By Sewell Chan
The United States Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by 11 New York City property owners and tenants whose homes and businesses are scheduled to be taken over by the government and demolished to make way for the $4 billion Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn.
The justices, without comment, declined to hear the plaintiffs’ argument that the seizure of their property would violate the United States Constitution. (A notation on the court’s case list indicated that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. would have voted to hear the case; such notations are not uncommon.) In February, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a trial judge’s dismissal of the landowners’ and tenants’ suit.
However, the plaintiffs, including Daniel Goldstein, the leader of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, which opposes the Atlantic Yards project, vowed to continue their legal fight by turning, once again, to the state courts. Matthew Brinckerhoff, the lawyer for plaintiffs, said in a statement:
High Court Won’t Hear Appeal on Atlantic Yards....
Monday, June 23, 2008
High Court Won’t Hear Appeal on Atlantic Yards
Friday, June 13, 2008
A Question Mark Looms Over 3 Expensive Projects
By CHARLES V. BAGLI
More than two years ago, the Bloomberg administration came up with an aggressively creative way to use tax-exempt bonds to finance two of the most expensive stadiums in the world, one for the Yankees in the Bronx and another for the Mets in Queens.
The Internal Revenue Service initially approved the use of the bonds for the ballparks, but quickly issued a proposal in 2006 to tighten the rules governing the use of tax-exempt bonds so that it would be more difficult, and perhaps impossible, for this kind of financing to be used again by profitable, private enterprises like professional sports teams.
Now state and city officials say the proposed rules are jeopardizing what is planned to be the city’s next big sports palace: the $950 million Barclays Center, an 18,000-seat basketball arena for the Nets that is the centerpiece of the huge residential and commercial complex in Brooklyn known as Atlantic Yards. The project’s developer, Forest City Ratner, says it plans to break ground on the arena this fall and has long expected to use tax-exempt financing to reduce its borrowing costs by tens of millions of dollars.
Barclays Center is expected to be the most expensive arena in the world, and the lack of tax-exempt financing would substantially increase its cost. The $4 billion Atlantic Yards project already faces delays because of litigation, a sluggish economy, the lack of commercial tenants and the reluctance of lenders to finance large real estate developments.
FULL ARTICLE....
