July 8, 2005, NY Daily News — Historic brownstones! Prospect Park! Brooklyn Museum! That’s how a band of Prospect Heights activists tried to attract rival developers to bid for the downtown Brooklyn site where Bruce Ratner wants to build a $3.5 billion arena and housing complex – and it worked. The group along with Develop – Don’t Destroy Brooklyn stuffed more than 100 envelopes with photos and fancy cover letters trying to court developers from Illinois to Singapore. The Manhattan-based Extell Development Co. took the bait and put in a last-minute surprise bid yesterday for the 8.4 acre stretch of railyard along Atlantic Ave. The MTA put out a request for proposals for the site in May and bids were due by Wednesday. Ratner wants to build an arena and 17 soaring skyscrapers – the tallest reaching 620 feet high – along the yards and extending into Prospect Heights. The Extell plan is a much smaller and does not involve taking private land. “We went through all the developers and read about the kind of things they worked on,” Hagan said about choosing who to target.
Continued on the Jump…

A Coney Island Dream [NY Daily News]

The promotional package included aerial maps of Brooklyn and color photos of quaint restaurants, brownstones and luxury lofts. Photos of the dilapidated stretch of railyards also were included along with a copy of the request for proposals from the MTA. “We encourage interested developers to make competing bids,” read the cover letter. “The yards are an incredibly valuable opportunity in an exceptional location.” But it wasn’t the meadows and museums that attracted Extell. “They didn’t do this based on a photo image,” said Extell spokesman Bob Liff. “This is a serious company that does serious work. What attracted the developer to this is that it’s one of the great developable sites in Brooklyn. We’re surprised there weren’t more people,” Liff said.


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  1. The 50% affordable housing figure is incorrect. It was the number put forward by Ratner when the agreement with ACORN was first announced. Since that time, the amount number of apartments in the development has been increased, and the figure is now at 30%, which is typical for this kind of development. By the way, the subsidies for affordable housing would be available to any developer.

    I feel that poor coverage of this development by New York media has contributed to the confusing concerning the facts about the Atlantic Railyards project.

  2. David, there is no “cut-off” regarding height. Why are you demanding an absolute here? So you can imply that there’s no rationality to it?

    As for most things in life it’s merely a sliding scale of preferences. At three times lower, 20 floors is preferable to me than 60 floors, IMHO.