New York City Real Estate Blog

Atlantic Yards:Demolition postponed while new civil lawsuit filed

“Opponents of the Atlantic Yards project will mount another court challenge today to block the massive project from going forward.

A coalition of civic groups is filing a lawsuit claiming the environmental review for the project was not thorough enough. They say the review didn't adequately consider traffic problems and security concerns that may arise.

The project calls for an 18,000 seat arena for the Nets and more than 2,000 units of affordable housing.

Today's lawsuit is just one of several the developer – Forest City Ratner – is facing. NY1 has reached out to Forest City Ratner for comment, but has not heard back. ”

New Lawsuit Filed To Stop Atlantic Yards Project(NY1)

“ Today twenty-six co-petitioners filed an Article 78 and Declaratory Judgment lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court (New York County) to annul the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and approval of Forest City Ratner's "Atlantic Yards"project. The suit alleges that former Governor Pataki's Empire State Development Corporation's (ESDC) FEIS was fatally flawed on substantive and procedural grounds.

The suit also seeks to enjoin demolition and construction with a preliminary injunction. ”

26 Co-Petitioners File Lawsuit Against the Empire State Development Corporation, PACB, MTA and Forest City Ratner Companies (DDDB)

Forest City Ratner has already purchased most of the land it needs for the project but faces opposition from a handful of holdouts living on the 22-acre site

‘‘Having cleared all political hurdles, developer Bruce Ratner's plan to build the $4.2 billion Atlantic Yards complex is still facing legal obstacles from Brooklyn residents who will lose their homes.

Lawyers for the residents who are fighting the use of eminent domain to take the property will file papers in federal court today. Lawyers for developer Forest City Ratner and the Empire State Development Corp. filed motions in December to dismiss the lawsuit -- filed in October -- or have it moved to state court.

"We'll be explaining that the time to hear the case is now and the place to hear the case is federal court," said Matthew Brinckerhoff, an attorney representing the 10 Brooklyn residents who are fighting plans to build the arena and 16 commercial and residential towers.’’

Atlantic Yards Project Foes Take Fight To Court (AM New York)

"Even Bruce Ratner’s millions aren’t tempting enough"

(Photo: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images (Activists); John Marshal Mantel/AP (Ratner); Courtesy of Daniel Goldstein (Self) and Property Shark (Building))

“Development, previously filed under the more uplifting rubric of “progress,” has always had its malcontents. Growing up in north-central Queens during the early sixties, our heroine was one Mary Sendek, an archetypal little old lady who flummoxed the R.H. Macy Company’s plan to build the world’s largest round store at Queens Boulevard near the Long Island Expressway.

“I’ve got a dog and he has to have a place to run,” said Ms. Sendek, mother of six, explaining why she refused to sell her brown shingle house, even after Macy’s offered a then-unthinkable $200,000 for the tiny plot. Macy’s had no choice but to build around her, leaving a pie-slice divot in their dream of the perfect 360-degree emporium. ”

Goldstein Can’t Be Bought(NYMag)

Silver Will Hold Up Atlantic Yards For Further Review in New Year?

“All eyes will be on Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver Wednesday as the controversial Atlantic Yards project seeks approval from an obscure state panel controlled by Silver, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R-Brunswick) and Gov. George Pataki.

Through his vote on the Public Utilities Control Board, Silver has killed Mayor Michael Bloomberg's West Side Jets stadium project and indefinitely delayed plans to convert the James A. Farley post office on Eighth Avenue into Moynihan Station."

Atlantic Yards plan could face key vote today(AMNY)

The Atlantic Rail Yards(onNYTurf)

“NY1 learned Tuesday the plan will not get the green light from the state before the end of the year.

According to a source briefed on the matter, as of now, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver will not give final approval to the project before January 1st. There's word he still has financial questions about Atlantic Yards, which includes office and apartment towers and a sports arena for the Nets basketball team.

Officially, a Silver spokesperson says the speaker hasn't decided. But Silver is said to be ready to either vote no or not vote at all if the projects are put before him at a meeting of the Public Authorities Control Board this week. ”

Ratner To Wait Until 2007 For PACB Decision On Atlantic Rail Yards(NY1)

The State Supreme Court's Appellate Division reversed the disqualification of a lawyer for critics of Atlantc Yards

A state appeals court dealt a setback to opponents of the proposed Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn , reversing the disqualification of a lawyer, David Pagetwho had advised both the complex's developer and the state agency that is conducting an environmental review of the project and finding that Justice Edmead, a Supreme Court judge in Manhattan, had acted correctly when she refused to block the demolition of six buildings on the 22-acre site where Atlantic Yards would be built.

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Opponents of the 8.7-million-square-foot project may yet get a chance to challenge Mr. Paget's work with the development corporation, if they can show that his ties to Forest City Ratner have actually — rather than theoretically — biased the environmental review.

Forest City Ratner is the development partner in building a new Midtown headquarters for The New York Times Company.

Forest City Ratner retained Mr. Paget, a leading environmental lawyer, in December 2003 to consult on the Atlantic Yards project, a proposed residential, commercial and arena development near Downtown Brooklyn. He formally relinquished that role in September 2005, when the development corporation started the environmental review, for which he was hired as outside counsel. The appeals court said that Justice Edmead, in finding that Mr. Paget had advised both parties simultaneously, had misread a February 2004 agreement by Forest City to pay for legal costs incurred by the development corporation during the environmental review, as private developers are required to do.

Tags: Atlantic Yards, Forest City Ratner

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Demolition Begins in Atlantic Yard.....Progress or a Step backward

The first visible change to the site of the proposed $3.5 billion Atlantic Yards development near Downtown Brooklyn crept into view yesterday as workers began dismantling, brick by brick, a dilapidated four-story building on Atlantic Avenue.

Ruby Washington/The New York Times

At the intersection of Flatbush, Atlantic and Fifth Avenues in Brooklyn, the Underberg Building begins to be taken down, brick by brick.

The property, the Underberg Building, is one of six that the developer, Forest City Ratner Companies, planned to demolish in December, after an engineer hired by the company concluded that the buildings were in imminent danger of collapse.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/nyregion/09demolish.html

Tags: Atlantic Yard, Brooklyn

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