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tel/fax:
718.362.4784
Please note our new postal address when sending
contributions to the legal fund:
121 5th Avenue, PMB #150
Brooklyn, New York 11217
About DDDB
Our coalition consists of 21 community organizations and
there are 51 community organizations formally
aligned in opposition to the Ratner plan.
DDDB is a volunteer-run organization. We have over 5,000
subscribers to our email newsletter, and 7,000 petition
signers. Over 800 volunteers have registered with DDDB
to form our various teams, task-forces and committees
and we have over 150 block captains. We have a 20 person
volunteer legal team of local lawyers supplementing our
retained attorneys.
We are funded entirely by individual donations from the community at large
and through various fundraising events we and supporters have organized.
We have the financial support of well over 3,500 individual
donors.
More about
DDDB...
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Of Illicit Leases and Typhoid Mary
As if Bruce Ratner needed any more obstacles, a state appeals court has upheld a judge’s March 2007 decision that another developer improperly assigned leases to a Pacific Street
building and adjacent parking lot to an affiliate of FCR.
As Atlantic
Yards Report details, the leases were signed over by developer Shaya Boymelgreen, who was leasing the properties from the actual owner Henry Weinstein. Initially, Ratner used the
assigned leases to claim that he "controlled" the two parcels. Weinstein, however, had never received notice of the assignment, and so asked that the deal be invalidated and the existing
Boymelgreen leases terminated. The appeals court upheld both remedies.
Weinstein's property comprises about one acre of the 22 acres in the proposed Atlantic Yards project, and Weinstein
is also a participant in the Goldstein et al. v. Empire State Development Corporation eminent domain lawsuit. Says AYR writer Norman Oder:
"...the ruling can't stop the state from using eminent domain to take the properties, but it might make it more costly, as Weinstein has contended that Boymelgreen’s deal with Ratner would
diminish the value of his property."
And "more costly" isn't the kind of phrase the Ratner team needs to hear right now. In his Gumby Fresh blog, the pseudonymous blogger Gari N. Corp takes the New York Times to task for its
"special dumbness about stadium finance bond insurance" (and the NYT should be grateful that it
attracts Mr. Corp's scorn only rarely, as his dissection is both merciless and quite funny).
After untangling the issue of the Mets' stadium bonds to conclude that the downgrading of the
bonds' insurer was not, as the Times suggested, tantamount to downgrading the bonds themselves, he added this caution:
"Before anyone says that...the preceding might be construed as a clean bill of health for the business of New York sports, please read the bit about the Mets' resilient brand, and note also that the
Mets attracted new financing from the one standing bond insurer (Assured Guaranty) for a small amount for a pretty much complete stadium for a solid team. It won't do the same for the
Nets. The New Jersey Nets are the Typhoid Mary of High Finance, and no-one wants to eat their delightful cooking."
Posted: 5.09.09
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