You Pay and the Nets Will Play
Forest City Ratner is poised to get $2,157,260,000 in tax subsidies for Atlantic Yards, according to an article in this morning’s Post, but even that may not be enough dough from public coffers. In a conference call last week the firm’s president told investors that the mega-development will “still need more” subsidies. Michael D.D. White,…
Forest City Ratner is poised to get $2,157,260,000 in tax subsidies for Atlantic Yards, according to an article in this morning’s Post, but even that may not be enough dough from public coffers. In a conference call last week the firm’s president told investors that the mega-development will “still need more” subsidies. Michael D.D. White, a real estate attorney who has criticized how Atlantic Yards is being financed, came up with a subsidy tally for the newspaper (reprinted on the jump). “The setup is basically like paying taxes on your home and then having the government use that money to help you pay off your mortgage,” says White, who estimates that FCR will save $1 billion in tax payments that will go directly toward paying for the $950 million Nets arena. FCR spokesman Loren Riegelhaupt takes issue with White’s tally, saying no subsidies are set in stone aside from $305 million from the state and city for infrastructure and land-acquisition costs. Riegelhaupt also says that the entire project is supposed to bring in $1 billion in net tax revenues over its first 30 years.
Your ‘Net’ Loss [NY Post]
Ratner Feasts on Public Subsidies [Brownstoner]
Photo of Nets billboard on Atlantic by threecee.
how much in taxes is the city collecting from this land now? how much will the city be collecting once developed?
but if all those items weren’t enough, the one re mta appraisal takes the cake.
the analysis in this article isn’t even worth the price of the scanned page.
Something stinks around Brooklyn and it looks to be a result of all the people who been drinking Ratner’s cool aid. There is nothing to defend these numbers, NOTHING. The government doesn’t even need to be paying half the costs to make this stink of shit.
D-U-N-G D-E-A-L!
D-U-N-G D-E-A-L!
This sounds similar to what DDDb has been saying for years, though it turns out that DDDb was slightly UNDERestimating the costs to the taxpayers.
What’s interesting here is that this shows that the numbers that DDDb has been throwing around are quite accurate. This should boost their credibility for people who have yet to take a side on the issue. I doubt 2:16 falls in that category.
Finally everyone’s catching on. Only took 4 years…
Thanks for the insight, 11:34, but don’t expect it to change many minds. The anti-AY NIMBYs never let facts get in the way of their claims.
While this analysis is eye opening, you can’t compare the $2 billion subsidy to the $4 million cost. The PILOTs will pay principal and interest on tax-exempt bonds for 30 years. Same with the interest savings due to tax-exemption. These numbers should be expressed in today’s dollars to be comparable to the cost of the project. To compare the subsidy with the cost, you’d need to include all the interest on the borrowings Ratner is using for the entire project. The result would still be shocking, but far from implying that the government is paying half the costs.
And the people fighting this are the greedy ones. That is a laugh.
Thanks Brownstoner, for that plain English visualization of why Ratner and his project is a hack job. Or maybe a snow job.