Tag: Bruce Ratner
Sigh…Sold Out Again
by Joshua Malbin on Oct.27, 2009, under New York, Politics
At this point I’m no longer even surprised.
State development officials are drafting a new deal with Bruce Ratner that will give the Atlantic Yards developer a loophole out of the project’s main selling point: thousands of units of affordable housing.
New language quietly inserted into a Sept. 17 lease proposal between the Empire State Development Corporation and the Downtown-based developer now make the construction of the long-promised 2,250 units of below-market-rate housing “subject to governmental authorities making available … affordable housing subsidies.”
None of the prior agreements — including two approved general project plans — made the affordable housing conditional on any state or local support. Ratner was required to build the units whether subsidies were available or not.
And such subsidies are in very short supply.
There was never going to be any affordable housing in the Atlantic Yards project. Ratner only ever promised to build affordable housing somewhere in Brooklyn. Now he’s not even going to promise to do that. In the end, the only part of this thing that will get built is the basketball arena for a team he’s since sold to a Russian billionaire. Unless he feels like it sometime before 2031, which is how long he now has to finish the project.
This is the problem with mega-developments: government officials tie their boats to them and then can’t afford to cut free when they run way off course into the middle of a hurricane.
What do they care? It’s not their money and it’s more than clear that none will ever pay a political price for their cronyism.