Ratner's Yards Bonds Rated 'Barely' Investment Grade

The Nets are an up-and-coming team. I know that sounds silly on its face given their record, but they have a lot of very good and very promising first, second and third year players. The reason they suck is that they have intentionally starved their team for money the last two years and not signed any big name or veteran players.

The reason being: this off-season, they will have more cap space than any team in the NBA to go after what will be the best free agent class in the last 15 years.

As a basketball fan-- and not a citizen-- I am definitely looking forward to how this team comes together over the next couple years.

FtGreeneCorey, you just beat me to it! But yes, I agree. The Nets will be an exciting team in 2010-2011 and beyond.

Good point about Yankee Stadium/ Citi Field.

I know we all gripe about what to do with this space and how to pay for it... but can I just ask if anyone else is embarrassed when they drive/ walk from Flatbush/Atlantic to Prospect Park?

That stretch should be one of the proudest parts of Brooklyn as you come up to the park, yet it's run-down and thoroughly lacking in charm and personality. It's certainly not pre-Disneyfied West/East Village charming. It's not even Williamsburg raggedy-chic, it's just raggedy.

Please don't respond with a comment of the arena is out of scale or the money is whack-- I'm just talking big picture here and not about the arena specifically. At what point do you simply have to try something bold?

fsrg-- I'm there with you. And yes, it might be too much for Brownstoner posters to understand that tax exempt bonds don't destroy value or cost the city money (it's not a tax cut, it's an abatement).

Here's what I was trying to get at:

Not having grown up in this country, the thing that always strikes me as strange about Americans is that they're very penny-wise and pound foolish, which is very strange to me because growing up in Europe we always thought that Americans were very big-picture oriented.

Big projects and big sweeping changes (whether an arena, investment in a train line or increased taxes in a business improvement district or the creation of a special economic zone) rarely make money on their own, but in conjunction with other things they can improve the economic standing and quality of life of an area. Everything builds on everything else, making new things possible.

The problem with AY, admittedly is that it isn't part of a bigger vision, but my only point is that for a place like Brooklyn, a big vision is needed. It should be the great American city of the 21st century but it's too caught up in sniping itself to death over b.s. like Bjork putting in new windows.

Polemiscist-- if only the city were run by Communists! I'm only half joking, because in Denmark we are run-- pretty much-- by Communists... the only advantage is that at least someone is in charge. If the city wants to build a public works project or a soccer stadium, they figure out a way to do it (involve the community better than the AY people), figure out something sensible and do it.

The biggest problem with the AY project is how no-one is in charge. There are years of lawsuits, fights and problems over stuff that should have been ironed out in a few months.

In a socialist country you would have gotten the Frank Gehry design and gotten it a year and a half ago.

In the everyone-is-a-special-snowflake world of Brooklyn, you get years of fights, millions of dollars wasted on legal fees and years of bad will built up as thousands of people became bitter over a long fight... you STILL end up with a stadium, just a crappier one which will cost the same amount.

DitmasSnark-- you're right, the best possible situation is that someone moves it to that whole area earns as much money and pays taxes for 25 years. That is not under dispute.

Tax exempt bonds only cost cities money if the opportunity cost (someone else building something that would pay taxes) exceeds the cost of maintenance and liability costs for the city in the period between when the bonds are issued and when the alternative company would come along and develop.

NYC has consistently, over the last 20 years, made the bet that waiting costs more than short-term tax abatement.

Sparafucile-- Yankee Stadium isn't enough to overcome the fact that it's in America's poorest urban congressional district, though all the stores on River Ave wouldn't be there w/o the stadium.

Stadiums usually lose money for cities. The only way they succeed economically is if they succeed at prying dollars away from another tax base. Building a new Yankee Stadium across the street (or even somewhere else in the Bronx) doesn't accomplish that. The idea (and this is the idea) is that the 200 events per year is going to represent spending and local tangential spending that would not have taken place in Brooklyn otherwise.