Last October 9, Forest City Enterprises (FCE) held an Investor Day meeting at the New York Times Tower, built by subsidiary Forest City Ratner (FCR) in tandem with the New York Times Company. The developer shared several important pieces of news about the Atlantic Yards project that have not been aired publicly.Among the highlights, thanks to the transcript:
The developer has invested $250 million in the $4 billion project, its largest single investment, but that's only 25% more than its developer fee, and less than the direct public investment of $305 million
Translation: The taxpayers of NYC are ponying up a lot more to get this thing done than the developer is.
More here.
In the Gotham Gazette, Councilman David Yassky said the following:
Of course, the single biggest example of corporate welfare is the proposed Atlantic Yards development. The Bloomberg administration has agreed to give the project's developer at least $100 million in direct subsidies, plus another $400 million to $500 million in tax breaks. In the current financial climate, this handout is impossible to justify.
Photo from Streetsblog
4 comments:
This is one of the saddest chapters in NYC history. That our own government would do this to private citizens in order to further fatten a fat cat is corrupt and is reminiscent of the Tweed era.
Its even worse that our social safeguards, the cultural elite, and our media, completely ignore this.
Poltiicans are politicans and developers are developers. Every time you talk to them, don't expect a new car from a used car salesman.
The problem is with those mentioned above.
I wonder why they are blind and don't care.
Actually, the photo rendering is from New York Magazine.
http://nymag.com/news/features/18862/index3.html
Money talks and Forest City Enterprises has been doing a lot of it, with their pocket book all the way to the top.
However, kudos to Obama. Despite receiving campaign contributions from Forest City his office in Chicago (while he was still senator) assisted our organization (Citizens United Against Corporate Corruption) against FCE on one of their huge Chicago properties, which may be on the verge of a mold epidemic. Stay tuned. Hopefully the bad guys here will be going down soon.
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