You gotta hand it to those Ratner folks, they are all about integrity!
From the Observer finally waking up to Ratner's scamming of a federal money for green cards program—the one the WSJ wrote about today, but which Norman Oder has been all over these past many months...take it away MaryAnne Gilmartin:
'Not Your Cleaning Lady's Green Card Program:' $500K Visas Finance U.S. Construction
by Laura Kusisto
Desparate times in the construction industry call for desperate measures. Like letting foreigners basically buy green cards, for example.
...
The new-old program came to light this fall, when it turned out that Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner was using the program to help finance its Brooklyn project. But even Forest City VP MaryAnne Gilmarten (sic) seems a little queasy about the program.
"As citizen Gilmarten (sic), I'm not sure how I feel about it," Ms. Gilmarten (sic) said at a New York Commerical Real Estate Women event attended by The Observer a couple of months back. But she continued that with conventional financing channels frozen, the project might otherwise never get built. "This is not your cleaning lady's green card program," she said.
Um, what?! As subsidy-sucking development exec Gilmartin presumably she feels great about it.
