Nets Will Have New Owner; FCR Will Have New AY Partner
Wow! Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Prokhorov, announced a deal with Forest City Ratner and the Nets that will make Prokhorov’s Onexim Group the majority owner of the Nets and an Atlantic Yards development partner. Details from the AP: “According to the agreement, entities to be formed by Onexim Group will invest $200 million and make…
Wow! Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Prokhorov, announced a deal with Forest City Ratner and the Nets that will make Prokhorov’s Onexim Group the majority owner of the Nets and an Atlantic Yards development partner. Details from the AP: “According to the agreement, entities to be formed by Onexim Group will invest $200 million and make certain funding commitments to acquire 80 percent of the NBA team, 45 percent of the arena project and the right to purchase up to 20 percent of the Atlantic Yards Development Company, which will develop the non-arena real estate.” The deal still needs to be approved by the NBA. AY Report has details on Develop Don’t Destroy’s reaction to the news.
NJ Nets, Russia’s richest man agree to deal [AP via Yahoo]
Russian Tycoon Investing $200M to Bridge Financing Gap [AY Report]
NBA and Treasury Department Must Vet Billionaire [DDDB]
Photo from Impactlab
Ppark – except Marty Markowitz is a politician with essentially no power.
Love the “Rubles for Clunkers” headline in today’s Times.
The project has ALWAYS been a done deal. Ratner has always had Marty Fucking Markowitz in his pocket.
Brooklyn Speaks tried to work with ratner/ESDC they weren’t listening at all. Even Marty and his reps started attending the Brooklyn Speaks meetings but the ESDC and Ratner had a deaf ear and blind eye to any discussions. They didn’t want any input except from sycophants.
Good luck DDDB in trying to derail what is now a Russian oligarch’s vanity project. You should have worked with Ratner while you could. He at least needed to care about his image in the US and the economics of the project. Russian oligarchs aren’t well known for taking “nyet” for an answer.
Not the only reason to overrule them but certainly a compelling argument that there is no public good in this arena project. When the Atlantic Yards project was all of a piece, to include affordable housing (whether this is truly affordable or not is, of course, another question), and the arena was supposed to have a public room, an argument could be made that there was a public component to it — but now that it has been split into two separate projects, with different ownership, etc., there is no way that anyone could argue that a privately owned, pay arena serves the greater public good in any way. So maybe there should now be two separate eminent domain lawsuits here — one covering the arena footprint and the other covering the rent stabilized buildings that Ratner wants taken by eminent domain (away from him, incidentally — this whole scam is so dishonest it hurts) so he can evict those pesky rent stabilized tenants at last. And I see a no on both counts — one because the arena is clearly not in the public interest, but a private, for-profit endeavor and the other because there is absolutely no fixed timeline for when and even if the other phases of this project are going ahead.
Yay! DDDB is finally SOL! Woo-Hoo to the world-class arena! Yeah, Lebron!
Corey just curious – what relevance is the religion of Russian Oligarchs to this debate or frankly almost any other????
“Mr. Prokhorov will build his “summer palace” in the section of Brooklyn formerly known as Mill Basin, but now known as Prokhorivshtello. all former residents of the area will be moved to trailers and will need to assist in the constructioin of the estate. They will thereafter be his serfs as part of a deal brokered by Czar Bloomberg I and Prokhorov”
LMMFAO!!!