State to Evict Holdouts in Seven Properties in Atlantic Yards Footprint
You may have thought everyone in the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park footprint had already moved, but nope, there are a few households still left. The state already seized title from seven of the remaining properties, a few of which are residential, above, and there are at least two families still living in them. One of these…
You may have thought everyone in the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park footprint had already moved, but nope, there are a few households still left. The state already seized title from seven of the remaining properties, a few of which are residential, above, and there are at least two families still living in them. One of these has a newborn. Also, the three houses at 491-495 Dean Street, above, are good-looking 19th century buildings.
And guess what? The remaining families want equivalent homes somewhere else in Prospect Heights, which would cost about $3,000,000 or so each. The state says they should be satisfied with a $1,500,000 property in Bed Stuy or Crown Heights, said the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report, which attended a hearing on the matter Thursday. One of the owners pointed out his property is worth even more as a development site for a skyscraper.
We were surprised to read all this, knowing that condo owner and anti-Atlantic Yards activist Daniel Goldstein and others got much more for their slighter holdings.
By the way, P.C. Richard and Modell’s will also be condemned, to make way for a 250-foot tower.
What do you think would be fair compensation for the homeowners?
Nearly All in Atlantic Yards Footprint Have Left; State Moves Toward Residential Eviction [AYR]
Photo by AYR
It is interesting to me that the discussion about things that can be bought are conflated with things that are only built with hearts and souls. Communities are about people not money. I grew up in Prospect Heights and know that many friends who fought to make this neighborhood what it is have been forced to sell because they can no longer afford to live here. It would tear my heart out to give up a building I painstaking restored with my own two hands, over decades, to a developer who will never live here.. There is no monetary compensation equal to my passion. No dollar amount to pay for my youth spent building a community. The property rights issue aside, must we always judge and be judged through the filter of self-serving greed?
Some facts. 1. The assessed TAX value of all the townhouses on this block are circa $3M.
2. FCR made no prior offer to them.. These seven buildings fall in to what FCR dubbed phase 2 of their project and as such they aren’t hold outs as much as they have been strung out for 12 years. During which all of us on this block suffered 5 years of construction, rat infestation, our buildings rattling as if we were going through an earth quake on more times that I care to remember and the sound of trucks running up and down our street at all hours of the night. That’s my experience and I’m down the street so I can only imagine what it was like for them as their townhouses are literally next door to the construction site. If you ask me, these guys should be paid handsomely for enduring what truly was a public nuisance for over a decade in addition to what ever they have been offered now. If it’s really $1.5M that’s an insult. That’s nowhere near what the replacement cost of buying a home in this nabe and if anyone knows that FCR does. Didn’t they shell out something like $3.7M to buy their director, Maryanne Gilmartin, a house a few block away from here? The irony is, and I’ve been told this my next door neighbour who attended the hearing, the family in the grey houses went on record as saying: “they don’t want FCR money”. Words to the effect that they just want a house in the neighborhood they have called home for sixty years. If you ask me, that seems fair enough. I mean, the City and state have bent over backwards to make this project happen for FCR (50 years of tax abatements, selling the rail yard for a price far below market value even when competitors tendered higher bids, $80M to buy residents out etc) and what did the developer do? Flip the project, as someone in mentioned to the government of Shanghai and a Russian oligarch. So, in the grand scheme of things ensuring these guys are relocated in a similar home in their neighborhood seems the very least they could be done with our tax payers money. #thereforthegraceofGodgoI
In full disclosure these guys live on my block. They couldn’t be nicer and it’s going to be a shame to see them and those three houses go. To think they have young children and they have to put them through this mess now, it’s a crying shame and I’d bet anything those lots stay undeveloped and collect rats and garbage for years like the adjacent lots FCR raised in 2010.
The family that owns the two grey ones have lived in the neighborhood for near 60 years. If the literature I read a while back when their houses were in the Brooklyn Brownstone Garden tours is anything to go by, they could be two of the oldest houses in Prospect Heights 1823 and 1825. Beautiful gardens! Anyone in the neighborhood knows that six-storey high magnolia tree.
Good for them. They deserve compensation. They have lovely homes and should be compensated fairly.
Why the development has to span this far…I do not understand.
@East New York. Great point re Goldstein didn’t he have a 1000-odd sq ft apartment? These guys have 3000 sq ft town houses.
FYI NO market value offer was made to residents in Phase II and Legal fees to get compensation in court runs north of $1M. A process that reportedly takes four years and has no guarantees. So sadly, more than likely than not we will be wishing them good luck for their rentals. And, they will need all the help they can get: http://nypost.com/2014/04/15/brooklyn-landlords-pushing-black-tenants-out-for-whites-suit/
I suppose that the same kind of person who would buy a luxury apartment or even live on the corner of Tillary Street and Flatbush Ave???
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
You’re right, eminent domain does suck, but “a greater good” might be better defined as a freeway, railroad tracks or a veteran’s hospital. I’m pretty sure the Atlantic Yards project doesn’t sit on the same level as these types of significant public works. And most likely, the current homeowners might have left on first offer if they felt that by holding out, they were somehow holding up an important project. I’m not a hater: I’ve attended and enjoyed many events at Barclays, and I think it’s good for the neighborhood. But displacement of current residents and their historic homes to make way for more cookie-cutter, overpriced high-rise apartments is simultaneously sucking both the character and diversity out of the neighborhood, aka, the things that made Brooklyn BROOKLYN. Developers will not be satisfied until previously “charming” Brooklyn neighborhoods all scream of glass and steel towers with ground level big-box and chain commercial tenants. It’s pretty sad when you think about it.
Risk work both ways. They held out for more and could get more, or they can get less but they don’t necessarily have to get less. The original amount shouldn’t set a cap at what their property is worth.