Nets Arena May Not Be Finished Until 2011, Ratner Says
The planned new Brooklyn basketball arena for the Nets now may not be ready until 2011, according to developer Forest City Ratner, as the company acknowledges that the time to build the structure may take it past its current completion goal of calendar year 2010.
The news was first spotted by Norman Oder at his encyclopedic watchdog blog Atlantic Yards Report, where he put up part of a transcript from a Forest City conference in June [corrected]. In the conference, Forest City chairman Bruce Ratner said the company hoped to start construction on the arena by the end of this year, and would take two and a half years to finish.
We put the question over to Forest City this morning, and here's their response, via a statement from vice president Bruce Bender:
"It is not a new schedule. I think Bruce was just stating that the schedule in place is in fact very aggressive. We plan to break ground this fall and are working to open in calendar year 2010. While that's the goal, if it is not met then it would end up being calendar year 2011."
Of course, that timeline could itself be upset if the company cannot secure financing before the end of the year, and given that the IRS is raising hackles with the tax-free financing Forest City was expecting, that's not at all an inconceivable prospect.
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Bender's statement is about as trustworthy as Chuck Ratner's clarification last year, when, after slipping and indicating the arena would open in 2010, insisted that he meant 2009.
http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2007/03/fcr-offers-clarification...
Ratner is actually BUILDING two huge residential towers, on Beekman in Lower Manhattan and on DeKalb in Brooklyn. He didn't seem to have trouble securing financing for a 76-story building and a 36-story building, now did he?
Since you are the real estate writer, why not mention that rather than focus on claims by a handful of critics who pay a couple of thousand dollars in rent or mortgage...not exactly the expert class of New York real estate. Maybe, just maybe, Ratner's ability to secure financing for those two projects outweighs the critics' claim that he won't be able to secure financing for the Barclays Center.
This is amateur hour.
bobbo, i'll leave the debate on whether or not Ratner will will ever secure financing for his project (never mind the beekman and dekalb projects were cheaper and as far as i know are not arenas). But it doesn't take a "real estate expert" to know that ratner can't build an arena unless he has the land to build an arena.
The farmers and merchants who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights were amateurs. We honor them for the result, not for their resumes.
The professionals who blindly support Atlantic yards have years of experience accepting campaign contributions from finance and real estate and in turn abandoning the interests and needs of their constitutents.
These so-called professionals don't have a clue how to build affordable housing, and worse, they don't care. Their focus is their own re-election, and not on public service.
Without grass roots opposition, Atlantic Yards would already be a reality. The public would have no idea how much scarce public money is being spent for a project that is destined to be a civic and planning disaster for Brooklyn.
You don't have to be rich, politically connected, or a real estate expert, to understand that what is at stake here is democracy itself.
Thank goodness for amateurs.
Yea, you amateurs have done a great job. Every morning I look at the empty pits and those ugly train tracks I thank you for your service to the select few at the cost to the city and Brooklyn as a whole. Great job.
Why doesn't Ratner just give up the Brooklyn fight and move the Nets to Newark? Newark already has a brand-new, state-of-the-art arena - one that was built with two sets of locker rooms.
I realize that the Nets are losing millions per year in the Meadowlands, but Newark might be more profitable, at least in that first year.
As a Newark partisan I'm delighted by the delay. I hope that this means that Newark will get one season of the NBA.