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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.
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Legal Challenges Remain as Paterson Allows Eminent Domain and Atlantic Yards Master Closing
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 23, 2009
Governor Paterson Allows ESDC To
Move Forward With Illusory Atlantic Yards and
Eminent Domain Home & Business Theft
Two Days Before XMAS
Despite “Master Closing”
Big Legal Challenges Against Project Remain
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK—Even foreclosing banks and unpaid landlords provide a moratorium
on foreclosures and evictions for the holiday month.
However, not Governor Paterson and
the State of New York.
Without compunction, Governor Paterson and his appointees on the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) today filed legal papers to start the process of stealing the homes and businesses of Brooklynites by eminent domain, to eventually evict them and give the vacant buildings to Bruce Ratner for one dollar. Ratner would then demolish those homes and businesses in an effort to construct a taxpayer subsidized, money-losing arena—the world’s most expensive arena, Barclays Center—in the middle of a fiscal crisis and a housing crisis.
Forest City Ratner also announced that they have signed a “master closing” for the Atlantic Yards project with various city and state agencies. But Ratner failed to disclose that he was forced to put the closing and arena bond proceeds into escrow because of numerous outstanding issues, including several serious legal challenges.
The property owners and tenants fighting to keep their homes and business will vigorously challenge the legal papers filed by the ESDC today.
There are also two outstanding lawsuits against the project that would stop it
cold (with oral argument scheduled for January 15th) and one pending decision
by the Court of Appeals on a motion
to reargue the challenge to the state’s use of eminent domain in light of
the recent eminent domain decision against Columbia University.
Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn is also currently planning on suing, most likely
the ESDC and the
mysterious Brooklyn Arena Local Development Corporation, for bypassing the
legally mandated review of the $511 million arena bond financing by the Public
Authorities Control Board and New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
“Governor Paterson, who once opposed eminent domain, has clearly decided that the best thing to do for the holidays is to evict men, women and children from their homes. He has decided that the avoidance of minimal scrutiny and review of the largest project in Brooklyn’s history is an acceptable way to govern. He has decided that reform apparently means allowing and supporting the same old bad faith, backdoor dealing with powerful, land-grabbing real estate developers,” said Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn spokesman Daniel Goldstein. “Shame on Governor Paterson for throwing good money—taxpayer money—at Ratner’s boondoggle money pit and for stealing a viable neighborhood to do it. Ratner’s project will never produce the benefits the developer and the ESDC have lied about for years, and should it go forward the Governor and other project supporters will rue this day.”
“I want to make it very clear to the Governor, the ESDC and Ratner, that
Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, our scores of allied community organizations and
our thousands of supporters will not easily give up our fight against Atlantic
Yards,” Goldstein said.
It should be noted that there is not a single city or state politician in and
around the Atlantic Yards project site that still supports the drastically altered
project. And there are none anywhere, besides project cheerleaders Marty Markowitz
and Michael Bloomberg, who vocally support it.
After six years of exposing the Atlantic Yards project as a corrupt, boondoggle
financed on the backs of New York taxpayers, Governor Paterson, Mayor Bloomberg,
Sheldon Silver, Charles Schumer, and Marty Markowitz apparently have decided that
the best thing for New Yorkers is to look the other way as state and city appointed
bureaucrats sign papers handing over 22-acres of prime real estate to a single
developer to turn into massive parking lots for decades.
The most powerful “leaders” in the state have apparently decided that the best
way to change the face of Brooklyn—the best way to spend massive taxpayer subsidies,
grant extraordinary tax breaks and gifts, sell public land at a sweetheart price,
give away city streets, abuse eminent domain, provide a city zoning override,
create millions of square feet of density for free for a politically-connected
developer—is to do it without ever having any legislative, democratic oversight,
and to avoid even the minimal oversight and accountability provided by the financial
review of State Comptroller DiNapoli and the Public Authorities Control Board.
Posted: 12.23.09
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