Stunner: Goldstein Takes $3 Million Buyout
Our hand-wringing yesterday over the financial fate of Dan Goldstein looks pretty silly now! As most readers have probably heard already, Goldstein, the last remaining resident in the footprint of the Atlantic Yards project and the biggest thorn in developer Bruce Ratner’s side over the past several years, took a last-minute buyout of $3 million…

Our hand-wringing yesterday over the financial fate of Dan Goldstein looks pretty silly now! As most readers have probably heard already, Goldstein, the last remaining resident in the footprint of the Atlantic Yards project and the biggest thorn in developer Bruce Ratner’s side over the past several years, took a last-minute buyout of $3 million yesterday after mediation session led by Judge Gerges. (As Atlantic Yards Report reveals, after the lawyer’s cut and subtracting the market value of his apartment, this comes out to about $150,000 a year for his activism work. AYR also notes that the seven renters received an average of $85,000 each earlier this week.) “What I did today was hopefully protect my family and end up on my feet after fighting like heck for seven years not for to reach this day, but not to reach this day,” Goldstein said. While Goldstein agreed to resign from his leadership role at Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn and not to “actively oppose the project” as part of his deal, he managed to get this quote off to NY1: “Atlantic Yards is an illegitimate project that got where it is today through an illegitimate process — a breakdown of democracy.” It’s tough not to have mixed emotions about Goldstein’s decision. On the one hand, he was going to be evicted in less than a month, so who can blame him for taking as much dough as he could get. On the other hand, the amount is so much that it threatens, at least from a PR standpoint, to throw into question the motives behind his activism; not only that, but AYR points out that it’s not quite true that there was nothing left he could do. We don’t in the slightest bit doubt the sincerity with which Goldstein devoted himself to opposing the project nor can we blame him for his final move in the giant poker game given the options, but it’s hard not to have some feelings of ambivalence about the way it all ended. After all, it was never supposed to be about the money.
A statement released this morning by Goldstein, and posted in full on the jump, helps explain the play-by-play and how he views yesterday’s news.
Daniel Goldstein Leaves for $3 Million [NY Times]
Last Atlantic Yards Hold-out Daniel Goldstein Folds [NY Daily News]
Last Atlantic Yards Holdout Cuts $3M deal to Go [NY Post]
DDDB’s Goldstein settles for $3M [AYR]
Ratner Pays Millions To Have Yards Residents Relocate [NY1]
Last Holdout Accepts Ratner’s $3M! [Brooklyn Paper]
Last Pure Man in Brooklyn Sells Out [Gawker]
As has been widely reported (see the invaluable NoLandGrab for full coverage), I reached a financial settlement with the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), tool of Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner, to move out of my home—which the ESDC took ownership of on March 1st—by May 7th.
I did not know, when Wednesday started, that a settlement was in store. It was nothing that I expected to happen. I only knew that I had to defend myself against eviction by New York State.
My day started at 9:30 in State Supreme Court where my attorney (not DDDB’s) argued against ESDC’s effort to get Judge Abraham Gerges to evict my family from our home on May 17th. I did not expect that this argument would then lead to a settlement, so I did not have a press release prepared when an agreement was reached around 3pm. I did not even think of the press implications because I was thinking about my personal situation and my family, not the press. I should have known better because clearly Forest City Ratner saw it as a big press event and sent out a press release immediately. This has led to some misreporting. I send this statement to clarify what has actually occurred. There is a lot to say, so I hope you’ll forgive the length, and my apologies for not getting this message out sooner.
Contrary to press reports I have not given up my First Amendment rights or my involvement with Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. (Ratner, though he tried to hide it, did require this of nearly all those who sold their homes to him years ago, and they agreed to it.) Ratner and ESDC tried very hard to force me to agree to give up those rights and the work I do with the organization I helped found. It wasn’t enough, I guess, for Ratner to decimate my neighborhood, take my home, and kick me out, they also felt they had to cut out my tongue. For nearly 3 hours of talks mediated by Judge Gerges I refused to accept any kind of gag order. I would not have taken any amount of money to do that, and I did not.
I did agree to give up my title as “DDDB spokesman”, but that’s just a title. And I did agree to remove my name from one outstanding lawsuit which remains in court despite that. Otherwise I can do and say whatever else I want, and my agreement explicitly states that I have maintained my First Amendment rights. So they have not succeeded in silencing me and I am free to criticize and speak about the project, the developer and the ESDC as much as I want. I intend to do that whenever the need arises.
For seven years my wife Shabnam Merchant (who I met as a fellow activist against Atlantic Yards) and I have worked and fought day after day—giving up an income for many of those years—in an effort to help bring community-based, democratic development to Central Brooklyn. This meant, obviously, opposing Ratner’s corrupt, developer-driven, undemocratic project.
As a co-founder of DDDB I will continue that work to the best of my ability and as time allows. I’ve not been silenced, and I am not leaving DDDB as it transitions into a new phase of fighting Atlantic Yards, exposing its corruption and false promises, and advocating for changing the State’s abusive eminent domain laws and the way development is done in New York. And should Atlantic Yards falter, and the land return to its contested state, DDDB will be prepared to jump in.
Impact on the Fight Against Atlantic Yards
On March 1st, after years of litigation, ESDC took title ownership of my home. From that day on, I no longer owned my apartment but instead became a tenant of the State.
At that time, with that action on Ratner’s behalf, there was nothing I could any longer personally do with my home that would stop or impact the project. Staying in my home until the sheriff came to evict my wife, child and I would have accomplished nothing at all for the fight but would have severely harmed us.
After March 1st, it was inevitable that we would be forced out; it was just a matter of when.
On April 9th ESDC filed papers requesting that the court evict me on May 17th. Wednesday morning my attorney argued that the court should not grant that eviction. After the argument, Judge Gerges made it crystal clear that he wanted resolution between me and ESDC/Ratner—that day—as to when I’d leave my home.
So instead of being evicted in about 27 days and then being forced to go to court to hope to get close to fair market value for my home (as opposed to the extremely lowball “just compensation” offered to me by New York State, which was nowhere near fair market value), I agreed to leave in about 17 days. That agreement to leave ten days sooner avoids further litigation over “just compensation,” which would have cost me more time and money while accomplishing nothing for the fight against the project.
I did not sell my home today. I had no home to sell as the state took my home on March 1st. Contrary to what Ratner and ESDC might want people to believe, eminent domain was used on me and many others. My home was seized by the government to give to a private developer.
What I did do was agree to leave my home rather quickly in return for a payment. What I did do was what I needed to do as a responsible husband and father to make sure that my family could make an orderly transition to a new home in Brooklyn. I was left with no good choice by the ESDC or Judge Gerges.
I have always promised that once the legal options to save my home and the homes and businesses of my neighbors were extinguished, I would have to turn my attention to what was best for my family, after years of neglecting our interests. That is what I did on Wednesday.
DDDB
Speaking as the “former” spokesman of DDDB I have this to say.
The fight we have waged as a community has been heroic and crucially important to literally millions around the City and the country. We have all exposed the project and the process as fatally corrupt. We have convinced nearly all good people of good will that the project is a sham and a poster child for the wrong way to develop cities. We shined a bright light on the way eminent domain is abused in New York State to the point where there is now a legislative effort led by Senator Perkins to reform the state’s laws.
We have fought every lie, exaggeration, fudge, false promise, abuse, and misinformation campaign tooth and nail. The project that Ratner wanted to build will never be built. And we know that his promises, many already broken, will continue to be broken—especially his promise to build 2,250 units of affordable housing in ten years. It is shameful, and it is shameful that so many politicians remained silent, and still do to this day.
And we, as a community, as DDDB and so many other community groups, will continue to expose the project’s problems and abuses.
Through the relationships and alliances amongst community groups and individuals I am certain that it will be impossible for developers and their government cronies to ram this kind of project down another community’s throat ever again in New York City.
They didn’t ram it down ours.
While we didn’t stop the groundbreaking, our voice of protest was heard loud and clear for years before that day, and on that day. On Ratner’s day of celebration, the overwhelming media coverage (besides Beyonce and Jay-Z of course) was of the protest of that travesty.
A legacy of this fight will be that we have proven that all that we have found wrong with Atlantic Yardsngal has been shown to be legal in the view of the courts and most legislators. The abusive laws, which favor the most powerful and entrenched interests, must be changed.
Finally, please remember that DDDB, this community and the fight against Atlantic Yards was never about a single person or a single apartment—or even about a single borough. It has been, and still is, about one of the biggest failures of government and democracy in this City’s history, and its impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the great borough of Brooklyn. Our fight has—and this is one of the victories—given hope, inspiration and encouragement to innumerable people that a community united can fight principled fights worth fighting, regardless of the outcome. These are fights that have to be fought if we are to find a way to become a working democracy, which treats individuals and communities fairly, rather than disenfranchising and disempowering them.
See you at the next meeting (once I find a new Brooklyn home). And please be in touch with DDDB.
With my great respect for all the civic minded people who have engaged in the resistance to Atlantic Yards, to any degree at all, throughout the years. You are heroes and YOU have the power.
Daniel Goldstein
Co-founder of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn
PS. It will be interesting to see what Congressman Pascrell accomplishes with his effort to get a Treasury Department investigation into Mikhail Prokorov’s business deallings in Zimbabwe.
“He fought the good fight and went without years of income and other professional opportunities to do so.”
Do we know if he took at salary from DDDB?
From the DDDB website regarding where their money comes from:
“We are funded entirely by individual donations from the community at large and through various fundraising events we and supporters have organized. We have the financial support of well over 3,500 individual donors.”
I’m looking at the advisory board and it’s 99% artists. Literally literary! Bad joke. Nobody in politics or architecture or from Wall Street, who I myself would have made sure I had. There is one urban planner but who identifies herself first as an artist. Sounds like a lot of yes-people. If he’d had true experts in how to fight this those people would be very opinionated because of their expertise and by nature of their jobs, and maybe that was too much a clash of personalities? If you’re running a political campaign you hire people who are able to understand and even sympathize with the opposing view. Does it look like that happened here?
Can we just begin construction now????
Excuse me, traditionalmod, how is taking donations from residents using taxpayers’ money? Maybe those residents who donate enough to deduct on their income taxes pay some fraction of this amount less in taxes, but that isn’t the same thing, is it?
And, again, this case was argued by was Dan’s personal lawyers paid for by his personal funds, not DDDB lawyers and not DDDB funds.
And since when, DarkStar, do volunteers ask to be (re)paid? Isn’t that why they’re called volunteers, they don’t get paid?
Sheesh – I am not at all surprised by the usual haters, but it is truly disappointing to see DDDB contributers swayed by the Rat’s latest obfuscations. Don’t you know better than to believe a word out of him/FCR?
We have half of the project we would have if these NIMBYs hadn’t stood in the way of progress. If FCR could have financed this before the credit crunch Brooklyn would be so much better off. But instead it got delayed by a bunch of people who hid their snobbery and money grubbing behind all kinds of fake social causes. And in the end we see what they are really made of. Brooklyn loses. Goldstein wins. And the people who supported him will probably never understand how much damage they really did. What an astonishing abuse of the legal system.
I don’t blame Goldstein one bit for taking a relatively big payout. He fought the good fight and went without years of income and other professional opportunities to do so. His home has been taken. There is no need for him to further martyr himself. In addition, he has a small child and has to take that child’s future into consideration.
I am bothered, however, that he apparently agreed to take less of a leadership role in DDDB for money. In his email to DDDB members (which omits the settlement amount), he states that his title change is just a semantic quibble, but why would Ratner pay extra for a semantic quibble?
Goldstein also agreed to remove his name from the remaining lawsuit. His email also minimizes that move, but that seems pretty serious to me. THAT looks like being paid to abandon the fight. He must be VERY tired, but that is very disappointing.
Actually the delays probably saved us money.
We delayed a massive, massive expenditure with almost no economic benefit – as verified by Ratner’s own studies.
If you’re gonna throw away many hundreds of millions of dollars it’s better to do it later than sooner.
Admit it, the delays were just that, delays. And they cost brooklyn a lot.
3 mil was a steal for Ratner as delays would have cost him 2 to 3 times that per month. Danny ran out of time too and wasn’t about to walk away with nothing. Like in the old days, when a railroad runs through your property, it’s somewhat of a windfall.
Stop hating, DIBS.
Go Newark Nets! Ooops – Go Brookyn!
***Bid half off peak comps***