Ratner's Yards Bonds Rated 'Barely' Investment Grade
On the heels of last week’s eminent domain ruling, Forest City Ratner took another step towards realizing its vision for a basketball arena in Brooklyn when Moody’s Investor Service gave the $500 million in tax free bonds being used to finance the Barclays Center a crucial investment-grade rating. According to a largely positive story in…
On the heels of last week’s eminent domain ruling, Forest City Ratner took another step towards realizing its vision for a basketball arena in Brooklyn when Moody’s Investor Service gave the $500 million in tax free bonds being used to finance the Barclays Center a crucial investment-grade rating. According to a largely positive story in Crain’s yesterday afternoon, “the Baa3 rating reflects several factors, including the strength of New York City as a media market, existing sponsorship support for the team, the large amount of equity the developer and its partner are putting in the project and strong reserve funds.” And check out this quote in The Times from a vice president at Moody’s: The lawsuits are not an issue as far as the rating is concerned. The rating assumes that the lawsuits will be settled and that the project will move forward.” A more skeptical article in the New York Observer noted that while technically investement-grade, the bond rating was only one step above junk level, reflecting significant risk factors like relocation, weak team finances and “uncertain demand for premium seating.” And Atlantic Yards Report points out that the Moody’s rating assumes 225 events per year but Ratner’s on record as predicting only 200. Crain’s says that bond sales are expected to begin sometime this week.
New Nets Arena Wins Another Court Challenge [NY Times]
Moody’s Gives $500M in Nets Bonds Thumbs Up [Crain’s]
Nets Arena Wins Needed Bond Rating, Mostly [Observer]
Atlantic Yards Debt Gets Rated [The Bond Buyer]
Snark, don’t go on hiatus. And bxgrl,don’t buy into the “gotcha” demand for a citation, especially when the folks who go on about the great ecomomic benefits of stadiums rely on anecdotal information. I suggested once before, if they google “stadium impact on a community” they will find that the vast majority of the articles cited note that there is little or no benefit to local communities.
And on the topic of looking at building on existing hubs, a look at http://www.livablecity.org/campaigns/transit.html is interesting. Their observation that building on a site can work IF it is accompanied by other remediation actions (like through streets, which AY kills), and reduced parking, and pedestrian safety – I haven’t seen anything that supports just adding new passengers to trains – or increasing new trains. The article that benson cited did not speak to hubs where many different lines converge, like the Atlantic/Pacific street station
Keep going, Snark. You’re doing fine.
Polemicist is right this time. Damn commie pinkos, demonstrating in favor of subversive un-American ideas like private property rights! Send em back where they came from!
As much we complain about the MTA it’s way better than the FAA which still relies on technology used in the 1950s.
snark- don’t you dare go on hiatus! Who but you understands steampunk garden gnomes?
just goes to show, not everyone is in agreement. FSRG- wish I could find the pages where I read that. i did a lot of research one day after a thread about just this subject and found a lot of differing opinions. This one stuck out because, as posted above, on the surface it doesn’t seem the most obvious solution but they did explain why they believed it and related it to the NYC transit system. It had a lot to do with the development of neighborhoods, supply pipelines and infrastructure aging.
> the act is rather tiresome
True, true. The schtick has gotten stale. Thanks for the encouragement to take a hiatus.
Regarding the “capacity” issue:
The MTA is in the midst of an upgrade to the subway’s signalling system, which will effectively increase the capacity of existing lines without the need for more tunnels and tracks.
Details here:
http://www.progressiverailroading.com/pr/article.asp?id=13257
“SOME city and ruban specialists have said that it makes more sense to spread out density across the transit system” though MOST would go against that statement.