Atlantic Yards opponents basically being held hostage in their own homes!

From Atlantic Yards Report:

Things are getting truly strange for Daniel Goldstein, spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, who with his wife and child is the only resident left on Pacific Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues.

Goldstein lost his condo to condemnation last week and his street and two others were closed and made private.

Now that his street is closed to traffic--permanently at Fifth Avenue, and via guarded barriers at Sixth Avenue, anyone visiting Goldstein must provide advance notice, which means friends have been stopped by guards and kept him on the phone today with representatives of both Forest City Ratner and the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), which owns his property.

Goldstein on March 4 received a letter (below) from Charles Webb, ESDC Condemnation Counsel, informing him that "ESDC requires you to relocate by April 3, 2010 (thirty days after the date of this letter) so that development plans for the Atlantic Yards Arena and Redevelopment Project... may proceed."

Goldstein's attorney Michael Rikon responded forcefully, on behalf of Goldstein and other footprint property owners, calling Webb's letter "an attempt to intimidate our clients":

First, you have absolutely no right to inform anyone that they must vacate by April 3, 2010. You must understand that condemnees have the protection of New York's Eminent Domain Procedure Law. You cannot even suggest a vacate date until you comply with the requirements of the law.

Those requirements include a notice of acquisition and a good faith advance payment. Then the date to vacate would be set by the condemnation court.

He added that "no roadway or access to a street or highway may be interfered with."

Why using blight for eminent domain just isn't right

From the NY Post:

New York's real blights today are government's fault -- like the old Deutsche Bank building at Ground Zero, owned by the city and state since 9/11, whose "deconstruction" is still underway.

Eminent-domain abuse is a symptom of a deeper problem: The belief that central planning is superior to free-market competition. To cure yourself of this notion, stroll around Atlantic Yards, past three-story clapboard homes nestled near corniced row houses -- "blighted" residences. You'll peer up at [Daniel] Goldstein's nearly empty apartment house, scheduled to be destroyed.

And you'll see how Ratner's wrecking balls have made the neighborhood gap-toothed. A vacant lot now sprawls where the historic Ward Bakery was.

Today, Prospect Heights displays what the state wants everyone to see: decay. But it's isn't the work of callous markets that left the neighborhood to perish. It's the work of a developer wielding state power to press property owners to sell their land "voluntarily." Meanwhile, true private investment has been choked off, since everyone knows the state's aiming to hand everything to Ratner.

Free markets aren't perfect, but they're better than the blight of arbitrary government.

Saturday's Community Meeting of Eminent Domain Actions

Senator Bill Perkins holds Community Meeting of Eminent Domain Actions. Willets Point United participated as did our attorney, Mike Rikon.

WPU attends Senator Perkins' Community Meeting

WPU attended State Senator Bill Perkins' Community Meeting on Eminent Domain at Manhattan Pentecostal Church today.

WPU President Jerry Antonacci spoke about how the EDC is "reading from a script" since every few years the city or state comes up with an eminent domain-requiring development scheme for Willets Point.

Attorney Mike Rikon also spoke about how wrong the use of eminent domain is without a public use and to benefit private developers.

Attorneys Norm Siegel and David Smith, representatives of Develop Don't Destroy and the families fighting the Columbia University expansion also spoke.

Senator Perkins announced that his committee will be holding hearings on all of the currently proposed NYC projects that require eminent domain.

One goal of the meeting was to start a coalition to fight eminent domain abuse across New York State and members of all the groups present signed up to do just that.


Atlantic Yards Report has more.

WPU joins Atlantic Yards protest

Willets Point United members Irene Presti, Jake Bono and Jerry Antonacci attended the "Junk Yard Bonds Protest" held by Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn today at noon in front of 55 Water Street in Manhattan, headquarters of Standard and Poor. Crown Container donated a garbage truck upon which hung a banner that stated "Deposit Atlantic Yards Bonds Here". At the end of the demonstration, junk yard bonds were tossed into the back of the truck and compacted. Unfortunately, Crown couldn't dispose of them because their transfer station permit does not cover toxic assets.

More eminent domain stories

Perkins asks Paterson for moratorium on eminent domain, not to appeal Columbia case [Atlantic Yards Report]

Sen Perkins: Gov, Stop Eminent Domain for Atlantic Yards [Develop Don't Destroy]

First Person: Standing Up to Eminent Theft [The Indypendent]

Atlantic Yards Takes the Court [The Indypendent]

Daniel Goldstein: Home, Blighted Home [Huffington Post]

How victims of eminent domain are really treated

From Wall Street Journal:

In September, Dan Goldstein received a letter from New York State informing him and his wife that the government was about to seize their Brooklyn apartment "In furtherance of the Atlantic Yards Arena and Redevelopment Project." The building would be razed as part of a 22-acre, $4.9 billion sports-complex project.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, and developer Bruce C. Ratner have promised that the project will bring jobs, affordable apartments and the Nets basketball team. Lost amid these promises is the story of Mr. Goldstein, his wife Shabnam Merchant, and a few others who have spent years resisting efforts to dislodge them. The state's highest court—the New York Court of Appeals—is expected to issue its ruling in Goldstein et al. v. Empire State Development Corporation any day. The case is a pivotal one in the struggle to prevent abuse of the power of eminent domain.

All of this places Mr. Goldstein in an important spot. The case that bears his name is the first opportunity since Kelo for New York's highest court to affirm that the state's constitutional standard for seizing property is more stringent than the federal constitutional standard.

If the court rules against Mr. Goldstein, however, he and his wife could suffer one final injustice. The letter they received in September informed them that the state will compensate them $510,000 for their property—less than what they bought it for and less than half of what Mr. Ratner offered to pay them for it four years ago.

It's also less per square foot than what Mr. Ratner expects to sell his luxury apartments for once they are built. "I think [the state] lowballs to deter people from fighting like we have," Mr. Goldstein told me.

Mr. Goldstein should win. The state constitution supports him. If he loses, so will the owners of private property everywhere in the Empire State.

And from the Brooklyn Paper:

“I’m pissed off that the state is the low-balling me,” said Goldstein, whose last legal challenges to the project are on the verge of resolution. If those lawsuits fail, Goldstein said he’ll be forced to “go to court to get fair market value and just compensation.”

Goldstein’s lawyer, Mike Rikon, believes that the Empire State Development Corporation’s offer is lower than the market value of the apartment as a punishment for Goldstein’s opposition to the project.

“We saw the number and thought maybe they were being vindictive,” Rikon said.

Videos of City Hall Press Conference

Richard Lipsky and Michael Rikon

Bart Didden

Jake Bono

Arturo Olaya

Daniel Goldstein

Jerry Antonacci

Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn makes offer on Vanderbilt Yard

On Wednesday a Brooklyn community organization, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, Inc. (DDDB), made a firm offer of $120 million to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to purchase the development rights for the 8-acre Vanderbilt Yard in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. The group proposes a mixed-use development plan over the rail yards based on the UNITY Plan framework. (See: www.unityplan.org and download the full PDF.)

To complete their offer, the Vanderbilt Yard would be placed into a trust (modeled after the successful Hudson River Trust), for the purposes of financing and managing the development over the yards. It will be called the UNITY Trust.

The UNITY Trust would be administered by local community organizations, a subsidiary of the Empire State Development Corporation, and local elected officials. The Trust would be mandated to bid the yards out in smaller, manageable parcels (6-8), for development and payment over a far shorter timeline than developer Forest City Ratner’s proposed 22-year Atlantic Yards timeline. The UNITY Trust will seek out both for-profit and not-for-profit development teams.

The group estimates—based upon comparable efforts elsewhere and extrapolating the 2005 MTA appraisal and rail yard construction cost projections—that the project can be completed in approximately 12 years.

For more, read:

Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn Offers $120 Million to MTA for Vanderbilt Yard