May 05, 2008
Brooklyn arena fate still up in air
In the wake of last week's rumor that the New Jersey Nets could be headed to Newark instead of Brooklyn, plus Saturday's neighborhood rally to demand that the state call a halt to the faltering Brooklyn project, Nets owner Bruce Ratner fired back with an op-ed in the Daily News insisting that he's moving ahead with construction. Headlined "Atlantic Yards dead? Dream on," Ratner's essay insisted:
We're still building all 6,400 units of housing - including 2,250 affordable units. We're still building the iconic Miss Brooklyn tower and the state-of-the-art Barclays Center, the future home of the Nets.
Twenty-four hour later, though, Ratner revealed that the Miss Brooklyn tower had been dumped, in exchange for a smaller office-only building creatively titled "B1." (The Brownstoner blog notes that the size reduction has actually been in the works for over a year, but this still represents a significantly new design, which the Gothamist blog dubs "Miss Jenga.")
The real question remains whether to believe Ratner's assurances that the $950 million arena will break ground later this year, or whether this is just a last-ditch effort to attract investors to a project that was designed for better economic times. If the latter, and Ratner falls short and the arena never gets built, I argue iin an op-ed in today's Metro New York, that might end up being the best thing for Brooklyn.
Spurs seek another $75M in tax money
The owners of the San Antonio Spurs have spent $500,000 on the campaign for a May 10 referendum that would extend the Bexar County venue tax on hotels and car rentals. That may sound like a lot of money, but the potential payoff is far greater: The San Antonio Express-News reports that the Spurs' AT&T Center - built in 2002 with $175 million in venue tax money - could rake in an additional $75 million from an extended tax.
Continues the Express-News:
Spurs management and county officials have said upgrades to the arena will be necessary to increase revenue streams to pay for the player salaries that have brought the team four championships.
According to Forbes, the Spurs are currently the NBA's 10th most valuable franchise out of 30, and 11th in annual profits, thanks in large part to those four championships, not to mention the last infusion of venue tax money. A more honest accounting, then, would be that the upgrades are "necessary to increase revenue streams so that player salaries are paid by public taxes, not out of our profits" - but that doesn't sound as good in a referendum campaign.
May 01, 2008
Nets-to-Newark move in the works?
It's been rumored before, but today's Newark Star-Ledger has the first published reports of talks to move to New Jersey Nets to Newark's Prudential Arena instead of to Brooklyn's troubled Atlantic Yards project. The Star-Ledger reports that New Jersey Devils owner Jeffrey Vanderbeek and Newark mayor Cory Booker are working on putting together an investment group to buy the Nets, and have held preliminary meetings with Nets owner Bruce Ratner and his development company about such a plan.
Being second fiddle to an NHL team usually isn't as enticing a prospect as having your own arena, but there are some special circumstances here: The Nets are currently losing an estimated $40 million a year playing in the Meadowlands, and are stuck there at least another two seasons before a Brooklyn arena could be ready. And they're facing an increasingly tougher financial road there as well, despite heavy public subsidies. As George Zoffinger, former head of Jersey's sports authority, told the Star-Ledger: "When you start to spend north of $500 million for an arena, you can't generate the cash flow necessary to generate a decent return on the investment. If the number is $900 million, it's absolutely, positively not viable from an economic standpoint."
Ratner, meanwhile, insists the team isn't for sale, which could be read either way: It could be meant as a sign of reassurance to Brooklyn legislators who might be wondering if they should pull the plug on Atlantic Yards; or, you might wonder whether, if Ratner's really serious about getting more money out of Brooklyn, he wouldn't want to raise the specter of a Newark move to up the ante. I wouldn't hazard a guess, but it's worth noting the Nets wouldn't be the first team to stay in New Jersey after initially insisting it was not an option.
Bills to rake in loonies in TO
So much for jokes about Canadians using Monopoly money: The Buffalo Bills estimate they're going to earn almost $10 million in revenues for each of eight games they'll play in Toronto over the next five years, about double what they bring in from games in Buffalo. Given this, suggests Globe and Mail columnist Stephen Brunt, it's extremely likely that even the Bills will be playing at least some games in Toronto for the foreseeable future, if they don't move there entirely:
Permanent franchise relocation is a whole other issue, which has already been much discussed. (Wilson, who is 89, has said he won't sell the club before his death, and his estate would be bound to sell it to the highest bidder, which, given the economics, is less likely to be someone committed to keeping the Bills in Buffalo than someone intent on moving them to wealthier climes.) ...
Since the Bills will already be here, in part, and since the Toronto money would be helping them stay alive, no one is going to force them to end their Canadian enterprise. When the time comes not too far down the road for a new stadium to be built, U.S. politicians would be forced into a very expensive game of put up or shut up.
B.C. Place to get new roof?
The province of British Columbia is reportedly considering building a retractable roof for the B.C. Place stadium, to replace the inflatable roof that collapsed in a storm early last year. (It's since been patched.) A new roof is estimated to cost as much as $250 million, and would risk rush charges as it would need to be completed for the 2010 Winter Olympics, but never worry - as CTV reports:
PavCo chairman David Podmore has said any costs linked to the upgrades will be recovered through the sale of property around the facility to condominium developers.
And if they didn't build the roof, you couldn't develop that land and using the condo money for other purposes, because ... um, that part must have been left out of the web version of the story. An inadvertant omission, I'm sure.
April 25, 2008
Dodger Stadium to get $500m "necklace"
So much for the economic downturn making sports team owners shy of starting new construction projects. Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt announced yesterday plans for a $500 million expansion of Dodger Stadium, to be completed in time for the ballpark's 50th anniversary in 2012. Dubbed the "Next 50 Plan" - as in, keeping the stadium around for another 50 years - it wouldn't actually change the existing structure, but rather would build out new facilities into the existing parking lot, including a promenade filled with shops and restaurants, and a "green necklace" of landscaped walkways.
The idea here, obviously, is to do what the Boston Red Sox have done with Fenway Park: Add new ways to separate fans from their wallets without building a whole new stadium. The question is whether the Dodgers can sell enough tacos and Clayton Kershaw souvenir jerseys to pay off $500 million in construction debt. As L.A. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne writes:
The additions are all connected to a single goal: to extend the amount of time a typical visitor spends at the stadium. McCourt wants Dodger fans to arrive at the park earlier, to stay later and maybe even to drop by on days when no game is scheduled.
The success of the plan, then, won't be hard to gauge. If there are scores of Angelenos milling around the stadium grounds on, say, a Saturday afternoon in January 2013, snapping up foam fingers and Russell Martin jerseys, then McCourt's ideas for updating the landmark will look prescient. If Dodger fans bolster their reputation for showing up in the third inning and beginning the walk to their cars in the eighth -- and not even thinking about the stadium during the winter months -- we'll be justified in wondering whether that $500 million was worth it.
Also in question is whether McCourt will ask for any public spending as part of the project - while he's said the expansion itself will be paid for privately, he also said he hoped the city would "tweak and adjust subway lines" to add a stop at the stadium and provide "bus access in the interim." Deadpans the Times: "It remains unclear who would pay for such transit."
April 23, 2008
Detroit puts price on Tiger Stadium's head
The Detroit Tigers left Tiger Stadium almost nine years ago, and it seems like the city has been about to tear it down ever since. Now, though, the day of reckoning has apparently been set: Detroit's Economic Development Corp., awarded a contract yesterday to tear down the historic ballpark, starting in May or June, to make way for a vacant lot.
The group pushing to preserve at least part of the stadium, meanwhile, has been given an ultimatum: Come up with $369,000 by June 1 - $300,000 to make up for the fee the demolition company will pay if it's allowed by then to knock down the whole building in one shot, the rest to cover six months of security and maintenance on the remaining fragment - and the city will consider saving the home-plate section. Otherwise, the whole building comes down.
"Right now, this deal costs the city no money. If we wait, we lose out on $300,000," EDC VP Wayne Guillebeaux told the Detroit News. "Do you think the city intends to lose out on $300,000?" Would that be the same city that collected $2 million in ticket taxes to pay the cost of demolishing the stadium and then gave it to the Tigers instead?
Seattle to NBA: Give us new team, we'll give you Sonics
Looks like two can play the blackmail game: Former U.S. senator Slade Gorton, who is representing the city of Seattle in its lawsuit to hold the owners of the Seattle Sonics to their lease through 2010, said Monday that he'd consider settling the suit if a new team was part of the bargain:
"If a replacement team is part of the package, of course we'd talk. My goal from the very beginning has been to have a team. Revenge, I'm not interested in as such. The city has a financial stake in all this. The mayor and I are in complete accord that what we want is a team."
It's an interesting gambit - the NBA certainly doesn't want to face two lame-duck seasons in Seattle, and Sonics owner Clay Bennett is likely to push the league to do whatever it can to let him move the franchise to his hometown of Oklahoma City ASAP. While NBA commissioner David Stern said last year that Seattle wasn't getting a new team if it lost this one, Bennett said last week that the team name and records should stay in Seattle, leaving open the possibility of a Cleveland Browns scenario.
The question then becomes what price Seattle would have to pay to get a new franchise, beyond settling the lawsuit. Both Cleveland with the Browns and Charlotte with the Bobcats had to build all-new buildings in order to be awarded new teams; it seems likely that Stern would at the very least hold out for a publicly funded (or somebody-other-than-team-funded, anyway) major renovation of KeyArena as a condition of a new franchise. (While it would arguably make sense for, say, the New Orleans Hornets to jump at the chance to move to a bigger market, that's not generally how things work under sports cartels.) So that'd leave us back where we started: The NBA demanding a new arena, and Seattle voters and politicians saying they're not going to be the ones to pay for one. The Sonics may leave, but the arena battle looks destined to live on without them.
April 19, 2008
Sonics move: Pinning the blame
In its day-after coverage of the NBA's approval of the Seattle Sonics' proposed move to Oklahoma City, ESpn included the following:
The only thing keeping the moving trucks from pulling up and emptying the Sonics' offices is an arena lease, which Stern has called the worst in the league. (The Sonics receive zero revenue from parking, just 40 percent of revenue from suite sales and concessions, and just 60 percent of the revenue from a large swath of thousands of $105 seats in the lower bowl.)
This is the real explanation for why the NBA is set to trade the nation's 14th media market for its 45th, despite Seattle having an arena that was just renovated 14 years ago. It's not the arena, it's the lease.
So, how bad is that lease? Certainly, having to hand over half or more the revenue from suites, seats, and concessions sounds pretty tough - why should the city of Seattle be getting the money when people go to Sonics games? The answer, though, is that that's what the Sonics agreed to, in order to get KeyArena renovated in the '90s: The city would get to keep a large chunk of arena revenues to pay back its $74 million share of renovation costs.
There are several lessons here:
- Teams want new arenas, but not if they have to pay for them.
- If, in fact, the Sonics really can't make money with this lease, then it's unlikely any arena can pay off its own costs and still turn a profit for the team that plays there. ($74 million is a piddly amount in arena construction/renovation terms.)
- If a team owner promises that if you build him a new arena you'll get all your money back eventually, keep one hand on your wallet.
April 18, 2008
NBA to Sonics: Pack your bags
It's official: The NBA owners voted 28-2 today to approve the relocation of the Seattle Sonics to Oklahoma City. The two dissenters: Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who'd previously said he thought it was dumb for the NBA to give up a bigger market for a more lucrative arena deal, and Portland Trailblazers owner Paul Allen, who is also owner of the Seattle Seahawks and would be run out of town on a rail if he voted yes.
The only obstacle now to the move is the pair of lawsuits facing the Sonics, one from the city of Seattle trying to hold them to their lease through 2010 (the case goes to trial beginning in June), and one from former owner Howard Schultz trying to nullify his sale of the team on the grounds that the new owners failed to live up to an agreement to negotiate in good faith to keep the team in town. Given that you can count on one finger the number of teams that have had relocations blocked by court injunction - I'm tempted to say less than one finger, but I might be forgetting somebody - the odds on the Sonics staying put look bleak.
Leaving nothing to chance, meanwhile, the Oklahoma legislature passed a bill on Thursday absolving the relocated Sonics from paying payroll taxes for the nexf 15 years, an estimated value of $60 million. The Oklahoma Legislature sweetened the pot for the NBA on Thursday, approving a payroll-tax rebate for the Sonics worth an estimated $60 million over 15 years. The state House approved the measure 67-32 and sent it to Gov. Brad Henry, who swiftly signed it into law. Add in the $121 million the city is spending on upgrading the Ford Center, and the $89 million cost of originally building the arena just five years ago, and ... well, you can see why the Sonics owners, at least, don't seem to care much about Cuban's arguments about market size.
So congratulations, people of Oklahoma City: You just bought yourself one used NBA franchise. With any luck, it'll be a few years before some other city tries to steal it out from under you in turn.
Developer pitches NFL stadium east of L.A.
Los Angeles developer Ed Roski officially announced plans to build a 75,000-seat football stadium in the City of Industry, a small town east of Los Angeles heretofore best known as the place where Michael J. Fox revved up his DeLorean in "Back to the Future." Roski said he hoped the $800 million stadium, to be surrounded - stop me if you've heard this before - by shops and restaurants, would be enough to lure an NFL team to the L.A. area. (In fact, he won't begin construction until a team is in place, a reasonable requirement that some cities could have learned from.)
And how exactly does Roski plan pay for this? He didn't exactly say, beyond indicating that the surrounding development would somehow offset the stadium cost. (Again, stop me if you've heard this.) One method he won't be using is tax increment financing: A plan to redirect property taxes from the L.A. County treasury to pay for redevelopment in the City of Industry was killed by the state legislature on Wednesday, after county supervisors screamed bloody murder. Reports the L.A. Times:
A spokesman for Roski said the site of the proposed NFL stadium is not within a redevelopment project area, and there is no plan to ask for public funds for the project.
That the bill is being supported at the same time the NFL stadium is being proposed is "coincidental in timing and unrelated in purpose," said John Semcken, a vice president of Roski's Majestic Realty.
The Times did not report on whether Semcken was able to keep a straight face.
April 16, 2008
Schultz: Gimme the Sonics back
I know I've been saying that anything can happen as the NBA nears a vote on the Seattle Sonics' proposed move to Oklahoma City, but I still didn't expect this: Former Sonics owner (and Starbucks CEO) Howard Schultz has announced that he's suing to reverse his 2006 sale of the team to a group of Oklahoma businessmen, on the grounds that they lied when they promised to make a good-faith effort to keep the team in town. Schultz' lawyer Richard Yarmuth told the Seattle Times:
"The theory of the suit is that when the team was sold, the Basketball Club of Seattle, our team here, relied on promises made by Clay Bennett and his ownership that they desired to keep the team in Seattle and intended to make a good-faith effort to accomplish that."
While a former owner suing to rescind a two-year-old sale seems - what's the legal term? - insane, Bennett and Co. apparently did sign a side letter to their purchase agreement promising to honor the team's lease through 2010 and to use their best efforts to work out a new arena deal in Seattle, neither of which, it's now clear, they've done. Though it's always possible Schultz' move is more a p.r. gesture to try to get people drinking his coffee again, it could make for an even more interesting NBA owners' vote on Friday.
Wolff, San Jose agree on soccer stadium terms
San Jose Earthquakes owner Lew Wolff has reached an agreement with city officials to buy 66 acres of city land, at a cost of $132 million, to serve as the site of a new 18,000 soccer stadium that Wolff would build himself.
If this sounds like a breath of fresh air in the stadium world - not only does the team owner pay construction costs, he even pays for the land he's using! - be sure to read the fine print:
The real estate magnate is counting on the city to rezone 78 acres of commercial and industrial property he owns in Edenvale to allow developers to build as many as 1,500 townhomes there. Wolff plans to pay for the soccer stadium with the profit from selling the Edenvale property as residential land.
This is, you'll recall, the same scheme - call it a "rezoning subsidy" - that Wolff is proposing to Fremont for a stadium for his Oakland A's (inasmuch as he's proposing anything specific at all). Not to mention similar to what was floated in Sacramento for the Kings a while back. California is quickly gaining a reputation as one of the toughest states to get public stadium funding out of, both because of a skeptical electorate and strong voter-referendum requirements; instead, team owners are being forced to look for other ways to build stadiums without, you know, spending any of their own money. Because that would be crazy talk.
Giants buy back stadium bonds
So much for that stadium debt crisis blowing over quickly: Two weeks after it was revealed that some of the New York Giants' stadium bonds had hit 22% in interest rates, the team announced yesterday it was redeeming $100 million worth of auction-rate stadium bonds to get out from under the crushing interest payments. That's not a sign of an organization that expects the bond market to return to normal anytime soon.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, meanwhile, has cited the increased stadium bonds as one reason why league owners will likely vote to opt out of their labor agreement this fall, likely precipitating a player strike. Why the players should have to pay the price for the owners' risky borrowing schemes he didn't make clear - though if the Giants' owners are turning to Jeremy Shockey for financial advice, that would explain a lot.
April 14, 2008
Nets project to cost $2B in subsidies?
The New York Post has a new estimate for the ever-changing subsidy figure for New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner's planned Atlantic Yards development, and it's a doozy: $2.157 billion. (A detailed breakdown is here.) That's $38 million higher than the $2.119 billion estimate by project opponents Develop Don't Destroy, and a crazy amount higher than the official $305 million figure (which only includes direct subsidies, not tax breaks). It's also about half the cost of the entire project, though as Atlantic Yards Report notes, that cost is now more like $4.3 billion than the $4 billion cited by the Post.
How real are these numbers? Hard to say - it's unclear whether the expert the Post consulted, urban planner Michael D.D. White, used present-value figures (I'm guessing not, especially for the $1 billon-plus he estimates in property tax savings), and some of the subsidies included are what's known as "as-of-right," i.e., anybody building a similar project would get them. What does seem clear, though, is that the total subsidies for the project will run into the billions - that is, if it ever gets built, given that Ratner has begun backing away from commitments to build anything other than the arena.
New York state assemblymember Richard Brodsky, who controls oversight of the state authorities that are overseeing the project, warned the Post that "the notion the taxpayers are going to invest money while the developers don't meet their commitments, if that's what people expect, there is going to be a fight about it." Ooh, a fight - Brodsky does those well.
April 13, 2008
Sonics owners bankrolled OKC arena campaign
This should surprise exactly no one who's followed stadium campaigns in the slightest: The owners of the Seattle Sonics turn out to have funded nearly half of the campaign in favor of a sales tax hike to renovate the Ford Center for the franchise. Of the $843,007 spent by the pro-tax forces, $385,000 came from the Sonics owners; another $268,000 came from the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce.
The real question now is how much money the anti forces spent, and whether this referendum conforms to the rule that you have to outspend the opposition by at least 30-to-1 to win a sports subsidy vote. The Oklahoman doesn't say; if any FoS readers know where to find the campaign donation records, drop a line.
On the radio
If you weren't listening to Sirius channel 122 last Friday night at 1:20 am Eastern time, you missed my appearance on Sports Byline USA's show "Sports Overnight America," talking about the book some, but mostly about the Seattle Sonics' seemingly impending move to Oklahoma City. You can listen for yourself here.
And if you'd like to hear another interview I did on Sports Byline USA last month, that's here. (Thanks to Sports Byline USA's web stream and to Audio Hijack for making these possible.)
April 11, 2008
FL house proposes one-year cut to sports subsidies
The Florida state house, facing massive state deficits, has passed a budget that would eliminate for this year the $2 million in annual sales-tax kickbacks that all pro sports teams in the state receive, saving the state $20 million. Before you get too excited, though, the measure still has to be resolved in conference with the state senate, which passed its own budget with the tax subsidies intact; Orlando city officials, meanwhile, are charging that it could end up in default of its arena bonds for the Magic if the measure were approved. (It actually seems far more likely that the city would be forced to ante up the difference, but if you're the mayor of Orlando, would you mention that?)
House leaders admitted the legislation was "a symbolic gesture" and that it hadn't been vetted to determine how it would affect stadium debt obligations. Team lobbyists, meanwhile, threatened to sue if it were put into effect, presumably under the Supreme Court's "no backsies" precedent. Don't hold your breath waiting for this to become law.
Sonics owners e-mails show move was goal all along
You'd think by now public figures would have learned the lesson: Don't say one thing and text another. Yesterday it was revealed that Seattle city attorneys had uncovered e-mails sent between owners of the Sonics last April expressing enthusiasm about moving the team to Oklahoma City at the same time that they were insisting they had no such plans. "I am a man possessed! Will do everything we can," wrote lead owner Clay Bennett, to which his co-owner Tom Ward replied, "That's the spirit!! I am willing to help any way I can to watch ball here [in Oklahoma City] next year."
Whether this will affect the city's lawsuit to hold the Sonics to their lease through 2010 isn't clear, as that seems to hinge more on the issue whether monetary compensation can be assigned to the loss of a sports franchise. There's a slim chance, however, that it could play into next week's NBA owners' vote on approving the team's relocation to Oklahoma City - especially considering that NBA commissioner David Stern, who has insisted that team owners at least go through the motions of seeking local arena solutions before bolting to new towns, fined McClendon $250,000 for telling a newspaper last summer that the ownership group bought the team in order to move it. (The owners had signed an agreement with Stern to negotiate in good faith through October to remain in Seattle.) Not to mention that Bennett e-mailed Stern after that incident, "As absolutely remarkable as it may seem, Aubrey and I have NEVER discussed moving the Sonics to Oklahoma City, nor have I discussed it with ANY other member of our ownership group."
As any spam filter could tell you, never trust people who type in ALL CAPS.
April 09, 2008
Sonics reno plan dead - for now
Sure enough, it wasn't a last-minute deal: Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels' announcement yesterday was that a proposed $300 million renovation of KeyArena for the Sonics - half to be paid for by a group of local billionaires, half by taxpayers - was dead, with not enough time to get public funding through the state legislature before the rich dudes' self-imposed April 10 deadline.
That said, it's not necessarily the kind of dead you don't recover from: Seattle developer Matt Griffin, part of the plutocrats' group, said "we'd be irresponsible to say we wouldn't keep an open mind" on future arena talks. It does mean there won't be a deal in place before the NBA owners vote next week on relocating the Sonics to Oklahoma City; even that, though, isn't necessarily a death knell for the team, as there's still that city lawsuit trying to hold the team to its lease through 2010. City officials say they're not looking for a buyout settlement (they rejected a $26.5 million offer in February), so if they manage to drag things out in court, that could at least buy some time for an arena deal to be worked out.
Whether that's a good thing or not depends not just on whether you think it's worth spending $150 million to renovate an arena that the city just spent $74 million to renovate in 1994, but on who would reap any increased revenues from a renovated arena: the Sonics, the private investors, or the public. While the split of costs has been a matter of intense public debate, there's been almost no discussion of the split of revenues - beyond a brief mention that the city would recoup its $75 million share from "revenues generated" at the arena, would could mean anything, from actual money from naming rights or ad boards, say, to dubious pay-your-taxes-and-eat-them-too schemes like TIFs. If I've said it before, Judith Grant Long has said it a thousand times: You can't evaluate a stadium or arena deal until you've gotten a look at the lease.
April 08, 2008
Sonics arena plans: One down, one to go?
Today could be D-Day for talks of renovating KeyArena to keep the Seattle Sonics in town. Yesterday, a spokesperson for the group of local billionaires offering to pay half the cost of the $300 million project (with an April 10 deadline for their offer) declared the plan all but dead; meanwhile, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels announced he'd hold a press conference this morning to discuss the plan's fate. Unless the billionaire group's announcement was a ploy to get Nickels off the dime (I swear I did not have that pun in mind when I started typing it), it's a fair bet that the mayor's announcement will be that the last best hope for spending public money to appease the Sonics has failed.
There is still one other arena plan out there: the one announced last week by ex-Sonics star Freddie Brown and WongDoody Communications director Dave Bean to build a $1 billion retractable-roofed downtown arena to host expansion NBA or NHL teams, using entirely private funds. Given that 1) this would be the most expensive arena project in history; 2) the second-most expensive arena project in history, Brooklyn's proposed Atlantic Yards Nets arena, is already getting several hundred million dollars in subsidies, and its developers claim it can't be viable without more; and 3) this is Seattle, which while no Oklahoma City, isn't likely to bring in a $20 million a year naming-rights deal, it seems likely this plan will go down in history with other phantom sports projects of years past.
Not that that makes it any less fun to say "WongDoody." And maybe that's all Bean is after - it's all about mind share, after all.
April 07, 2008
Ratner: We want more arena subsidies
It's been hard to put a precise number on New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner's planned Brooklyn arena project, thanks to the confusing list of tax breaks and such the project is slated to get, and the fact that it's hard to say what money is going toward the arena and what the other parts of the Atlantic Yards project that may now never get built. Thanks to a report this morning by Atlantic Yards Report's inveterate blogger Norman Oder, though, we can put an adjective on the subsidies - "more":
"We still need more" subsidies, Chuck Ratner, president of parent Forest City Enterprises (FCE) told investment analysts in a conference call last Wednesday. It confirms the clue, as noted in the most recent 10-K filing, that the developer seeks more public support before proceeding with the project.
Chuck Ratner's full quote, according to the official transcript:
Just in these past six or eight months, we got the various governmental agencies, state, city, bureau in New York to increase their commitments to Atlantic Yards by $105 million on top of the $200 they had committed. We still need more.
As Oder notes in a phone conversation with FoS, the $305 million Ratner mentions is all direct cash outlays, implying that the Ratners are seeking more up-front money, not tax breaks for affordable housing or the like. Given that the rest of the project is on the brink of collapse and the arena cost is up to a staggering $950 million, it wouldn't be exactly surprising. Stay tuned for further developments.
