the same amount of space, plus a 7% vacancy rate--you get 2,229 jobs. However, NYCEDC also estimates that only 30% of the promised jobs would be new to the city rather than moved from elsewhere (a pattern with Ratner projects). Take 30% of 2,229 jobs and you get 669 new office jobs.

Also note that, as Lumi Rolley points out, that "evicting current residents" is not the same as "using eminent domain," a hot-button issue that made it to the Supreme Court.

So even those statements aimed to inform did much too little. More than 2,000 affordable apartment sounds nice, but first "affordable" must be defined--only 900 apartments would go to people earning less than Brooklyn's median income--and then the poll should have noted that there would be 5,050 market-rate units. Creating "thousands of new jobs" sounds nice, but there may be fewer than 700 new office jobs (I had earlier said 1,038, but recalculated it) as opposed to the 10,000 once promised. There also would be--as the Observer's Matthew Schuerman points out--at least 400 permanent jobs at the arena and retail, plus 1,500 construction jobs a year for ten years. Or maybe 1,200, if you follow the mayor's numbers.

A cost of $200 million is vastly less than $1 billion. Even calling the project "mixed use" or "residential and commercial" is too vague. Atlantic Yards would mostly be a housing project--remember, office space was traded for housing--and mostly a luxury housing project at that.

The way questions are framed can affect the outcome of polls. In this case, because the questions did not acknowledge some significant criticisms of the project, the poll developers cannot claim that it was "conducted in such a way to get a good sense of where New Yorkers would be if they were well informed.” Not at all.

A Metro Briefing in the 10/26/05 New York Times, headlined BUILDER NAMED FOR ATLANTIC YARDS, brings up construction jobs at the project, an issue that deserves further discussion:
The real estate developer Forest City Ratner Companies announced yesterday that McKissack & McKissack, the country's oldest black-owned construction firm, would manage a planned $182 million renovation of the Atlantic Yards rail depot in Brooklyn. The renovation of the century-old railyards is the first major stage of the $3.5 billion development that Forest City Ratner has proposed. Supporters of the development said the selection of McKissack & McKissack was evidence that the developer was keeping its promise to hire contracting firms owned by minorities and women whenever possible. Critics have said that they hope to block the development.

Note that, according to BUILD (but not Forest City Ratner), McKissack & McKissack has also been contracted to build the arena, according to a 5/28/05 article in the Brooklyn Papers.

Also, it's time for the Times, and the rest of the press, to analyze exactly how many construction jobs are at stake, to explain that construction jobs but not office jobs can be steered to local residents, and to explain that construction jobs are customarily calculated in job-years, which inflates their number in casual press accounts.

First, there's a question of the total number. Forest City Ratner has long promised 15,000 union construction jobs, in a December 2003 press release (p. 5), in the June/July issue (available 6/17/05) of the Brooklyn Standard, and in the Fall issue of the Brooklyn Standard (p. 5), issued earlier this month.

However, Mayor Bloomberg used a figure of 12,000 construction jobs in a 3/3/05 press release and a 5/19/05 press release.

Adding to the confusion is that FCR promised 15,000 construction jobs for a project that was initially to cost $2.5 billion and cover 7.6 million zoning square feet and 8 million gross square feet. The company still promises the same number of jobs for a project that now would cost $3.5 billion (a 40% increase) and cover 9.132 million gross square feet (a 14.1% increase). That doesn't add up.

The most recent mention in the Times was a 6/28/05 Metro Briefing headlined "Developer Promises Benefits," which used the 12,000 construction jobs figure, apparently based on a previous mayoral press release:
The developer, Bruce Ratner... promised that he would give local residents the first chance at work on the $3.5 billion development, which is expected to generate 12,000 construction jobs and 8,500 permanent jobs.

That report implies that local residents, as part of the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA), would get priority for not just construction jobs but also office jobs, which are projected to be most of the permanent jobs, though the amount of office space has been cut by two thirds since December 2003. Similarly, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, in his 2005 State of the Borough address, also gave the impression that local residents would get a boost:
It is estimated that Atlantic Yards will create about 10,000 permanent new jobs. That is above and beyond the 15,000 construction-related jobs that it will create over the next decade.
And we can all be proud that 100 percent of those workers will be union employees.
Under a proposed groundbreaking Community Benefits Agreement, as many as possible of those new jobs will be filled by Brooklyn residents, and I promise you, those jobs will go to those who need them most — particularly low income residents living in public housing nearby.

To be precise, "100 percent of those workers" refers to only the construction jobs, and "as many as possible of those new jobs" refers only to construction jobs. Unless Markowitz had used the terms "construction workers" and "those new construction jobs," his speech can be read to imply that the CBA applies to all jobs. Rather, the CBA (p. 13ff.) refers to pre-apprentice training for construction jobs, lists of unemployed local construction workers, customized job training for project tenants, retail leasing preferences for local businesses, and internships.

City Council member Charles Barron quizzed FCR ’s Jim Stuckey about the office jobs at the 5/26/05 City Council hearing (p. 73-74):
STUCKEY: Well, we’re not even sure who those companies will be yet, Council member. I can’t tell you who the employees will be.
BARRON: Those jobs won’t be controlled by you?
STUCKEY: Those jobs are controlled by the companies that --
BARRON: That’s right. So, those, they could hire whoever they want basically.
STUCKEY: Typically that’s what happens with businesses in our country.

More fundamentally, as I write in Chapter 2 of my report, construction jobs are temporary jobs, not permanent jobs. A construction job, in standard industry parlance, lasts for one year. So FCR's projection means 15,000 job-years (1,500 jobs each year over 10 years). That means 1,500 people would be working each year. Or, if Bloomberg's numbers are used, there would be 1,200 jobs a year.

Andrew Alper, president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, acknowledged as much, at a 5/4/04 City Council Economic Development Committee hearing, where he assumed 14,400 construction jobs, a 4% drop from 15,000, which wasn't explained (p.23):
I should say that is construction people years, so it may not be 14,400 workers, it is that number of jobs for a year per person...

The Brooklyn Papers, in a 6/26/04 article headlined Numbers game over Ratner arena jobs, explained:
From the beginning the project’s developer, Bruce Ratner, has said the project will create 10,000 permanent jobs and 15,000 construction jobs.
But critics of the plan are pointing out that the project will really only create 1,500 construction jobs, which will continue each year for 10 years.
“Fifteen-hundred jobs a year over 10 years is 15,000 jobs and it’s 1,500 jobs a year in an area of high unemployment,” said Forest City Ratner spokeswoman Beth Davidson.

Other press outlets have not used the job-years figure regarding Atlantic Yards. In writing about other projects, the New York Times has done so, however. For example, a 4/10/05 Times article about the proposed West Side Stadium headlined "Mayor’s Guess At Stadium Jobs Is Highest Yet," the proponents’ data were questioned:
The mayor and the Jets contend that the project will generate 18,000 jobs. It actually means, the Jets acknowledge, that there will be an average of 4,500 jobs during the four years of construction.
The budget office’s estimate, however, was far lower than the Jets’—an average of 2,880 construction jobs per year, and it did not bother multiplying that figure by four, because construction jobs by their nature are temporary.

So here are some questions for the press: How many construction jobs are in fact planned? Where did Mayor Bloomberg's 12,000 jobs figure come from? Has the number of construction jobs changed since the project size was increased? And why aren't construction jobs also described in job-years?

In a post earlier today, I erroneously concluded that Mayor Bloomberg had retouched a press release:
Is Mayor Mike Bloomberg trying to distance himself from Bruce Ratner, the man behind the controversial Atlantic Yards development? An apparently retouched mayoral press release from last March offers a clue. It deletes two sections from the original press release: a reliance on the projections of the developer's paid consultant, as well as thanks to Ratner and his company.

After making that charge, I learned that the explanation was simpler but still confounding--the mayor apparently did issue a press release, a day before the governor and the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), with fewer jobs promised and a reliance on the New York State Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) rather than Ratner's paid economist Andrew Zimbalist.

But it remains disturbing that the governor and the ESDC were relying on Zimbalist rather than a more independent agency. And it remains disturbing that the press releases from the governor and the ESDC cite both the mayor and governor--they begin with the boilerplate "Governor George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today announced..."--and then quote Zimbalist's figures.

Bloomberg has previously been criticized for relying on the economic projections of self-interested private developers rather than more independent agencies, as in a 5/23/04 New York Times article headlined "Stadium Opponents Criticize City for Adopting Jets' Economic Study." Therefore it was disturbing to see, as I point out in Chapter 3 of my report, that a March 2005 press release from New York's mayor and governor relied solely on the economic projections of Andrew Zimbalist, Forest City Ratner's paid consultant, and that Zimbalist's report contains many dubious assumptions. The press release I was using came from the governor's office but was headlined "GOVERNOR PATAKI AND MAYOR BLOOMBERG ANNOUNCE MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING FOR ATLANTIC YARDS PROJECT IN BROOKLYN." So the mayor can be seen as partly responsible for the press release.

The March 2005 press release appears on three web sites: those of the mayor, the governor , and the Empire State Development Corporation. The latter two releases, which are identical and dated 3/4/05, contain this passage:
The project is expected to create 15,000 construction jobs and over 10,000 permanent jobs. According to an economic analysis completed earlier this year for FCRC by the economist Andrew Zimbalist, the net fiscal benefit to the City and State from the Atlantic Yards project is estimated to be at least $2.819 billion over thirty years, or a present value of at least $812.6 million.
(Emphasis added. Actually the economic analysis was completed in 2004.)

The press release on Mayor Bloomberg's web site, dated one day earlier, 3/3/05, contains the exact same text as the other two press releases, except for two key changes. (Why is it dated a day earlier? In a 3/4/05 article headlined "Deal Is Signed for Nets Arena in Brooklyn," the Times reported that Bloomberg had planned to issue a statement on 3/4/05, but did so earlier as word leaked out.)

The mayor's press release changed the number of projected jobs and didn't cite Zimbalist for the economic projections:
The project is expected to create over 12,000 construction jobs and approximately 8,500 permanent jobs. According to an economic analysis completed earlier this year for the New York City Economic Development Corporation [NYCEDC], the net fiscal benefit to the City and State from the Atlantic Yards project is estimated at $1 billion in present value over the next thirty years.
(Emphasis added.)

The mayor's press release allows Bloomberg to distance himself from Ratner's consultant, but the numbers are confusing, since there's no source for his jobs figure. While the press release contains a hyperlink to the NYCEDC's home page, no Atlantic Yards analysis is available at the site, so it's impossible to confirm that $1 billion figure. The only NYCEDC analysis I know about was dated 6/27/05 and released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. It projects a net fiscal benefit only to the city, not the state. Also, in the memo, the NYCEDC estimates fewer jobs than Bloomberg's press release announced nearly four months earlier:
It is expected that approximately 2 million square feet of commercial space will be added to the City as a result of this project. This new construction creates the potential for 7,100 jobs to be added based on an average of 250 square feet per employee and a 7% average vacancy rate.

Note that Forest City Ratner's projection of 10,000 jobs for the same amount of space was based on 200 square feet per employee--while the industry standard is 250--and with no acknowledgement of a vacancy rate. (The source of the mayor's 8,500 jobs figure isn't clear.) Also note that the amount of office space has since been cut by more than two thirds, and thus an updated NYCEDC analysis should acknowledge some 2,229 office jobs.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz also issued a 3/4/05 press release, citing "over ten thousand permanent new jobs."

The second change in the mayor's press release involves a deletion from the original, which contained this passage:
"Today, we are one step closer to bringing professional sports back to Brooklyn," said Governor Pataki. "But even more importantly, we are also a step closer to creating thousands of new jobs, much needed housing, including affordable housing, and providing greater hope and promise for the future. The new Arena will not only be home to the Nets, but will host local community events, as well as concerts and school athletics for neighboring high schools and colleges. I want to thank Bruce Ratner and Forest City Ratner Companies for contributing to Brooklyn's revival."
(Emphasis added)

The mayor's press release dropped the last two sentences of that paragraph, thus eliminating Pataki's praise for Ratner, who happens to be a friend of the governor's from law school.

It's unclear why the mayor's office made these changes, or why they weren't communicated to the governor and ESDC. The changes on the mayor's press release help him from seeming to irresponsibly rely on a developer's paid consultant. But the other press releases, which also attribute the announcement to both the mayor and the governor, rely on that consultant.

I had suspected, based on strong circumstantial evidence, that someone in the mayor's office revised a press release after the fact. The governor, ESDC, and Brooklyn Borough President issued press releases a day after the mayor, but promising more jobs than the mayor did. Now I suspect that someone in the mayor's office took a shared press release and revised it before it was issued, but neglected to inform others issuing the press release.

I found a New York Observer article from March, headlined "The Jets vs. Nets: Brooklyn Arena Deal Template for Stadium," which cited the mayor's press release:
The Mayor’s after-hours announcement on March 3 of a deal on the Brooklyn arena for the Nets basketball team was first seen as a pleasant distraction from his troubled negotiations over the West Side football stadium.
...Ka-boom! Out comes the press release from the Mayor’s office proclaiming "an historic project that will continue to energize the borough of Brooklyn" and bring 12,000 construction jobs and 8,500 permanent jobs. The city and state will chip in $200 million "in site preparation and public infrastructure improvements," the press release added.
...The city estimates a $1 billion return—which is good, because a new study by the Pratt Institute (the most objective source to conduct a study to date) finds that all these tax breaks could end up costing the city about $1 billion.

Other questions remain about the mayor's statements regarding Atlantic Yards. Notably, why did the mayor's office issue a press release in September citing that 8,500 jobs figure, even thought there's space for far fewer?

Today's correction:
An article on Sept. 7 about an agreement by the developer Bruce C. Ratner to double his offer for development rights to the Atlantic railyards in Brooklyn misstated the location of a new yard he plans to build. It is east of the existing site, not west. A reader pointed out the error in a recent e-mail message. (Go to Article)
The print version of the correction also mentions that the error was repeated in a Sept. 15 article.

That reader was me, and I sent them an email about a week ago. Now, I don't mind that the Times doesn't read my blog, where I pointed out these errors a month ago. But apparently no one on the Times, either before or after those articles were published, noticed that the articles were suggesting that, by moving west, the railyard would be placed in the middle of the busiest intersection in Brooklyn, at Atlantic and Flatbush avenues. Lots of Times employees live in Brooklyn.

Still, the Times is indeed following its policy:
The Times treats its readers as fairly and openly as possible. In print and online, we tell our readers the complete, unvarnished truth as best we can learn it. It is our policy to correct our errors, large and small, as soon as we become aware of them.

A 10/24/05 New York Daily News editorial on Atlantic Yards, headlined A neighborhood grows in Brooklyn, states:
Complaints from the not-in-my-backyard crowd, who packed a downtown Brooklyn auditorium, made the hearing sponsored by the Empire State Development Corp. drag on for hours longer than was necessary.
Critics complained about everything from increased traffic to the bizarre notion that the steel exterior of the Nets arena, designed by Frank Gehry, might reflect too much sunlight and make nearby streets uncomfortably hot - an alleged problem with a Gehry project in sun-drenched Los Angeles that likely would not be repeated here.
Thank goodness for responsible leaders, including Mayor Bloomberg and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who aren't letting the NIMBY-ites slow the progress on Atlantic Yards. Ratner now owns or controls about 90% of the needed land, and Bloomberg is committed to the project. That means Brooklyn is only a few years from seeing 17 office and residential towers atop what is now an underused railyard.
The plan would create an estimated 15,000 construction jobs and more than 6,000 housing units. Ratner, who has lined up $100 million in private investments, has already signed an innovative community benefit agreement that guarantees thousands of low-cost housing units will be built. And at least 45% of the construction jobs would go to women and minorities.

As Lumi Rolley points out on No Land Grab:
The mandatory hearing's purpose was to submit comments on the Scope of the Environmental Impact of the project, as was not a pep rally for or against the project as proponents and the Daily News seems to believe. Many of the groups who submitted comments and concerns have not taken a stand on the project, but all these groups are working together to make sure that concerns of the entire community, not just handpicked groups receiving finanacial support from Ratner, are addressed.

And let's count Marty Markowitz as a NIMBY himself, since he expressed concerns about traffic and scale, but would not specify them at the hearing.

15,000 construction jobs? As noted by the Brooklyn Papers and acknowledged by New York City Economic Development Corporation president Andrew Alper (see my report, p. 81 of PDF, marked p. 56), construction jobs are calculated in job-years, so that would mean 1,500 construction jobs a year over 10 years. By the way, in May, "responsible leader" Mayor Bloomberg calculated only 12,000 construction jobs.

As for "17 office and residential towers atop what is now an underused railyard," it's actually 16 towers plus an arena, and the railyard is a little more than eight acres. The planned site, according to the Empire State Development Corporation, would be 22 acres.

What the editorial calls an "innovative community benefit agreement" has been criticized by experts such as Good Jobs New York because it involves a small group of handpicked allies rather than a broad coalition that would otherwise oppose a project.

More than 6,000 housing units? Yes, how about 7,300.

"Thousands of low-cost housing units"? Well, maybe 900, plus 1,350 middle-income units, plus over 5,000 market-rate units.

As for 45% of construction jobs going to minorities and women, the Community Benefits Agreement (p. 13) calls for "good faith efforts to meet the overall goal... of not less than 35% Minority and 10% women construction workers..." Unless all those women are white--hardly likely in Brooklyn--that wouldn't add up to 45% of the jobs.

As for the editorial's criticism of the bizarre notion that the steel exterior of the Nets arena, designed by Frank Gehry, might reflect too much sunlight and make nearby streets uncomfortably hot - an alleged problem with a Gehry project in sun-drenched Los Angeles that likely would not be repeated here, note that the problem isn't exactly an allegation. Here's Rolley's response:
[I]n the past, Gehry's experimental forms have been deemed environmental hazards in themselves. The Draft Scope Environmental Impact hearing was just the place to make that point.

Oh, and didn't the editorial writer read the paper's own Mike Lupica?

Two articles in this week's Courier-Life chain add intriguing details regarding BUILD's political activities and the possible move of some affordable housing designated for Atlantic Yards east into Crown Heights.

An article headlined Ratner Funneled Money to Downtown Alliance, Too points out, as reported earlier by the Times, that Forest City Ratner gave $50,000 to the Rev. Herbert Daughtry's Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Alliance for the creation and construction of a health care center and inter-generational facility.

More importantly, the article pursues evidence that BUILD has hired workers to both distribute the Brooklyn Standard and do campaign work:
According to the Daily News story, at least one of these workers was also paid at the BUILD headquarters after handing out campaign literature on behalf of Eric Blackwell, who ran unsuccessfully against incumbent Letitia James in the 35th City Council district.
James, who has serious reservations about the project, refused comment.
Although BUILD is barred as a non-profit organization from engaging in political campaigns, several of their key executives formed a political action group called Community Leadership for Accountable Politics (CLAP).
BUILD’s Chief Financial Officer, Jasmin Miller, is president of CLAP and refused comment on the allegation.

The article ends with a quote from the Republican opponent of incumbent City Council Member Letitia James, an ardent opponent of the Atlantic Yards project:
But Anthony Herbert, who is challenging James in the upcoming November election, defended BUILD, saying they are still a young organization learning the non-profit ropes.
“It’s just a bunch of ‘hating’ going on. This organization, for the most part, is made up of people from the community,” said Herbert.
“Their bottom line is we want to help the community. No one else has stepped up to do it, so I support them 100 percent. They deserved to be paid with the amount of time and energy they put in,” he added.

Young organization, maybe. But its officers seem to have a background in politics, as noted above, and in stonewalling, as seen above and here.

The second article, headlined Ratner to Reduce Density By Expanding Project?, cited Roger Green's suggestion that the planners "could reduce density by siting affordable housing on this site and other blocks and lots located to the east of the Atlantic Yards project."
Green noted that in both the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) and CBA (Community Benefits Agreement) involving the project, there was discussion to find affordable housing at alternative sites.
Specifically, Green noted an area between Grand and Dean Streets and Washington and Bedford Avenues that need development.

However, the MOU mention of alternative sites does not concern the 2,250 rental units (of 4,500) that are part of the 50-50 plan for low- and middle-income "affordable" housing. Rather, as my report points out, the MOU states: Developer and ACORN will work on a program to develop affordable for-sale units, which are intended to be in the range of 600 to 1000 units,over the course of ten (10) years and can be on or off site. It is currently contemplated that a majority of the affordable for-sale units will be sold to families in the upper affordable income tiers.
The upper-affordable income tiers include families earning more than $100,000 a year.

Later, the Courier-Life article mentioned this issue: FCRC is looking at other properties in the borough to develop a home ownership program for low- and middle-income residents. Among these properties is St. Mary’s Hospital at 170 Buffalo Avenue, which recently went bankrupt and closed.

FCR again provided an evasive answer regarding the reason the project grew:
FCRC Executive Vice President James Stuckey responded that while the company is looking at developing other off-site affordable housing units, it doesn’t see altering one for the other.
...Stuckey further explained that the commercial space for the Atlantic Yards proposal was reduced because of the need for more housing. If the company moved the affordable housing elsewhere, critics would charge they are not living up to their agreement.

The commercial space was reduced because of the need for more housing? The commercial space was reduced so Forest City Ratner could add 2,800 market-rate condos, not any additional affordable housing.

A skeptical 10/24/05 New York Observer article on the new Times Tower on Eighth Avenue, headlined As New HQ Rises, Old Owners Cause Trouble Underfoot, points out the lingering disputes from the state Empire State Development Corporation's (ESDC) acquisition of 11 parcels via eminent domain for the project. The New York Times Company, parent of the newspaper, and developer Forest City Ratner, are partners in the Renzo Piano-designed building, and while the Observer makes no reference to Ratner's Atlantic Yards project, some parallels emerge.

Some of the issues have already been reported by the Village Voice, as I note in Afterword B of my report on Times coverage, but the Observer adds new details. Of the 11 landlords who lost their properties, 10 are suing, but here's the twist:
That’s because, according to the development agreement that paved the way for the condemnations, the Times Company and Forest City Ratner get to divert every dollar beyond that initial $86 million from the substitute tax payments that they’re making. [The Voice had reported this.] And the landlords claim that they are owed two or three or even five times what they’ve received so far. In essence, city and state taxpayers—who are already chipping in several millions dollars’ worth of subsidies—will also be helping out if the court appeals are successful.

But here the defense, which suggests that eminent domain is acceptable as long as the new use will bring more taxes, a point that Bill Batson warned about in his recent testimony at the ESDC hearing. As the Observer noted:
The Empire State Development Corporation, the state economic-development agency, defends the agreement because the Times Company and Forest City needed to know what their maximum outlay for the buying property would be before agreeing to the deal.
“It’s already paying more property tax by multiples than the previous properties were paying,” said an agency official who requested anonymity, speaking to The Observer. (The state has not, however, done an analysis comparing before-and-after tax revenues.)

Here's criticism, and the Times's defense:
“It might put an end to the taking of property, if they had to pay market value,” said Joe Wright, an advisor to community groups fighting eminent domain and a member of the national property-rights group the Castle Coalition. “They wouldn’t have to go through with eminent domain then, because they would get no economic benefit.”
Catherine Mathis, spokeswoman for The New York Times, said that the agreement on acquisition costs was part of a larger deal that would provide amenities to the public.
“The Times and Forest City Ratner Companies entered into a complex arrangement with the city and state to develop this property,” she said in a statement. “There are many components involved in the arrangement, including subway amenities, a publicly accessible auditorium, guarantees to build within set timeframes and make a payment in lieu of taxes.”

Similar issues could be raised regarding Atlantic Yards. Already the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has agreed to sell Forest City Ratner development rights to the Vanderbilt Yard for less than half the appraised value, in part because of the improvements FCR plans, as well as the potential tax revenue from the development. And if the project proceeds, and ESDC must acquire land from property owners unwilling to sell, will the agency pay market rate?

The Observer finds some compelling evidence that the Times Square property owners lost out:
“They gave us 20 cents on the dollar for what the property was worth,” said Sidney Orbach, whose partnership, Three O Realty, owned a 16-story office building on 40th Street. “Their initial offering was $7.2 million, and then they were required to reassess and ended up offering about $8 million. The appraisal we had done was for $35 million, and that’s on the lower side because of the way appraisals are done.”
The state’s appraisal comes to about $83 per square foot of space in his old building. The real-estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield—which isn’t working for either Mr. Orbach or the state on the Eighth Avenue appraisals—told The Observer that a square foot might have gone for between $250 and $300 three years ago.

And the Observer sniffs at the justification for economic development:
In fact, Mr. Orbach’s office building was so prosperous that the Empire State Development Corporation is saying that his rents were above market rate and therefore not a reliable way to calculate the true value of the property. A representative from the state agency wouldn’t elaborate because litigation is pending. Hmmm … if New York real estate isn’t worth whatever you can get for it, then why do we have this thing called capitalism anyway?
Oh, it’s not called capitalism; it’s called economic development. Sometimes the market needs to be nudged along, or else it will be mugged along.

The Observer points out that facts behind the recent 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld eminent domain don't quite fit the situation in New York:
However, property-rights advocates note that the Kelo case differs from the New York Times situation because in New London, a redevelopment agency seized the property first and then sought the best bid from any developer who wanted in.
Also, much of Times Square was redeveloped through an open bidding process. But the Eighth Avenue site was acquired by the state exclusively for use by The Times, which had said it was considering moving 750 jobs to New Jersey in order to save money.

The Observer doesn't point out that many people thought the Times's threat preposterous--would the New York Times actually operate from Jersey? The more important point: just as with the Times Tower site, the remaining portions of Atlantic Yards site would be acquired not through open bidding but for one developer. The New York Times, understandably, has not covered its own real estate deals as aggressively as have the Observer and the Voice. Will the Times, which is finally paying more attention to the Atlantic Yards project proposed by its parent company's real estate partner, notice the parallels between the Manhattan and Brooklyn eminent domain deals?

So, five days after I first reported that the Fall issue of the Brooklyn Standard, the Forest City Ratner tabloid "publication," put contributor Nate Schweber's name on two stories he didn't write, and significantly changed the two stories he did write, most other media outlets in town have ignored the story. They shouldn't. The questions go beyond the publication's dealings with Schweber, who for three years had freelanced for Manhattan Media--a publisher that otherwise publishes four community newspapers in Manhattan (and one glossy magazine, Avenue)-- and says he was led to believe that the Standard was a community newspaper in Brooklyn.

--Did Manhattan Media recruit other writers by telling them that they were writing for a community paper rather than a Ratner "publication"?
--If Schweber didn't write the front-page story attributed to him, who did?
--Who are Kim Last and Brigitte Labonte, the other two writers credited with front-page stories? Searches using both Lexis-Nexis and Google turn up no journalists with those names.

Did Manhattan Media--and perhaps even the Standard's top editors, Forest City Ratner officials--approve using fake bylines, especially after a 9/3/05 New York Times story tweaked Manhattan Media staffer Edward-Isaac Dovere for having "scored two front-page bylines"? Note that Dovere, listed as the Brooklyn Standard's Executive Editor, had four bylines in the first issue, and president/CEO Tom Allon, listed as the Standard's Managing Editor, had two bylines. While the two retain their places on the masthead in the new issue, neither has a byline. Is it because they want to distance themselves from the publication? Note that a Brooklyn Papers article describes Dovere's request for an interview with Rooftop Films--which refused to appear in the Brooklyn Standard--which suggests that he's closely involved in the publication. Four other stories in the Fall Brooklyn Standard lack bylines; they may have been put together by Ratner staff, or perhaps by Allon or Dovere.

Sure I speculate, but my speculations are reasonable, based on circumstantial evidence. I sent several questions to Allon in an email, then followed up with a phone call. He would not comment.

So, this raises another question: why is Manhattan Media willing to produce the Brooklyn Standard? Manhattan Media's four weeklies are members of the New York Press Association, which holds a "Better Newspaper Contest" and presumably aims to maintain journalistic standards. Allon is on the New York Press Association's Board of Directors, serving as Secretary-Treasurer. Manhattan Media promises, "Neighborhoods are our business, our only business." The media kit states: Our Town, West Side Spirit, The Westsider and Chelsea Clinton News are award-winning weekly community newspapers whose mission is to lead in coverage of local news in the largest and wealthiest metropolitan region in the United States, as well as serving as Manhattan ’s most important marketing resource for local businesses.

So the Brooklyn Standard seems to be an anomaly for the publisher. It is less akin to those newsprint weeklies it resembles and more akin to the glossy Avenue, which is touted thusly: "The look of the magazine is glamorous. The tone is celebratory and positive." [emphasis added] But even Avenue doesn't exist to support one very large proposed development.

The only paper to follow up, the New York Sun, ran a 10/18/05 story headlined
Ratner-Financed Publication Includes Pro-Yards Articles With Incorrect Bylines. Well, the articles with correct bylines (assuming there are some) also are "Pro-Yards Articles," because nearly everything in the issue, absent the listings, supports Forest City Ratner's agenda. The Sun reported:
The president of Manhattan Media, Tom Allon, told the Sun the misattributed bylines were the result of a production error. He refused to answer further questions.
A spokesman for Forest City Ratner, Joseph DePlasco, said “We make it very clear in the publication that it’s a publication from Forest City Ratner, an effort to share information about Atlantic Yards.” He said if readers of the Brooklyn Standard did not know it is funded by Mr. Ratner, they need “an IQ test.”

A production error? Someone was responsible. As for DePlasco, he changed the subject. Of course readers of the Standard know who funds it, but the question is what contributors were told. Schweber said: I was assigned the articles before the first issue of the Brooklyn Standard had come out and I was led to believe that it was a community newspaper like the other Manhattan Media publications I freelanced for.

Given that the first issue of the Brooklyn Standard was published in mid-June, and the second (front page here) in mid-October, it may be several months until a new issue emerges. Will no corrections regarding the articles attributed to Schweber--and perhaps other articles--appear until then? Will a web version of the Fall issue be posted, and include corrections? And shouldn't a newspaper publisher, whose business depends on openness, be more forthcoming? Will New York media outlets follow up on this, and also analyze the misleading content in the Brooklyn Standard?

In a 10/20/05 article headlined From Huge Project, a Mighty Anger Grows, the Times led off:
To longtime opponents of the proposed Atlantic Yards development, the intensity and rancor of Tuesday night's environmental impact hearing was not a surprise. They have spent the last two years, after all, mobilizing coalitions of community groups to oppose the project, passing out reams of antidevelopment pamphlets and news releases, and starting Web sites to dissect the project's every twist and turn.
But the high-decibel hearing on Tuesday clearly demonstrated that the complexion and scope of that opposition has changed since the developer, Bruce Ratner, and his firm, Forest City Ratner Companies, unveiled plans for the office, residential and commercial development in December 2003. As the project has moved out of its conceptual phase, awareness of its sheer size - nine million square feet, the equivalent of four Empire State Buildings - and potential impact has spread across Brooklyn, charging a much broader debate about its virtues and flaws.
"I think people began to realize how big this is," said Assemblywoman Joan L. Millman, who, in a setback for the developer, announced at the hearing that she would oppose the project.

Give the Times credit for following up on the story ahead of other dailies, citing the significance of Joan Millman's public stance, and implicitly contradicting the "modern blueprint" thesis advanced last Friday. But the opposition to the project is broader, it's about the trustworthiness and track record of Forest City Ratner, a company that--just to cite stories emerging in the past few weeks--produces a new Brooklyn Standard, turns promised open space on the arena roof into private space, and denies funding BUILD, then admits it.

Then the Times noted who got organized enough to testify: people not just from Prospect Heights, but also Park Slope and Boerum Hill, who talked about the project's broader impacts on surrounding neighborhoods, including greater demand for day care slots, slower response times for the police and firefighters, and runoff into the Gowanus Canal, the object of a decades-long community revitalization effort.
You can call this new opposition, but comment on those kinds of issues was specifically requested in the scoping document.

However, it's chancy to consider the significant presence of middle- and upper-class Brownstone Brooklynites--many part of community boards and civic groups charged to address the project's impact--a referendum on the project. Similarly, the press shouldn't have made too much of the predominance of Ratner supporters at previous events. What if, on Tuesday, the two dozen union members had all signed up to testify? What if BUILD and ACORN decided to bring groups of supporters, as they did for a November 2004 hearing in the same venue? Perhaps, as I noted in a previous post, BUILD members were laying low because of new revelations about payments from Forest City Ratner. Also, many BUILD and ACORN supporters don't live in the neighborhoods nearest the project. (Note that the Times hasn't yet reported that Ratner is paying BUILD to distribute the Brooklyn Standard, nor mentioned Ratner's most recent attempt to explain away the BUILD story.) A good sense of longstanding public opinion comes from two polls, as noted in Chapter 5 of my report, that demonstrate widespread opposition to a taxpayer-funded arena. The Times hasn't mentioned those results, one from a 2004 Quinnipiac University poll, the other from a June 2005 poll by the Times itself.

The Times article cited reasons for the growing awareness of the project: the death of the West Side stadium project; the July release of architectural sketches by architect Frank Gehry; and the Empire State Development Corporation's scoping document.
"For a lot of Park Slope residents, especially, the point of galvanization came with the unveiling of the latest Gehry design," said Eric McClure, a member of Park Slope Neighbors, one group that opposes the plan.
Actually, Gehry's sketches were revealed by the Times, which did not ask in its 7/5/05 exclusive (the disingenuously headlined "Instant Skyline Added to Brooklyn Arena Plan") why the project had grown in size, nor point out that the increase had actually been announced in late May.

The Times gives Brad Lander of PICCED a chance to comment, but the paper still hasn't quoted PICCED's earlier critique of the project and the planning process:
Brad Lander, director of the Pratt Institute's Center for Community Development, pointed out that even if the project were subject to city approval, Tuesday's hearing would still have been the first where the public could have aired concerns about it. "A public process doesn't begin until there's an official plan," he said.

The article ends with Millman:
Yesterday, Ms. Millman said she would urge Sheldon Silver, the Assembly Speaker, to oppose the project. Mr. Silver sits on the Public Authorities Control Board, which must vote on the project.
"He usually tends to follow what the people who represent the area say," she said. "So I intend to chime in with my thoughts on that." [Note: Millman said in early 2006 that she learned that the segment added to the Atlantic Yards plan--Site V, the plot of land with P.C. Richard/Modell's--is not in her district.]

So stay tuned for public and press pressure on Silver to state his position. As noted in Chapter 2 of my report, the reduction of office space at Atlantic Yards was seen by the New York Sun as a gesture toward Silver, since the project would be less likely to compete with office space in the Lower Manhattan district he represents (and he opposed the West Side Stadium for that reason).

The New York Observer's blog The Real Estate, in a 10/19/05 post headlined Out of the Woods, reported:
Forest City Ratner just issued a press release coming clean with just how much the developer has given to community groups supporting its Atlantic Yards project: $138,000 to BUILD, which is supposed to run job training programs, and $50,000 to the Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Association, which is supposed to set up a community center and a health center. That’s it. No more—or no more until the developer makes more payments.
The press release is a tacit acknowledgment of how much Forest City’s public relations strategy had veered off course. Instead of doing stories about how much good these community organizations were going to do for the community, the media was doing stories about how BUILD couldn't get its story straight.

FCR spokesman Joe DePlasco explains it's a failure to meet the company's high standards for openness:
“When we provide funding for programs that are good then we should let the public know about that, and when we gave these organizations money after we signed the community benefits agreement, we should have put out a press release at that time,” Forest City spokesman Joe DePlasco told the Real Estate. “If you are trying to operate in an open enough way as possible, when you miss one thing, people will say, ‘Oh you missed one thing.’”

Then DePlasco takes a hit:
Jim Stuckey, the project director, said outside a hearing last night that DePlasco, who is an outside public relations rep, didn’t know, when he first denied money changed hands , that BUILD had received money.

But the Observer's Matthew Schuerman, leading the scrum of reporters facing Stuckey last night, doesn't buy all the explanations:
That doesn’t explain why BUILD President James Caldwell didn’t know it had received money, or that he was getting paid. Cheryl Duncan, a spokeswoman for BUILD, said that the organization’s members had been working for so long without pay, and that it had just received its first general operating support in August, and paid payroll for the first time Sept. 5. Reporters started asking about the payments in late September.
“Quite frankly, they got caught off guard by the question,” she told the Real Estate. “It’s been so long that they have been doing work voluntarily, that it was a relatively new change.”

Let's go to the videotape, with Marie Louis of BUILD. Forgetful? Or stonewalling? See further details here.

The Observer also points out that, even assuming BUILD representatives suffered from some form of volunteer-inspired amnesia about the large payment, that still doesn't explain away their work on the Brooklyn Standard:
(Of course, BUILD got money before that--in June or July--to hire people to hand out copies of the Forest City newspaper, the Brooklyn Standard. But it was $10,000, only about a tenth of which BUILD kept for administrative purposes, Duncan said.)

Does this confirm the modern blueprint thesis the Times advanced last week?

They sat there yesterday, for some six hours, representatives of the Empire State Development Corporation (check the URL: nylovesbiz) and lawyers for project participants, listening to a parade of testimony against the Atlantic Yards project, and you had to wonder if it would be a replay of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) board meetings: pro forma attention to the public passions, but ultimately a decision in favor of developer Forest City Ratner (FCR). The raucous hearing, full of heckling, cheers, and boos from both sides, was supposed to go from 5 to 8 pm but ran twice as long, though at least half the audience left after the 15-minute break at the halfway point. Dozens of people signed up to testify for three minutes each, and the auditorium, according to several press estimates, was mostly full at one point with at least 700 people.

Unlike the MTA process, this one should contain significant public input. The hearing on the Proposed Scope of Analysis for the Preparation of a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), held at the auditorium of New York Technical College, did attract a good number of project supporters to cheer Borough President Marty Markowitz and boo City Council Member Letitia James, but most people in the audience—and an even larger percentage of those signed up to testify—were project opponents from the brownstone neighborhoods most impacted by the project. This was not the case in some previous hearings on the project, when BUILD (Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development) and ACORN and the unions appeared in force. Last night, there was no apparent ACORN contingent, a relatively small group from BUILD, and a few dozen union guys, of whom only two testified. Is this part of the "modern blueprint"?

No one from BUILD spoke until president James Caldwell addressed a mostly empty room at 9:45 pm. Were BUILD members ashamed they’d been further pummeled in the Daily News and their denials had been broadcast on WNYC radio? A scrum of reporters surrounded FCR VP Jim Stuckey and Caldwell during the break, and while the New York Times did not follow up on the Daily News report that Ratner is paying BUILD to distribute the Brooklyn Standard (or the revelations here), the 10/19/05 Times article, headlined The People Speak (Shout, Actually) on Brooklyn Arena Project, revealed another example of Ratner’s support of a signatory to the Community Benefits Agreement, albeit buried at the end of the story:
He [Stuckey] said that Forest City Ratner had also provided $50,000 in seed money to the Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Alliance, a group founded by the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a prominent supporter of the Atlantic Yards project. The money was intended to help pay for programs for children and the elderly.
Do we know how many members and board members this alliance has? Note: Daughtry wasn't at the hearing.

The reporters were gone by the time Caldwell spoke, and they missed Roger Green's revelation (see below) but the Times had the most space and the most thorough coverage, compared at least to the articles in the New York Sun, At Hearing, Critics Attack Ratner Project, and New York Daily News, SRO crowd takes shots at Nets plan. (The Post didn't seem to cover the story. The New York Observer skewered Ratner and BUILD on their denials.) Here's a report from the Brooklyn Papers, which has long had tough coverage of Atlantic Yards (but recently lost its lead reporter), and a report from the Courier-Life chain, which emphasizes the comments of Forest City Ratner's Jim Stuckey.

The Times lead, however, set up a false dichotomy:
The meeting exposed deep divisions between residents who want jobs and housing and those who fear the traffic that the project might bring, as well as a host of other problems. Critics of the plan also want jobs and housing, but question the cost and credibility of the Ratner plan. Several cited the Unity Plan and Extell bid as alternatives. Additional note to the Times: the arena is not at the project's "center." The Times did describe the project more accurately than in several past articles: near Downtown Brooklyn at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues. More precisely, that's the 22-acre site's western border, where construction would begin. But just last Friday the Times said the project was "in downtown Brooklyn," so call this progress.

When Caldwell (who once said Bruce Ratner “is truly sent by God”) spoke, you had to wonder if Ratner’s crew, surveying the scene from the back of the room, think he might be a liability. Caldwell followed a speaker who warned-—as did several others—that the scoping document ignores terrorism and security issues, so he decided to ad lib a rebuttal: “Two days ago, the FBI came out with a report that said New York State is one of the safest cities.”[sic] He must have been referring to this, but the FBI figures have nothing to do with the temptation an arena, set near the third-busiest subway hub in the city, might pose, especially since Arab plotters once tried to blow up the subway station. Caldwell then offered his typical testimony about disinvestment, poverty, and the high rate of unemployment among black men in Brooklyn--legitimate concerns, of course--but gave no details on how Ratner’s plan would actually help, and at what cost. “We support Forest City Ratner one hundred percent,” he declared, ever faithful. In the audience, some held up copies of Juan Gonzalez’s Tuesday column about BUILD. Caldwell made no mention of BUILD’s financial reliance on Ratner.

The politicians were mostly critical. Assemblywoman Joan Millman led off, objecting to the project’s “overwhelming scale,” rather disingenuously saying that “an arena with some housing became a mega-development with an arena.” It was always a mega-development (7.6 million zoning square feet at the start, or 8 million gross square feet), it just got bigger (9.132 million gross square feet). She began the parade of people criticizing the assumptions in the scoping document, pointing out that rush hour is not 5 to 6 pm but 4 to 8 pm. She said ESDC should use fees from Ratner to fund a community-based study. But Millman (whose district includes Site 5, home of Modells/PC Richard and slated for a high-rise building) finally voiced definitive opposition to the project, saying eminent domain “should be a last resort and not implemented for private gain.” [Addendum: in 2006, Millman said she'd learned that Site 5 is not in her district.] And, to the cheers of many, she said she’d ask Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, whose vote on the Public Authorities Control Board could sink the project, not to support it if eminent domain is included (which is the plan, of course).

Borough President Marty Markowitz, up next because he was late, mostly punted, saying he had concerns about traffic and the project scale (despite his support for the plan), and that he would submit written comments by October 28. “No one cares more about Brooklyn than I do,” he insisted, to the disdain of many in the crowd holding up posters declaring “Ratnerville Unmitigable.”

City Council Member David Yassky, pressed for his position, said, “I’m for the project, I want to see it done right.” That, he said, means the size of the buildings must be reduced, traffic problems must be solved, taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize the arena (but can support affordable housing, as in other projects), and though the project is now managed by a state agency, the ESDC should allow the project to go through the City Council’s Uniform Land Use Review Process (ULURP). Can Yassky get his way? For Ratner to build affordable housing and make his desired profits (which are unspecified, and there was testimony requesting Ratner's economic projections), the developer has to build bigger.

[UPDATE: Yassky's statement--he was challenged by the audience, "Are you for it or against it?" and responded as above--caused him some grief. A press release points out that Yassky's not really for it, unless it's done right. "In a statement, Yassky rebuked the Times, saying that he is for housing, jobs and investment for Brooklyn at the site, but will not support the project until significant changes are made." But as Lumi Rolley of NoLandGrab points out, "To be clear, the above link points to the written testimony Councilmember Yassky submitted at Tuesday's hearing, not his oral comments. The distinction between the two seems to be that the Times reported that he was for the project provided it was done right, but really he is against the project, UNLESS it is done right.
Councilmember Yassky appears to be attempting to walk a fine line, neither too "for" nor too "against" the project as he susses out his chances for a congressional run in 2006.
Yassky and Assembly Member Jim Brennan, as I reported, previously called for the MTA to stall the Atlantic Yards bid so the project could be scaled down. So in an earlier version of my post, which said Yassky "maintained cautious support," was inexact. It's probably more accurate to say, based on Yassky's performance at the hearing, that "Yassky, who has criticized the scale of the project, as well as other factors, continued to do so, but his bottom line is support rather than an effort to stop the project, as he previously tried."]

City Council Member Letitia James, sometimes drowned out by cheers and boos, spoke more passionately and pointedly than her official remarks suggest, citing urban planner Jane Jacobs and those (read: Marty Mark) “who wax eloquently about the past.” She added, “This project is being driven by profit, not people.” She called the affordable housing deal—once 50 percent, now 30 percent [actually 31 percent]—“bait and switch,” and wound up quoting Job from the Bible. Supporters gave her a standing ovation.

State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, speaking later, made an important request: “I ask you to examine and expose all of the direct and indirect subsidies associated with the project,” adding that it should include additional costs associated with defense against terrorism.

Assemblyman Roger Green, also speaking during a quieter later segment, called for a debate “in the spirit of civility,” a not unworthy request, but a little late, given that the moderator had long before lost control of the crowd. Green did not reference his ties to FCR and role in founding BUILD; rather, he gave a fairly dry recitation of the issues the scoping process must address—from sewers to schools to mass transit incentives—before letting loose a bombshell. He suggested that some affordable housing be put east of the Atlantic Yards site, thus lowering the density of the project. Unmentioned was that this land is in his district, so he’d gain supporters, and that moving the affordable housing means that the Atlantic Yards project would further foster gentrification. Note that the plan is currently 31 percent “affordable” (2,250 rentals, including 1,350 middle-income units for people earning an average of $75K) but only 12.3 percent low-income (900 units), plus 5,050 planned market-rate units. Will this be a repeat of Battery Park City, where the affordable component was built elsewhere? [See update here.]

A parade of individuals, representatives of community groups, and representatives from community boards also testified. Several said the study area for land use, zoning, and public policy should be expanded to two miles--the document lists the primary study area as a quarter mile and the secondary study area as a half-mile--a compelling point given the scale of the project and the fact that residents of Pacific Street, basically across the street from the project, testified their concerns were being ignored. Transportation expert Aaron Naparstek, representing the Park Slope Civic Council (PSCC), talked about congestion pricing for vehicles and limits on parking spaces. Lumi Rolley, also representing PSCC, warned of the effect on the Brooklyn Bears Community Garden (at Flabush and Atlantic, next to Site 5, proposed for a skyscraper) and warned that architect Frank Gehry’s penchant for titanium, at least in his Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, can create oppressive heat and light.

Pauline Blake of Community Board 6 pointed out that the project would affect access to police and fire stations, and that the Pacific Street branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, a Carnegie building, should be landmarked, even as it sits across the street from Site 5, slated for a skyscraper. Craig Hammerman, district manager of CB 6, pointed to a “glaring oversight,” because the document doesn’t address how the project changes the city map: Atlantic Yards would straddle and eradicate both community board and police precinct boundaries.

Celia Cacace, a CB 6 member, questioned the designation of public open space in the document. "'Public' implies that a public entity is responsible," she said; critics point out that Ratner's company manages the public space at MetroTech. Cacace, a gravelly-voiced example of nearly-bygone Brooklyn, provided a few moments of levity; after the moderator warned that she had 30 seconds left to speak, she responded with "You got it, kid." Here's written testimony from five representatives of CB 6, which encompasses Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Columbia Street District, Gowanus, Park Slope, and Red Hook.

Two union guys, Reinaldo Torres of the sheet metal workers and Anthony Pugliese of the carpenters, testified, and basically said the project was about jobs. They pointed out that other developers in Brooklyn, namely Shaya Boymelgreen and David Walentas, don’t use union labor, and Ratner does. The big-voiced Pugliese denounced local elected officials for not criticizing the other developers--a not unreasonable point, though he didn't include Ratner supporters like Markowitz. (He and I had a good discussion about this at the break.) He closed with a Martin Luther King, Jr. quote: “What’s so good about sitting at the counter if you can’t afford the chopped meat?” (It’s not a quote I could find on the web. Anybody? MLK quotes are usually a specialty of BUILD’s Marie Louis, who likes MLK’s “We can’t wait.” When will someone respond with an MLK quote like, “A lie cannot live”?) Later, after the union reps had left, Daniel Goldstein of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) pointed out that Extell Development Corp., the other bidder on the MTA’s Vanderbilt Yard, also would use union labor (and not require eminent domain).

Goldstein also observed, “It’s a shame this is the first time we’re meeting with ESDC” Shabnam Merchant, also of DDDB, pointed out that ESDC pays rent for space in Ratner’s Atlantic Center mall: “Why isn’t this a conflict of interest?” Later, Green Party candidate for Borough President Gloria Mattera asked the ESDC representatives, “How do you go to sleep at night?”

A supporter of the project, Kwan [or Quan, I didn't get the spelling] Lewis, testified that he didn’t hear anybody from Bedford-Stuyvesant or Brownsville, pointing to the self-interest of the local opponents. (Then again, Bed-Stuy and Brownsville residents live farther away, so they wouldn't have as many responses regarding environmental impact.) “I’m for the project because of inclusion,” which he defined as jobs—though of course the actual number of jobs is an important unanswered question, and the number of office jobs, at least, has been cut by more than half.

Sandy Balboza of the Atlantic Avenue Betterment Association pointed to Ratner’s poor track record in building MetroTech and the Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center malls, which set themselves off from the residential neighborhoods nearby rather than blend in. Henry Weinstein, a property owner in Prospect Heights, called attention to a “gross misstatement” in the scoping document, saying that Ratner claims to control three properties he owns. “This wholly false statement is trying to pull the wood over the eyes of those who would read this document,” he said. “I find it incredible…If lies and treachery are being used to approve this project, then every material fact in this statement is suspect.” He gave ESDC a letter from his lawyer.

Bill Batson, representing CB8, made an important point about eminent domain: “The seizing of property from one private party and giving it to another under the rationale of economic enhancement has never occurred in New York. Once this power is granted, however, eminent domain could be a tool available to any developer who has a higher yielding economic proposal for anyone’s private home or business.” CB8, which encompasses parts of Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, and Weeksville, has a host of concerns, represented in this 10-point plan.

Others pointed out that there is new construction in “blighted” Prospect Heights, and that new zoning could improve it. Robert Puca, a resident of the Newswalk condos that are gerrymandered out of the plan, said “everyone bought into sunshine; now we will have darkness.”

I testified as well, pointing out that an examination of environmental impact has to start with the environment of dishonesty and manipulation created by FCR, exemplified by the Brooklyn Standard. (Someone had to do it; no press entity has yet dissected the Brooklyn Standard, and thousands of copies had been distributed in the previous few days.) Scott Turner of Fans for Fair Play covered some other topics, but wound up in the same place, testifying, “I’m a fan of the truth.”

ESDC is supposed to review alternatives, so here's Doug Hamilton's testimony on the Pacific Plan, which would incorporate an arena but not create superblocks. It's unclear how many housing units--and affordable units--would be created, and what the cost would be. Eric McClure of Park Slope Neighbors also testified about an alternative, as well as effects on traffic, parking and transit, pollution, and noise, and strains on police, fire and educational services, many of which have not been adequately addressed or provided for in the Draft Scope of Analysis.

Near the end of the hearing, Schellie Hagan of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition referenced Caldwell’s praise for Ratner, saying, “We are gathered here tonight in the name of a man sent from God. The man used to be sent from God was named Jesus. That was a long time ago. Now it’s Bruce.” She talked about how the emperor—the state—puts signs on people’s houses: “Your house is no longer yours, it belongs to [Gov.] George [Pataki]. But it really belongs to Bruce, because you, Empire State Developers, will hand it over.” She said sarcastically, “Bruce has been sent to us to mitigate the crisis in luxury housing,” and ended by hoisting a sign declaring Ratner to be God.

Urban planner Tom Angotti of Hunter College provided some dispiriting news, saying that the process of looking at environmental impact cannot be done within the time set out: “We need 180 days.” Written comments are acceptable until October 28, to atlanticyards@empire.state.ny.us. Sometime after that, ESDC will issue a final scoping document, which will be revised based on comments received on the proposed scope of work. This final document will provide the framework of analysis for the Draft Environmental Impact Statement. There will be a second hearing sometime in the next few months.

As the Sun article summarized it: That statement, when completed, will outline necessary state and city approvals, predicted environmental impacts, and measures to mitigate those impacts. It will also list any unmitigated or unavoidable impacts and alternatives to the project

The Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods also will be holding hearings and gaining input.

# posted by Norman Oder @ 8:11 AM 1 comments

Juan Gonzalez's story in the 10/18/05 Daily News, headlined BUILD admits Ratner funding, advances the story about Forest City Ratner's payments to BUILD. Not only did Ratner pay BUILD $100,000, as the New York Times reported near the end of a story last week, the developer is paying for distribution of the Brooklyn Standard, which seems to go beyond BUILD's stated purpose, and BUILD also seems to be connected to some political work.

Gonzalez reported:
Forest City Ratner paid BUILD $10,000 earlier this year to distribute copies of a promotional newspaper about the Atlantic Yards project called the Brooklyn Standard.
Then in August, the developer donated an additional $100,000 to the group to pay its salaries.
That was two months after BUILD and seven other Brooklyn neighborhood groups signed a so-called Community Benefits Agreement with Forest City Ratner that promised up to one-third of the housing built would be "affordable" and set aside jobs for local residents.
Ratner provided an entire building rent-free for BUILD headquarters on Pacific St. and supplied all of the group's office equipment. The developer also is paying for a public relations firm to represent BUILD and the other neighborhood groups that support Atlantic Yards.
Last weekend, Ratner issued another $28,000 contract for BUILD to hire 100 neighborhood people to distribute a second copy of its promotional newspaper, said the developer's spokesman Joe DePlasco.

Remember, BUILD's president told the New York Observer he didn't know who was paying for his p.r.

Gonzalez queried a Brooklyn Standard distributor, Margaret Perkins, worker who explained that BUILD has become involved in political work:
"The people at BUILD pay well," she told me yesterday. "I've done work for them before, during the elections."
During the September Democratic primary, Perkins said, she worked the polls for City Council candidate Eric Blackwell. She picked up her pay for her election work at BUILD headquarters, she said.
Blackwell happens to be the former head of the group.
The incumbent whom Blackwell sought to oust was Councilwoman Letitia James. She is a firm opponent of the Atlantic Yards project, while Blackwell's campaign literature prominently stressed his support for the Ratner development.
James won in a landslide.
According to several sources, the BUILD headquarters was a busy place on primary day. A little-known organization called Community Leadership for Accountable Politics Inc. appears to have organized and paid the polling place volunteers.
IRS rules do not permit tax-exempt organizations to campaign for candidates.
I called BUILD headquarters yesterday to ask Marie Louis and the group's current president, James Caldwell, what involvement the group had, if any, with Community Leadership for Accountable Politics, or with the organizing of Election Day operations for Blackwell.
Neither Louis nor Caldwell responded. Efforts to locate a representative for Community Leadership for Accountable Politics were unsuccessful.
Meanwhile, at Forest City Ratner, no one had ever heard of Community Leadership for Accountable Politics.

Lumi Rolley of NoLandGrab.org picks up the story, connecting the dots between BUILD and CLAP:
Forest City Ratner denies having any knowledge of a group called CLAP. A Google search for CLAP turns up an Erik Enquist column from July, 2004 that identifies CLAP as a group "running candidates in Ft. Greene and Prospect Heights." The campaigns were managed by "local politico James Caldwell, the president of the pro-development group BUILD." Also, the lawyer listed on the NY State Department web site for CLAP is a name we heard before, Sharai Erima, Esq., the lawyer who erroneously scribbled in "$5 Million Forest City Ratner" on BUILD's IRS 1023 form.

Is this project a "modern blueprint for how how to nourish - and then harvest - public and community backing," as the Times suggested? Or is it old-fashioned underhanded politics?

The Fall 2005 edition of Forest City Ratner's Brooklyn Standard pseudo-newspaper deserves detailed fact-checking, which I've done in another post, but the first thing to remember, as the 9/3/05 New York Times story put it in an article about the first issue, "O.K., the Whole Paper Is Basically an Ad."

So why does Times stringer Nate Schweber have his byline attached to four stories, including the lead, in the latest Brooklyn Standard? (The new issue isn't up on the web yet, but here's the top of the front page.)

I contacted Schweber, who said he didn't write that lead story, nor another with his byline, though he did write two others, at least in some form. He sent me a written statement:
I was shocked and sickened on Saturday when I learned that my name was attached to two Brooklyn Standard articles that I did not write.
I did not report or write the front page story, “MTA Approves Atlantic Yards Bid,” nor did I write the story on page 18, “Furthering the Arts in Brooklyn.” The fact that I am credited for those stories is an egregious error on the part of Manhattan Media and I have sent faxes, e-mails and certified letters to CEO Tom Allon as well as Brooklyn Standard Editors in Chief Barry Baum and Scott C. Cantone as well as Executive Editor Edward-Isaac Dovere demanding an immediate retraction and correction.

Schweber said in a letter to Allon, I also demand that my name be stricken from those articles in all future pressings of this issue of The Brooklyn Standard, as well as any and all archived issues including, but not limited to, the web page www.brooklynstandard.com.

I called Allon, who told me, "There will be a retraction in the next issue," but would not comment further. Given that the current issue is labeled Fall 2005, it's possible that the next issue might not appear until December.

So why did this happen? I can only speculate, but it's possible that Brooklyn Standard editors wanted some New York Times-tinged cachet on the front page. Or maybe the articles were all written by Forest City Ratner public relations staff, and they didn't want their names used. Several pieces in the Brooklyn Standard lack bylines, which suggests they may have come directly from Ratner staff: a two-page "Frequently Asked Questions About Atlantic Yards;" a Q&A with Council Member Lew Fidler; a Q&A with new Nets CEO Brett Yormark; and a story headlined "FCRC Associates Pitch In for Prospect Park."

The staff box in the publication says that the Brooklyn Standard is "A Forest City Ratner Companies Publication" and the editors in chief are Ratner employees. Allon, listed as the Managing Editor, is president/CEO of Manhattan Media, which publishes various Manhattan weeklies, under the slogan, "Neighborhoods are our business, our only business." Schweber said he had an ongoing relationship with the company:
I have freelanced for Tom Allon and his Manhattan Media companies since 2002, mainly for the West Side Spirit and Our Town, two weekly, community papers in Manhattan.
For the sake of my name, my reputation and my career I need to make four things abundantly clear. First, the assignment to write the stories on page two was given to me long before my first interview with the New York Times. Second, I turned in my copy before my first interview with the Times. Third, the printed articles differ greatly from the copy I turned in. And finally, I was assigned the articles before the first issue of the Brooklyn Standard had come out and I was led to believe that it was a community newspaper like the other Manhattan Media publications I freelanced for. Immediately after I found out about the stories that I didn’t write but to which my name was attached I researched the Brooklyn Standard and found out that it was not a newspaper but a publication paid for by Forest City Ratner Companies. I am taking steps to set the record straight on this, the first business day after I found out about this problem.

There's a time lag here, since Schweber, who lives in New Jersey, apparently did not notice articles on the Brooklyn Standard in Brooklyn and New York media outlets in June, generated after Forest City Ratner issued its 6/17/05 press release. Nor did he take action after the prominent (Metro section front) 9/3/05 Times article on the Brooklyn Standard, which pointed out:
To counter the impression that it is trying to fool anyone, The Standard avoids calling itself a newspaper, instead proclaiming itself "a Forest City Ratner Publication."
Efforts at transparency end there. The Standard is printed on newsprint, folded like a tabloid, laid out to look like a newspaper and distributed alongside real newspapers.

Still, Schweber's lapses are far less than the misleading copy in the "publication" itself.

The lead story, misattributed to Schweber, headlined "MTA Approves Atlantic Yards Bid," contains a deck stating "FCRC's $445 million overall offer exceeds MTA's appraisal." It also states that MTA board Chair Peter Kalikow noted that the amount of money the MTA was receiving was in excess of its own appraisal. The bid was also praised by the majority of those who testified at the hearing. The article further states that the development is expected to be generating $6 billion in new tax revenues over the next 30 years.

This article, however, isn't journalism. Reporters who covered the hearing noted some dramatic opposition to the MTA's decision from members of the public and elected officials, as well as dissenting board member Mitchell Pally's forceful challenge to Kalikow's willingness to accept the bid. That information isn't mentioned in this article.

No source was given for the $6 billion, but a similar number has been estimated by Andrew Zimbalist, the economist who is Forest City Ratner's paid consultant on the project. Zimbalist's projections have been widely criticized--see Chapter 3 of my report, and the recent Independent Budget Office report.

More fundamentally, the article falsely reframed the bid amount. The New York Times's 9/15/05 article, headlined "Arena Project For Brooklyn Wins Approval From M.T.A.," better contextualized the bid amount:
[T]he authority's decision to accept the $100 million offer by the company Mr. Ratner heads, Forest City Ratner, for the 8.3-acre railyard. The offer was $50 million less than a rival bid from the Extell Development Company and $114.5 million less than the transportation authority's own appraisal.

The comparison between the Times's account and that in the Brooklyn Standard is worth noting, because the Times's own Ethical Journalism handbook states that outside contributors should meet the Times's standards:
152. Times readers apply exacting standards to entire paper. They do not distinguish between staff written articles and those written by outsiders. Thus as far as possible, freelance contributors to The Times, while not its employees, will be held to the same standards as staff members when they are on Times assignments, including those for the Times Magazine. If they violate these guidelines, they will be denied further assignments.

However, staff members are not supposed to be writing for publications that don't meet the Times's standards, The Times handbook continues:
97. Before accepting a freelance assignment, a staff member should make sure that the tone and content of the publication, Web site or program are in keeping with the standards of The Times. In general, a staff member should write nothing elsewhere that could not fit comfortably under his or her byline in The Times or that implies The Times’s sponsorship or endorsement.

Are the other puff pieces attributed to Schweber in the Brooklyn Standard up to the standards of the Times? Well, no, but as my report indicates, the Times doesn't always meet its standards either. One that Schweber wrote (at least in initial form), headlined "Small Businesses Flourish at MetroTech," quotes five happy small business tenants, thus suggesting that Forest City Ratner cares about small business, but it also points out that MetroTech is much bigger than that: Ratner's MetroTech Center provides New York City with more than 22,000 jobs, with a payroll of close to a half billion dollars annually.

A few paragraphs lower, the article acknowledges that the list of tenants includes government tenants, such as the New York City Fire Department, the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication, the Police Department's Public Safety Answering Center, the New York City Human Resources Administration, and the Kings County Family Court and New York State Supreme Court Criminal Term. The article does not point out, as critics have regularly observed, that Ratner's projects often rely on government tenants. The article also quotes a florist as saying, "Plus, you end up working less because it's a 9-to-5 work environment." The article does not acknowledge that MetroTech has been criticized because it's empty at night and on weekends.

Still, Schweber said in his statement that the printed articles--the "Small Businesses Flourish" as well as a profile of a hardware store at MetroTech--differ greatly from the copy he turned in. The fourth story that bears his byline, which he says he did not write, profiles Brooklyn Academy of Music President Karen Brooks Hopkins.

Freelancers for the Times are supposed to avoid conflicts of interests. Work for Forest City Ratner, a partner with the parent Times Company on the new Times Tower as well as the subject of major coverage in the Times, could present at least the appearance of such a conflict. The handbook states:
153. Before being given an assignment, freelance contributors must sign a contract with The Times. These contracts oblige them to take care to avoid conflicts of interests or the appearance of conflict.

Schweber has been a stringer for the Times only since September 2, and has contributed to 22 articles, nearly all spot news stories from New Jersey. His work covering New Jersey doesn't intersect with his work for the Brooklyn Standard. Still, Times contributors should not be compromising the newspaper by writing for Ratner's propaganda sheet, and Schweber, who turned in his Brooklyn Standard copy before he started writing for the Times, obviously now recognizes that.

An 8/14/05 column by Public Editor Byron Calame, headlined Outside Contributors: In The Times, but Not of The Times, acknowledged that it was hard to police standards among freelancers:
Monitoring and maintaining the paper's ethical and reporting standards among the growing and far-flung army of freelancers is a crucial and complex task. Two years ago, The Times acknowledged that it needed to do a better job of checking out new freelancers and requiring them to pay more attention to the paper's ethical and reporting standards. But the goals are proving tough to achieve.

Another passage stated:
A new electronic freelance administration system will include a process requiring all freelancers to respond to a set of pointed questions about possible conflicts of interest when they sign a contract. The new system, which began its rollout last week, initially will link freelance contracts to assignments and payments. The Times expects to incorporate the conflict-of-interest questions, which are ready for use, into the electronic system "within a few months," according to [Assistant Managing Editor] Mr. [William E.] Schmidt.

Not soon enough, apparently. The Times may have to add a question that goes something like this: "If you've turned in some freelance work for a publication that you later learn is of dubious quality, have you taken action to try to keep it from being published?
[Note: previously I had written, "Have you taken action to make sure it won't be published?" but I'm told that writers in that position probably don't have such leverage.]

Just in time for the Environmental Impact Scoping hearing 10/18/05, the second (Fall 2005) issue of the Brooklyn Standard, the Forest City Ratner "publication" that first appeared last June dated June/July, and it manages to maintain the same promotional, propagandistic style. Unfortunately, it's not available on the web yet, but here's a look at the top of the front page.

One change: there are no longer fake "letters to the editor" from the likes of Mayor Bloomberg. There are no letters to the editor at all, which is curious, since it's likely that some people wrote to the paper. Then again, the Editors in Chief are Forest City Ratner officials Barry Baum and Scott Cantone, so they could be using their editorial discretion to further the company's mission, which is to build "superior, long-term value for its stakeholders."

Let's start with the photo on the front page, which is captioned "A panoramic view of Vanderbilt Yard today." See the four-story brick building in the center? Well, one of the residents won't sell to Ratner, and has posted a banner outside his window that reads "I love my neighborhood and my home. And I intend to stay." Either this picture was taken years ago, before Ratner announced the Atlantic Yards plan, or that banner was excised from the picture.

I dissect the errors in and curious circumstances behind the lead story, headlined "MTA Approves Atlantic Yards Bid," in another post.

Also on page one, a story headlined "Historic Community Agreement" features rhapsodic praise for the Community Benefits Agreement. As I've written before, experts on CBAs say this one isn't legitimate.

On page two, the story headlined "Small Businesses Flourish At Metrotech" is also criticized in another post.

Let's go to the "Frequently Asked Questions About Atlantic Yards" on pages 4 & 5. The third question asks if Eminent Domain will be used. The answer evades that question. Of course eminent domain will be used. Some people won't sell. Also see page 4 of the MOU.

The fourth question asks if the project will "bring in more traffic than the area can handle?" The answer: No. But the whole point of the ongoing Environmental Impact Statement scoping process is to examine that. This City Council briefing paper, dated 5/26/05, points out some of the concerns about traffic.

The fifth question in the Q&A cites $200 million in (direct) city/state contributions but fails to note that even FCR acknowledges that the project would consume over $1 billion in public costs in 30 years. See Chapter 3 of my report.

The last question in the Q&A says the project will generate "15,000 union construction jobs and thousands of new office jobs." First, construction jobs are calculated in job-years, so that would be 1,500 construction jobs over 10 years, as I point out in Chapter 2 of my report.

The "thousands of new office jobs" as pretty vague, an indication that the company hasn't kept its promises. In December 2003, Ratner predicted 10,000 office jobs for approximately 2 million square feet of office space. The NYC Economic Development Corporation, using more conservative figures for amount of space needed per person and building in a 7% vacancy rate, predicted 7,100 jobs. The amount of office space has since been cut to 628,000 square feet (3,140 jobs, at Ratner's formulat of 200 square feet per worker), as Ratner has traded office space (jobs) for luxury housing. That means the number of jobs has been cut significantly. See Chapter 2 of my report and this post, which points out that, according to NYC Economic Development Corporation calculations, there would be 2,229 office jobs, including 669 new ones.

The page six column by Bertha Lewis, executive director of the New York chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) deserves notice for its stubborn commitment to unreality. "ACORN is all about working families," she declares, going on to cite the "50-50 balance for affordable housing, one of our proudest and greatest accomplishments as an organization." Then she writes, "In the years to come, 2,250 more families will have housing in a neighborhood that was moving in the wrong direction... If this project can stem the overwhelming tide of gentrification in central and downtown Brooklyn one iota, then it will have been worth it for the housing alone."

As noted, only 900 units are aimed at those below Brooklyn's median income. The other 1,350 affordable units will go to people with a median income of $75,000, surely not ACORN's constituency. And, as Lewis somehow neglects to notice, there's no longer a 50-50 program for the project as a whole. The 50-50 housing deal covers only the 4,500 rental units. Since then, Ratner has announced plans for 2,800 market-rate condos, surely part of the "overwhelming tide of gentrification."

So the second issue of the Brooklyn Standard, the Forest City Ratner "publication" is out, and numerous people are standing on street corners in neighborhoods like Park Slope and Prospect Heights handing out copies. And who does Ratner choose to organize this? BUILD, the "jobs development" group that Ratner has just admitted funding. (Ask one of the street team members: they'll tell you they picked up their copies at BUILD.)

[Note: the new issue of the Brooklyn Standard is not yet available on the web, but I will analyze it in another post.]

Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco, in the 10/14/05 Times article headlined To Build Arena in Brooklyn, Developer First Builds Bridges, said that the $100,000 was to go to job training:
Mr. DePlasco emphasized that the money given to Build was intended to fulfill the company's obligations under the community-benefits agreement.
"No money was given to Build prior to the community-benefits agreement. What they're supposed to do is begin outreach and job training so that people are ready to apply for these jobs when they become available. If you are going to commit to programs that otherwise don't exist, you have to find the funding for those programs - or at least a big chunk of that funding," he said.

Does Forest City Ratner plan to regularly issue free "publications" that require a street team to distribute? If not, the use of BUILD to distribute the Brooklyn Standard counts as part of Ratner's public relations effort, not the job training in the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA). Page 13 of the CBA states that BUILD is responsible for job training for construction jobs. Regarding permanent jobs, page 15 of the CBA says that tenants may request that BUILD provide specialized job training for applicants they intend to hire tailored to the tenants' particular needs.

Then again, page 40 of the CBA says that developers will work with BUILD, among other organizations, to target hard to employ young people (including ex-offenders between the ages of 16-21) who face barriers to employment for employment training opportunities at the Project. Could Joe DePlasco explain away street distribution of the Brooklyn Standard as fulfilling this component of the CBA?

BUILD's mission statement suggests that it's not aiming at short-term jobs:
BUILD is an organization committed to supporting development as a means of creating economic opportunities to promote financial self-sufficiency and prosperity in socio-economically depressed communities....

Testifying before the City Council on 5/4/04, BUILD first VP Marie Louis also emphasized the importance of building skills for the long term:
To safeguard against this, Bruce Ratner and Forest City Ratner Companies has committed to working with BUILD to negotiate an agreement aimed at:
--developing the capacity of working age adults to economically gain and benefit from the revitalization spurred by this project;
--preparing youth for global marketplace success so that they have the capacity to live anywhere they choose well...

Meanwhile, BUILD still hasn't updated its web site to revise its denial of financial support from Ratner. The site still says:
Myth: BUILD is financially supported by Forest City Ratner.
Fact: Since its inception BUILD has been supported by its members and community based supporters. BUILD’s faith in God and strong ties to the community has sustained and perpetuates our operations and advancement of our mission. Space, computers, supplies and time has been donated to the organization by its members since its inception this year (1/2004).

An important factor behind the "seemingly inexorable movement" of the Atlantic Yards project was left out of the 10/14/05 Times article headlined To Build Arena in Brooklyn, Developer First Builds Bridges. The project has been plagued by a lack of press scrutiny, especially by the Times, as I have detailed repeatedly, in this blog and in my report.

The most aggressive coverage has come from the weekly Brooklyn Papers, which, for example, has been the only press outlet to point out that the promised "15,000 construction jobs" actually means 1,500 jobs over 10 years. As I note in my report, the Times has used this more accurate job-years figure in articles about projects other than Atlantic Yards.

Now the Brooklyn Papers has received a national award for its coverage of Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. To quote the Brooklyn Papers' 10/15/05 coverage:
Praising The Brooklyn Papers “on a courageous piece of work” in its “Not Just Nets” coverage of developer Bruce Ratner’s “Atlantic Yards” plan, the National Newspaper Association this week awarded the newspaper its top prize for Best Investigative or In-depth Story or Series.
The 120-year-old NNA, with 3,200 daily and weekly community newspaper members, is the nation’s largest newspaper association.
Throughout 2004, The Brooklyn Papers coverage of Ratner’s proposal set the newspapers apart from the city’s other media, which ignored or downplayed the project’s impact.

The two reporters cited for their "Not Just Nets" coverage, however, are no longer with the paper: Deborah Kolben moved to the New York Daily News last year and Jess Wisloski has just left to freelance.

Now Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica has taken the gloves off, with a hard-hitting and factually grounded attack on Ratner, in a 10/16/05 column headlined Ratner's money tree grows in Brooklyn . Here are some major excerpts:
The mayor and the deputy mayor and the Jets get stopped on the West Side of Manhattan even as the next real estate con, not as big but close enough, grows in Brooklyn. This one comes from a developer named Bruce Ratner, who has convinced everybody he is a sportsman as he tries to buy himself an entire borough. Nobody stops him, at least so far.
...
Ratner is just smarter than Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff was with his vision for a new West Side, built around a football stadium. Ratner does not try to hide one of the sweetheart real estate deals in the history of New York City behind the Olympics. Instead, he spreads money all over the borough, trying to buy influence and loyalty, acting as if this is all about jobs when it is mostly about highly profitable luxury housing.
Along the way, he allows this idea to grow exponentially along with his con:
That since he has so many blacks in Brooklyn with him, it must be the borough's gentrified whites who are against him. In this case, race is much more productive for him than the 2012 Summer Games. This has nothing to do with Ratner's slogan about "jobs, housing and hoops." No, this is Karl Rove's blueprint for how you get things done, right out of the Bush White House: Divide and conquer.
There is no Cablevision to fund the opposition this time, even though it is the same fight Cablevision fought against the Jets, and one that involves a competing basketball team this time.
So the opposition this time comes from neighborhood coalitions like Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, the constituency of which has seen through Ratner's game from the start. And from the start, the first lie, huge, was this one:
That this was all about bringing a major professional sports franchise to Brooklyn, which hasn't had one since the Dodgers left nearly 50 years ago.
No, this was a real estate deal all along, so much of it to be funded by taxpayer dollars, at least a billion of them before we are through, if Ratner gets his way.
...
In the end, in a borough where the median income is still listed as $35,000, as few as 900 units will be truly affordable to the people about whom Ratner, Caring Bruce Ratner, says this development of his is all about.
And always there is the use of race by Ratner and his people, as if it is part of his business plan. Of course, this is all tied up with the neighborhood support Ratner says he has. If he has it, he bought it. We hear about groups like BUILD, about which Juan Gonzalez has written in The News. It stands for "Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development." Huge Brooklyn cheerleaders for Ratner. Lots of black faces. The use of innovative only applies here if you think it is new for guys like Ratner to spread money around to get what they want.
On Sept. 29, Joe DePlasco, who comes out of Democratic politics in the city and is now on Ratner's payroll as Ratner tries to buy Brooklyn, told Gonzalez that the only thing Ratner's company, Forest City Ratner, was providing for BUILD was "free office space." Now DePlasco suddenly remembers in the Times on Friday - it is always worth pointing out that the Times and Forest City Ratner are partners in building the Times' new midtown headquarters - that Ratner "disbursed" $100,000 to BUILD in August. It's the old Bob Arum dodge. Yesterday I was lying, today I'm telling the truth.
One of the headlines in the Times was this: "Arena Developer Builds Bridges to Achieve Goal in Downtown Brooklyn." Right. Builds bridges and buys BUILD.
The late Bill Veeck once said that a hustler is somebody who gets you to loan him bus fare, then makes it seem like he did you a favor. Ratner still wants you to believe this is about the Nets. It is about him building his own Brooklyn in Atlantic Yards. And you're supposed to help him. Sound familiar?

Again, it's notable that a sports columnist grasps this deal better than the metro reporters and editorial writers who should also be analyzing it.

The 10/14/05 Times article headlined To Build Arena in Brooklyn, Developer First Builds Bridges deserves even more scrutiny, especially the lead, and the closing.

The lead: In the two years since he announced his ambitious Atlantic Yards development in downtown Brooklyn, Bruce Ratner has lined up an impressive roster of supporters, including Gov. George E. Pataki, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and even the rap artist Jay-Z.

Well, Pataki and Bloomberg were backers from the start, two years ago. As for Jay-Z, he's an investor in the Nets. All investors are de facto supporters, so that's hardly impressive. The only one of the four who wasn't part of the prepackaged support was Sharpton, who announced his support in July 2005. The context, as I noted in Chapter 4 of my report, was that the Times reported Sharpton's support in a single-source story, but the Daily News quoted the Rev. Clinton Miller, who actually represents a church in the area in question, as pointing out, "It's misguiding, and it makes it seem that African-Americans should be behind this project." Again, the Times ignores that context.

So, those are three figures who were supporters from the start, plus one opportunistic minister/public figure, who claimed, at least in the Times's paraphrase (Sharpton Backs Developer's Plan for Brooklyn Arena and Towers, 7/19/05), that the plan would provide needed jobs and lower-cost housing for largely poor and minority areas nearby.

Had the Times had practiced the journalism of verification in this case, it might have examined Bloomberg's uninformed claims about jobs and housing, and told readers exactly how many jobs and how much low-cost housing the plan actually would provide.

It's not like the Times can't do some checking--a 10/15/05 story headlined Reality Check: Two Different Kinds of Math, and Two Spins on Unemployment contained this passage:
At the heart of Mr. Ferrer's attack is his claim that 40 percent of the city's black men, and 33 percent of its Hispanic men, are unemployed.
Just how accurate are Mr. Ferrer's numbers? Not very.
Mr. Ferrer's aides said his unemployment figures were based on a report by the Community Service Society, a nonpartisan group that fights poverty. The report, released in February, is titled "Unemployment and Joblessness in New York City, 2004: Better but Still a Long Way to Go."
The author of that study, Mark Levitan, the group's senior policy analyst, said that he never made any such claim about minority joblessness being that high. "My report definitely does not say the unemployment rate among blacks is 40 percent," Mr. Levitan said.

Back to the 10/14/05 story, which states:
Mr. Ratner has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on publicity for Atlantic Yards, the sprawling Frank Gehry-designed office, retail and residential development with an arena for the Nets as its centerpiece.

This should be an occasion for analyzing the content of the publicity, rather than simply reporting the fact of publicity. Also, as the article later reveals, Ratner has spent $100,000 as well on Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development (BUILD), which goes a lot beyond publicity.

The Times article states:
But opponents see the outreach as something more sinister: a campaign to divide opponents, co-opt those local figures who were interested but skeptical, and create the appearance of broad support where they say little exists.

Again, this is cast as a "he said, she said" dispute, with no attempt at evaluation. The issue of "broad support" can be evaluated. As I explain in Chapter 5 of my report, two polls, one by Quinnipiac University in 2004 and one by the Times itself in 2005, show widespread opposition to a taxpayer-funded arena. The Times, however, did not report on that aspect of its own poll. Also, in the Democratic primary election last month, City Council Member Letitia James, a diehard Ratner opponent, trounced a challenger who co-founded BUILD.

The Times failed to stress Ratner's evasions:
The company has denied that it provided financial support to launch the group, but a spokesman said that as part of the community-benefits agreement, the company recently gave Build a $100,000 grant and covers its overhead costs.

The issue was not whether Ratner supported BUILD's launch, but whether company spokespeople (and BUILD spokespeople) lied last month to reporters about whether the company had paid any money to BUILD. And, as the Times article shows, they did--unless you believe the later explanation that Joe DePlasco was out of the loop.

Again, let's look at the article's ending:
Mr. Caldwell, the group's current president, and Marie Louis, its treasurer, said late last month that Build was not yet receiving money from Forest City and that neither of them was yet drawing a salary.
But on Tuesday, Mr. DePlasco and a new spokeswoman for Build, Cheryl Duncan, revised that account.
In August, Mr. DePlasco said, two months after the agreement was signed, Forest City disbursed $100,000 to the group. The company also provided space for and is paying the overhead of a new Build office near the Atlantic Yards site, and along with other supporters donated furniture and computer equipment to the group. On Sept. 5, Ms. Duncan said, Build began paying several staff members, including Mr. Caldwell and Ms. Louis, who she said are currently being paid at a rate equal to half the salaries listed on the group's original I.R.S. form. Before the signing of the community-benefits agreement, the staff had been working as volunteers, she said.
Mr. DePlasco emphasized that the money given to Build was intended to fulfill the company's obligations under the community-benefits agreement.
"No money was given to Build prior to the community-benefits agreement. What they're supposed to do is begin outreach and job training so that people are ready to apply for these jobs when they become available. If you are going to commit to programs that otherwise don't exist, you have to find the funding for those programs - or at least a big chunk of that funding," he said. "Forest City Ratner Company believes firmly that supporting nonprofits and community groups, and working with them to identify and address needs, is at the foundation of what they do. It's that simple."

So, Forest City Ratner and BUILD admit that they lied [or, in Ratner's case, DePlasco was out of the loop, came the explanation], but the Times refuses to call it a lie. Rather, it's having "revised that account."

You'd think that DePlasco, having just admitted lying [or, in the later explanation, being out of the loop], would have lost all credibility. But no, he--the developer's spokesman--is granted the last word, and says something that is both self-serving and highly dubious.

Is supporting nonprofits "at the foundation" of Forest City Ratner does? Actually, according to Ratner's own mission statement, the foundation sounds more like profits than charity: Forest City Ratner is an owner and developer of real estate, committed to building superior, long-term value for its stakeholders.

So, two weeks after many in the New York media found news in BUILD's curious claim--while negotiating a Community Benefits Agreement with Forest City Ratner--to be receiving $5 million from the developer, the New York Times finally offers its report. And, instead of using the two weeks to further develop the story--the obvious extension would be the way Ratner and BUILD have used race as a tactic (see Chapter 4 of my report)--the Times instead, in a front-page 10/14/05 article headlined To Build Arena, Developer First Builds Bridges, decrees that this project is... a model.

The article states:
the project's seemingly inexorable movement suggests that Mr. Ratner is creating a new and finely detailed modern blueprint for how to nourish - and then harvest - public and community backing for a hugely ambitious development that is expected to provide more than nine million square feet of apartments, offices, stores and hotel rooms, as well as the arena, in the middle of a populous, cantankerous and often sharply divided city.

Note: an earlier online version of the story was headlined, "Seeking to Avoid Fate of Jets Stadium, Builder Treads His Way to Brooklyn Arena Plan," and it partly echoes that 6/9/05 Times article headlined Unlike Stadium on West Side, an Arena in Brooklyn Is Still a Go. In both, the Times focused on strategy over substance, skating lightly over numerous issues that deserve some "journalism of verification."

First of all, the Times made no effort to report on how the assignment of those nine million square feet had changed, how the developer had traded office space--a selling point for "jobs"--for luxury housing.

Then, curiously, the article pretty much repeats some main conclusions from the Times article four months previous. The 10/14/05 article stated:
Mr. Ratner scored a coup of sorts when he received the support of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, the advocacy group that has fought previous Forest City projects, which this time struck a deal to include a significant amount of moderate- and low-cost housing in the project.
He has also found an ally in the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, pastor of the House of the Lord Churches on Atlantic Avenue, who initially fought the plan.
Both were among eight groups that signed a community-benefits agreement with Forest City Ratner in June under which the builder will provide job training, housing and business opportunities to local residents.
But it is Mr. Ratner's links to a different group, Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development, or Build, that has drawn the most attention from critics, who say it didn't incorporate until after the plans were announced. The company has denied that it provided financial support to launch the group, but a spokesman said that as part of the community-benefits agreement, the company recently gave Build a $100,000 grant and covers its overhead costs.
"There's no doubt that the development community all over the country is very closely watching what happens in Brooklyn. The movement to build coalitions around development is going national," said John Goldstein, national program director for the Oakland, Calif.-based Partnership for Working Families, which helped negotiate a landmark community-benefits agreement around the Staples Center sports complex in Los Angeles.
Mr. Ratner's street-level and high-level public relations campaign began in the fall of 2003, when his company retained Dan Klores Communications, one of the city's top public relations firms. Their team, headed by Joe DePlasco, a veteran of the city's Democratic establishment, began lining up politicians and other supporters before the December news conference unveiling the initial design.

The 6/9/05 article said:
But the Ratner group was courting a different constituency. Bruce Bender and James P. Stuckey, executive vice presidents of the development company, studied the opposition, sending assistants to take notes at public meetings or doing it themselves. Mr. Bender has decades of experience as a City Council aide, notably as chief of staff to the former speaker, Peter F. Vallone. Mr. Stuckey is a former president of the Public Development Corporation and a longtime adviser to Mr. Giuliani. They also hired Joe DePlasco of Dan Klores Communications, a former top aide to Mark Green, to handle public relations.
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.
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.

There's only one source--that ambiguous quote from Goldstein--to back up the "modern blueprint" thesis. Yes, the development community is watching. But somehow the Times didn't see fit to quote Good Jobs New York, the recognized expert on such CBAs. Once again, let's quote the testimony from the 5/26/05 City Council Economic Development Committee hearing that the Times, alone among major city news outlets, failed to cover--that establishes that this is no blueprint. First, as Bettina Damiani testified, consider the skewed public process: [emphasis added]
The negotiations surrounding the development of the BAY project have been marked by secrecy, with elected officials providing privileged access to one developer for the site. Rather than working with local stakeholders to create a vision for community-driven development and then issuing a Request For Proposals (RFP) to locate the developer that can best meet those community needs, the city instead chose to pursue one idea – that of a sports arena coupled with a prime residential real estate opportunity – that fails to take many local concerns into account and partnering with one development company, Forest City Ratner Company (FCRC), to put that idea into action. Unsurprisingly, this process has contributed to a fragmentation of community responses, as some groups have been able to work with the “designated developer” to advance their concerns while others have not.


Then, Damiani compared this Community Benefits Agreement to the national template: [emphasis added]
The BAY project is the first project we know of in New York City in which the developer has advertised that he seeks to participate in a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA). As a sponsored project of Good Jobs First, which provided support for the CBAs negotiated in California and continues to act as a clearinghouse for information on CBAs, we feel it is important to draw the Council’s attention to several major differences between CBAs as they have been used in other parts of the country and the series of negotiations that FCRC is calling a CBA. Perhaps the most striking is that elsewhere CBAs are negotiated by one broad coalition of groups that would otherwise oppose a project, a coalition that includes labor and community organizations representing a variety of interests. The coalition hammers out its points of unity in advance and then each member holds out on settling on its particular issue until the issues of the other members are addressed. This way, the bargaining power of each group is used for the benefit of the coalition as a whole. In the BAY case, several groups, all of which have publicly supported the project already, have each engaged in what seem to be separate negotiations on particular issues.

Nor did the Times point out, as the New York Observer's The Real Estate blog reported in August, in an entry headlined Ratner-Style Deal with Columbia University?, that activists in Manhattan do not see Brooklyn as a blueprint:
“We are avoiding the Brooklyn model,” he [Jordi Reyes-Montblanc, the chairman of Community Board 9] said. “We are wanting to do something else. We are wanting to develop a wide coalition of organizations and people that will be properly represented, perhaps through a local development corporation, but it’s not going to be ACORN negotiating for the community or any similar type of thing.”

Back to the 10/14/05 article Times article, which cites public relations efforts without any room for criticism of them:
Forest City Ratner also contracted with Knickerbocker SKD, a media consultant, to produce two promotional mailings, each going to more than 300,000 households in Brooklyn. They oversaw publication of a newspaper-style brochure, dubbed The Brooklyn Standard. More recently, Forest City retained the Terrie Williams Agency, a prominent black-owned public relations firm, to represent those groups that signed the community-benefits agreement.

The first promotional mailing, as explained in Chapters 2 and 7 of my report, was highly deceptive. The first mailing promised "10,000 new permanent jobs," while other promotional material acknowledged that jobs would also be "retained" (i.e., moved from Manhattan) and, of course, now there's much less office space. The first mailing came from the vague entity "Atlantic Yards," which happened to be located at Forest City Ratner's offices. The developer was not mentioned. And the mailing used a quote attributed to the New York Times ("Almost everything the well-equipped urban paradise must have") that was 1) from the architecture critic and 2) did not include the double disclosure of the critic's and the Times's ties to Ratner. Times Standards Editor Allan Siegal later told project critics that use of the logo was improper.

The Brooklyn Standard? This article makes it seem like a positive example of public relations. The Times itself dismissed the Brooklyn Standard in a 9/3/05 article headlined "O.K., the Whole Paper Is Basically an Ad."

As for the Terrie Williams Agency, somehow the Times missed the juicy quote in the New York Observer in which BUILD's James Caldwell claimed he didn't know who was paying for the agency's services.

The article mentions Roger Green's role in forming BUILD, but neglects to mention that the assemblyman resigned in 2004--for the brief remainder of his term--after pleading guilty to billing the state for false travel expenses. See Chapter 4 of my report.

Here's the article's finale: [emphasis added]
According to Internal Revenue Service documents first reported by The Daily News, Build was not formally incorporated until Feb. 4, 2004, just a few days before the group held a press conference to announce that it was supporting the project. The same I.R.S. form also estimated that the group would receive $5 million over two years from Forest City Ratner as part of the community-benefits agreement then being negotiated. Build officials later said that that amount was never promised by or discussed with the developer.
Soon after the group decided to support Mr. Ratner, Mr. Canada, its original president, resigned, citing in a news release "the need to distance myself from those in the organization who see this organization as financial self gain" rather than "for the needs of the Brooklyn community."" That has led some of Mr. Ratner's critics to question whether the group was too close to the developer to fairly represent the community.
"Build and the other signatories of the so-called community-benefits agreement are Bruce Ratner's partners. They are contractually obliged to speak on behalf of his project," said Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for the anti-arena group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn. Mr. Caldwell, the group's current president, and Marie Louis, its treasurer, said late last month that Build was not yet receiving money from Forest City and that neither of them was yet drawing a salary.
But on Tuesday, Mr. DePlasco and a new spokeswoman for Build, Cheryl Duncan, revised that account.
In August, Mr. DePlasco said, two months after the agreement was signed, Forest City disbursed $100,000 to the group. The company also provided space for and is paying the overhead of a new Build office near the Atlantic Yards site, and along with other supporters donated furniture and computer equipment to the group. On Sept. 5, Ms. Duncan said, Build began paying several staff members, including Mr. Caldwell and Ms. Louis, who she said are currently being paid at a rate equal to half the salaries listed on the group's original I.R.S. form. Before the signing of the community-benefits agreement, the staff had been working as volunteers, she said.
Mr. DePlasco emphasized that the money given to Build was intended to fulfill the company's obligations under the community-benefits agreement.
"No money was given to Build prior to the community-benefits agreement. What they're supposed to do is begin outreach and job training so that people are ready to apply for these jobs when they become available. If you are going to commit to programs that otherwise don't exist, you have to find the funding for those programs - or at least a big chunk of that funding," he said. "Forest City Ratner Company believes firmly that supporting nonprofits and community groups, and working with them to identify and address needs, is at the foundation of what they do. It's that simple."

So there is some news: BUILD officials were lying when they said in September that they hadn't received money from Forest City Ratner. But that doesn't fit the "modern blueprint" storyline, does it? And so, Joe DePlasco, paid flack for the developer, gets the final word, not, for example, any of the numerous public officials involved in this debate. Marty Markowitz, for example, would've been good to interview. See below.

Note: unmentioned in the Times are the six-figure salaries expected by BUILD's top three officers, according to the IRS filing. See Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn's comprehensive page on BUILD. Rather the Times takes care of the issue discreetly: On Sept. 5, [spokeswoman] Ms. [Cheryl] Duncan said, Build began paying several staff members, including Mr. Caldwell and Ms. Louis, who she said are currently being paid at a rate equal to half the salaries listed on the group's original I.R.S. form. Before the signing of the community-benefits agreement, the staff had been working as volunteers, she said.

Here are some other issues, unmentioned in the Times article, that suggest that the Atlantic Yards project is more accurately a national model in public manipulation and broken promises:
--The number of office space has been cut by more than two-thirds, and the original number of promised office jobs, 10,000, may be as few as 2,229, with fewer than 700 of them new.
--The amount of luxury housing, once 2,250 units, has been more than doubled, to 5,050 units.
--ACORN is contractually required to publicly support the project. (See Chapter 7 of my report.)
--The number of promised construction jobs, either 15,000 (according to Ratner) or 12,000 (according to a mayoral press release), is actually job-years, so that would be 1,500 jobs a year over 10 years. (See Chapter 2 of my report.)
--A public park on the roof of the arena, once a major selling point for the project at large, will now be private space accessible only to tenants of the high-priced condos (and, ok, some fraction of 'affordable' housing units) Ratner plans to sell. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, a chief booster of Atlantic Yards, has said he opposes this change.
--Markowitz, pressed during a debate with his small-party opponents, acknowledged that the project is too big and should be scaled down.
--Let's not forget that two polls, one the Times's own, said that the public opposes an arena if it requires public subsidies--and that the Times never reported this. (See Chapter 5 of my report.)

Other people also see something fishy about this project too. The Municipal Art Society has a program scheduled for Nov. 10 titled Large-Scale Plans Removed from the Public Review Process: Case Study of the Atlantic Yards. The session is allotted an hour and a half. It could use a week.

In a 10/10/05 Business Week column by Jon Fine headlined All the News That's Fit to Dis, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, speaking at the Association of National Advertisers conference in Phoenix, dissed bloggers:
"Most of what you know, you know because of the mainstream media," Keller said. "Bloggers recycle and chew on the news. That's not bad. But it's not enough."
Keller pointed out that it cost the Times around $1.5 million to maintain a Baghdad bureau in 2004. (It cost one Times freelancer much more last month: He was murdered.) "This kind of civic labor can't be replaced by bloggers." The Times' assets: "A worldwide network of trained, skilled [observers] to witness events" and write about them, and "a rigorous set of standards. A journalism of verification," rather than of "assertion," and maintaining an "agnosticism" as to where any story may lead. And, borrowing a key buzzword of the day, he said the Times practiced "transparency," or, in math-teacher terms, "we show our work."

I basically agree with him, that journalists do--or aim to do--much more than bloggers. But sometimes bloggers, such as myself, do a lot more research than Times reporters.

Skilled observers to witness events? The Times, unlike numerous other news outlets in the city, never reported on the New York City Council Economic Development hearing on 5/26/05 concerning Atlantic Yards, the only hearing this year--as my report notes. I'm told someone went, but wasn't skilled enough to recognize that there was news: Forest City Ratner announced a huge increase in the size of the project. The Times didn't report this until July.

Rigorous set of standards and transparency? Not for the number of office jobs promised in this project, to pick one of many examples. The Times reported in a Metro Briefing (Developer Promises Benefits, 6/28/05): The developer, Bruce Ratner ... president of Forest City Ratner, promised that he would give local residents the first chance at work on the $3.5 billion development, which is expected to generate 12,000 construction jobs and 8,500 permanent jobs.

Where did they get the numbers? Probably from a 6/27/05 mayoral press release, which stated: The $3.5 billion project will create 8,500 permanent new jobs...

However, Ratner had already traded office space for housing, and the most recent filing by the Empire State Development Corporation shows that there's space for only 3,140 or 2,512 jobs, depending on whether you use Ratner's math or standard figures for needed space. (Add a vacancy rate and the number gets lower.) The Times hasn't reported these numbers. Rather, it has used unverified, and hardly transparent numbers presented by the developer. [An earlier version of this post incorrectly suggested there was more office space, which could encompass 3,900 or 4,875 jobs.]

Since the 6/28/05 article, the Times has merely printed generalities, such as that the project would provide "thousands of jobs." Well, when the original promise is 10,000 jobs and the result is less than two-thirds of that, it's time for some journalism of verification.

Rigorous set of standards and transparency? FCR has long promised 15,000 union construction jobs—a figure that has been widely quoted in the press, though the Times has most recently used the figure of 12,000 construction jobs, in that same 6/28/05 Metro Briefing.

As noted in my report:
However, construction jobs are temporary jobs, not permanent jobs. A construction job, in standard industry parlance, lasts for one year. So the actual projection means 15,000 job-years (1,500 jobs each year over 10 years), or 12,000 job-years. That means 1,500 people would be working each year. Or 1,200.

The Times’s failure to analyze construction-job figures at Atlantic Yards suggests a double standard. In writing about other projects, the Times has used the more accurate job-years method to analyze actual numbers of construction jobs. In a Times article about the proposed West Side Stadium, the reporter questioned the proponents’ data, noting (Mayor’s Guess At Stadium Jobs Is Highest Yet, 4/10/05):
The mayor and the Jets contend that the project will generate 18,000 jobs. It actually means, the Jets acknowledge, that there will be an average of 4,500 jobs during the four years of construction.
The budget office’s estimate, however, was far lower than the Jets’—an average of 2,880 construction jobs per year, and it did not bother multiplying that figure by four, because construction jobs by their nature are temporary.

The Times has still not yet analyzed the construction-job figures at Atlantic Yards.

A 10/10/05 Times article headlined In a Still-Growing City, Some Neighborhoods Say Slow Down begins:
A swelling population, an overheated real estate market and the biggest building boom in 30 years are fueling a counterrevolution in New York City: Dozens of neighborhoods have asked the Bloomberg administration to rewrite zoning rules to rein in what residents see as runaway development and growth.

There are mentions of Park Slope and Bensonhurst, Williamsburg and Greenpoint, but nothing about the largest development in the history of Brooklyn: Atlantic Yards. Yes, Atlantic Yards is not quite a question of zoning, but this development raises many of the same questions about appropriate scale and neighborhood character.

The article quotes Brad Lander of PICCED:
"There are real reasons why people feel they'd rather not have new development, good and bad," said Brad Lander, executive director of the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development. But, he added, "It seems to me that if you refuse growth, you are either implicitly saying we should change our immigration policies and not let people in, or immigrants should live in basements and attics or in the Poconos."

So Lander sounds like a reasonably sober booster of growth. However, the Times has never quoted PICCED's report and testimony criticizing the Atlantic Yards development.

The Times quotes Amanda M. Burden, chairwoman of the City Planning Commission:
Ms. Burden pointed out that the administration has encouraged housing development. The recent rezonings of former manufacturing areas in Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn and West Chelsea and the Hudson Yards in Manhattan are expected to produce 29,000 new units. Other possible areas of growth in the future, she said, include Long Island City in Queens and the area known as the Hub in the Bronx.

She didn't point out that the administration has also encouraged housing development at Atlantic Yards. So if Burden doesn't bring it up, the Times reporter doesn't question her?

So who's responsible? The Times Metro Editor at least sounds sympathetic. She was interviewed by Times Public Editor Byron Calame in his 10/9/05 column, which was headlined Turning the Tables: What the Times News Staff Thinks of You:
Susan Edgerley, the metropolitan editor who literally lives and works in the midst of her core audience, offered a catalog of specifics on the readers of her section. A sampling:
"They care about their schools whether or not they have kids. They are fervently interested in and sometimes irked by their commutes. They are charmed by the city and outraged by it, no matter where they live. They want to understand how it runs and who is running it. ... They worry about terrorism and will never forget 9/11. They want to be safe, and that means more to them now than local crime statistics." [Emphasis added.]

Yes, we want to understand how our city runs and who is running it. Ignoring or downplaying the largest development in the history of Brooklyn--not just in this article, but in many other articles, as I've documented, isn't the way to do it.

Taking off from posts on this blog Sept. 26 and Oct. 5 about how the park space on top of the Brooklyn arena, orginally promised to be public, would be private, the New York Daily News followed up in a 10/9/05 Score column headlined Ratner's latest shell game:
In other words, according to foes of the project, the taxpayers Ratner wants to pony up at least $200 million for the project should take a hike unless they live or work at the complex.
...
Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco acknowledges the rooftop park won't be open to hoi polloi. The towers around the arena were originally supposed to be primarily for commercial use, he says, but plans have changed. Now the towers will be heavily residential, and the developer is reserving the rooftop, which would be connected to adjacent buildings, for tenants so they would have easy access to laundry rooms and other amenities.
But that doesn't mean the public is getting stiffed, DePlasco says - new plans call for seven-plus acres of public space, an acre more than the original proposal. Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz, perhaps the project's biggest booster, says Forest City Ratner's change of heart is unacceptable. "I believe there should be some public access to the roof," Markowitz says. "I will definitely use whatever power I have to make sure that happens."

It's time for a little factchecking. Ratner originally announced, in a December 2003 project fact sheet that the roof was aimed at the whole community:
The roof of the Arena offers an exciting opportunity to create new public space, with 52,000 square feet in four lushly landscaped areas for passive recreation and a promenade along the outside edge of the roof with outstanding panoramic vistas facing Manhattan. For active recreation, an outdoor ice-skating ink connects the four gardens; in warmer months the rink will become a running track. This open space not only provides a destination for community residents as well as for the workers in the office buildings-–it also allows the commercial buildings surrounding the arena to be connected at the sky-lobby level.

Ice skating rink? Running track? Those weren't for the office workers--those were community amenities that helped draw public support for the original plan. Now the private open space raises the value of the market-rate housing in the towers around the arena. In other words, commercial space (space for jobs) has been replaced by housing, most (69%) of which is market-rate.

And maybe the public is getting stiffed. That seven-plus acres of public space may not be available until 2016, according to the scoping document, while the rooftop park is supposed to be finished by 2009, so that's a seven-year wait. And the additional acre is offset by the increased height of Ratner's planned towers.

The New York Post, in a 10/9/05 article headlined B'KLYNITES CALL A FOUL ON PARK, wrote:
"Originally, all the buildings around the arena were commercial, and members of the public would be walking in that area," said Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco. "But now, with all the buildings around the arena being residential, we've made the space accessible to those people."
Critics point to other "broken promises" — like the vow that 50 percent of the residential units would be affordable. Of 7,300 housing units, only about 2,200 will be affordable — more like a 30-70 split, James said.
DePlasco said the 50-50 promise was for the 4,500 rentals only — not the remaining condo units. James countered: "It was 50-50 for all the units. This is not being done right."

Members of the public would be walking in that area? They'll still be walking in that area--it's the busiest crossroads in Brooklyn.

As for DePlasco's statement, it may be technically correct, but when announced, the 4,500 rental units were the only residential units in the plan. A 5/19/05 mayoral press release stated:
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Forest City Ratner Companies President & CEO Bruce C. Ratner and Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) Executive Director Bertha Lewis today announced that approximately half of the 4,500 new rental units in the proposed Atlantic Yards development will be set aside for low- and moderate-income households using financing tools created by the Bloomberg Administration's New Housing Marketplace plan.

None of the subsequent news coverage suggested that there would be any additional units beyond the rental units. See coverage in the New York Times (Brooklyn Arena Plan Calls For Many Subsidized Units, 5/20/05), Newsday (CAMPAIGN '05: Praise from an unexpected source, 5/20/05), the New York Post (YOU'RE BUSS-TED, MIKE - HOUSING DEAL SEALED WITH A KISS, 5/20/05), The New York Sun (Ratner Delivers on Affordable Housing', 5/20/05), and the Daily News (HOUSING PLAN NET GAIN FOR MIKE, 5/21/05).

As for the 50-50 housing promise, as noted in my report, soon the developer increased the amount of housing:
FCR ’s 5/17/05 Memorandum of Understanding with the New York affiliate of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), the nation ’s largest community organization of low-and moderate-income families, contains this passage (www.dddb.net/cba/HousingMou.pdf): If the projected number of residential units should increase for any reason that the Developer determines to be economically necessary, both the Developer and ACORN will work towards developing a program that follows the same guidelines and principles set forth in this document.The MOU refers to 2,250 “affordable” units out of a projected 4,500 units of housing.Once ACORN was on board, FCR, at a City Council Economic Development Committee hearing nine days later, announced an increase in the number of planned housing units to at least 6,000 and possibly 7,300. See coverage in The Brooklyn Papers (Ratner site expands —into Park Slope, 6/2/05): The presentation, shown at the May 26 hearing,indicated that the developer might increase the number of housing units from 4,500 to at least 6,000 or possibly 7,300.
[Note that my report is italicized, with quotations bolded]

Forest City Ratner has been rather quiet about developing that "program that follows the same guidelines and principles." According to the MOU:
Developer and ACORN will work on a program to develop affordable for-sale units, which are intended to be in the range of 600 to 1000 units, over the course of ten (10) years and can be on or off site. It is currently contemplated that a majority of the affordable for-sale units will be sold to families in the upper affordable income tiers.

The upper-affordable income tiers include families earning more than $100,000 a year—surely not ACORN ’s constituency.

Why did the project size increase? Because the developer considered it to be "economically necessary," it seems. And why has the proposed public park been made private? Given the incoherence of the explanations offered by DePlasco, the answer may well be that the developer simply thinks it's "economically necessary."

The Brooklyn Arena that would be built as part of Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project would be, by far, the most expensive arena ever, at $555.3 million. However, the rest of the $3.5 billion development would cost five times as much, so that's overshadowed the arena angle.

But imagine a standalone arena. Wouldn't the cost generate some news coverage? Wouldn't reporters be asking Ratner and public officials why the arena would cost so much?

[Update 12/11/05: Note that originally I thought the Gotham Gazette entry was the first mention.]

This happened once, as far as I can tell. A 4/8/04 Daily News article headlined Nets arena cost: 500M, made the point after the headline:
Developer Bruce Ratner plans to spend more than $500 million on a new arena for the Brooklyn Nets, making it the most expensive home court in NBA history, sources said.
"It will cost about $500 million and change," a source familiar with the project told the Daily News.
That would be more than twice the average cost of the eight NBA arenas built since 1999, and would easily surpass the $375 million Staples Center in Los Angeles.
Ratner lieutenant Bruce Bender neither confirmed nor denied the half-billion-dollar figure. But he noted the arena is being designed by celebrated architect Frank Gehry, and "it's going to be done right." He said Gehry also has been told to explore expanding the arena's capacity, to create more lower-priced seats. The arena, to be built at Atlantic and Flatbush Aves., originally was designed to seat 19,000.

After that, the next mention of the arena's outsize cost came in Gotham Gazette, which on 5/2/05 declared that the arena, along with other sports facilities planned, would be by far the most expensive ever built. They depend on large subsidies by the taxpaying public.

Subsequently, the New York Sun, in a 5/20/05 article headlined "Ratner Delivers on Affordable Housing," quoted Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn spokesman Daniel Goldstein: "A small bone of 'affordable' housing thrown to Brooklynites is far from enough to make Ratner's plan acceptable," he said. "Ratner is demanding that the public waste its money on the most expensive sports arena ever proposed, huge skyscrapers in a low-rise community."

The next mention of the arena cost came as an aside in the Independent Budget Office's fiscal brief issued in early September, titled "Atlantic Yards: A Net Fiscal Benefit for the City?" The first mention of the cost came here: If the PILOT is too small to cover debt service on the full $555.3 million cost of construction, taxable bonds will be sold to cover the difference and FCRC will pay the debt service on these taxable bonds.

Soon afterward, the Times reported the cost of the arena as a secondary issue in its 9/7/05 article headlined Offer Is Doubled by Developer to Build Arena in Brooklyn: The $555.3 million arena, which would be a new home for the Nets and the most expensive arena in the country, is one element of a $3.5 billion development of 6,000 apartments as well as stores, office space and parks that would transform the area.

Back in May, the projected cost of the arena was $435 million, at least according to the Gotham Gazette (that Daily News story a year earlier already said $500 million). Now the projected cost of $555.3 million represents an increase of more than 27.5%. Surely that's a significant change.

In an article headlined Ratner to bar public from promised park, the Brooklyn Papers took off from my previous blog posting about the space on top of the planned arena, once promised as public, now projected as private.

The article noted: Forest City Ratner did not return repeated calls for comment.

Well, someone has to explain. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz? Mayor Mike Bloomberg? If public money is going to this project, then the developer must be accountable.

Sports economist Andrew Zimbalist, a consultant hired by Forest City Ratner to provide economic projections for the Atlantic Yards project, based his projections in part on no new arena in Newark. His 2005 report states:
Many of the numbers used in this report concerning Nets attendance, ticket prices, construction costs and other items come from projections done by or for the Nets. I have discussed these estimates with the Nets and they seem reasonable to me. The Nets project that the arena will not host an NHL team and that it will host 226 events during the year (assuming the eventual closing of CAA, no new arena in Newark, no NHL and no minor league hockey events at the Atlantic Yards arena.) The Nets project out three scenarios over time based on aggressive, moderate and conservative assumptions. I use the estimates from their moderate scenario. (Emphasis added.)

Except it looks like there will be an arena in Newark. In a 10/4/05 article headlined This Time, Newark Leaders Say, the Arena Will Be Built, the Times reported: In what officials insisted was the last of several ceremonies over the last seven years trumpeting the construction of a professional sports arena in New Jersey, Newark broke ground on Monday on a $310 million building that will be the home of the New Jersey Devils at the start of the 2007-8 hockey season.

ALso, the article curiously (and carelessly) claimed that the Nets had already left for Brooklyn:
The arena plan has surmounted numerous obstacles. The State Legislature, dominated by suburban lawmakers, declined to provide money for the project. The New Jersey Nets, which were to share the arena, departed for Brooklyn, and the group that owned both teams broke up.

Remember, the arena wouldn't open until 2009 at the earliest--and that's not counting the inevitable litigation.

In a 9/30/05 posting headlined BUILDing Blocks in the New York Observer's blog The Real Estate, BUILD lawyer Sharai Erima again explained why BUILD's IRS filing claimed $5 million was coming from Forest City Ratner: because under the Los Angeles airport community benefits agreement, one of the few such agreements in existence, a single corporation—Los Angeles World Airports--is paying for the job training at the rate of $3 million a year.
During subsequent negotiations with Forest City Ratner on the Atlantic Yards CBA, Erima said, “We found out that they would not be willing to be the sole funder.”

Erima's background was questioned, and then he stopped answering questions:
Erima was admitted to the New York State bar in 1999. His registration, under his old name, Sharai Elegba, is currently delinquent, which means that he cannot legally practice law--although that does not mean he cannot fill out tax forms.
When asked about the registration status, which was confirmed with the court system’s Office of Court Administration as well as the Appellate Division, Erima said, “I have no further comment.”

Also, in a 10/3/05 article in Brooklyn's Courier-Life newspaper chain headlined "Ratner Paid Biggest Arena Supporters $5 Million," state Assemblyman Roger Green, a founder of BUILD, claimed it was not formed solely to negotiate a Community Benefits Agreement, and that the group was formed "sometime before the Atlantic Yards was announced."

However, BUILD's web site shows clearly that it began in 2004, after Forest City Ratner's December 2003 announcement of the Atlantic Yards plan.

The text at the BUILD site states:
Myth: BUILD is financially supported by Forest City Ratner.
Fact: Since its inception BUILD has been supported by its members and community based supporters. BUILD’s faith in God and strong ties to the community has sustained and perpetuates our operations and advancement of our mission. Space, computers, supplies and time has been donated to the organization by its members since its inception this year (1/2004).