"The city’s newly announced plans for Willets Point are an outrage — and should be seen as such by every City Council member who voted in favor of the plan that was originally proposed, and by all New York City taxpayers who are being stuck with the bill for what will forever be known as Bloomberg’s folly."
The editorial points out that this is all part of a twenty year scheme by Sterling Equities-the Wilpons' real estate arm-to gain control over property contiguous to their new tax payer supported stadium: " The Wilpons have schemed for 20 years to get the property adjacent to their stadium for development. They have funded a local development corporation, now under investigation by the New York State Attorney General for illegally lobbying on behalf of the Willets Point plan, and are now poised — as the lawyers say — to eat the fruit of the poisonous tree. A more blatant example of crony capitalism would be hard to find."
Of course the other scandal here is that the Wilpons are not going to pay for the property that the city bogarted from Willets Point business owners-using over $200 million of tax payre money-with the threat of eminent domain: "Making this entire situation that much worse is the fact that the Willets Point properties that the city bought — using the taxpayers’ money, of course — are being transferred to two, billion-dollar real estate companies for the princely sum of $0. Can this be any more outrageous?"
All of this sleight-of-hand for what? Another mall:
"At his recent press conference heralding this latest iteration of developing Willets Point, the mayor — with a straight face — said this about the new plan: “It includes everything we were looking for in the first phase, exactly as envisioned and approved by the community and City Council back in 2008.” This is a bald-faced falsehood, because the current plan — the one that will perhaps go forward in the near term — is really a gigantic mall. That is a far cry from the new green neighborhood, the one with so many units of affordable housing, that the City Council approved in 2008."
Read the whole thing and weep for the demise of honesty in government.
