December 13, 2006
Nets arena to net less in taxes?
More today on the Brooklyn Nets economic impact mystery from Norman Oder's Atlantic Yards Report: It seems that in the revised Atlantic Yards General Project Plan issued last Friday by the state-run Empire State Development corporation, it revised downwards the projected tax revenues from $1.9 billion to $1.4 billion, while also reducing the projected public cost from $545 million to $453 million. (Neither the new or old figures include costs of schools, sanitation, or other services for the several thousand new residents of the apartment towers that would accompany the Nets arena.)
Oder notes that the new projections are for a 30-year period rather than a 40-year period, which could account for some discrepancy. However, he also reports, the ESDC had previously said that the 40-year time span was a "typo"; and further, a shift from a 40 years to 30 years "certainly shouldn't affect revenues from construction, which is expected to take ten years. And it shouldn't affect the average annual number of jobs. But both figures declined significantly."
When Oder's report first surfaced this morning, I e-mailed ESDC spokesperson Jessica Copen to ask about the discrepancy, but she hasn't yet (as of 7:38 pm) responded. Copen's usually good about replying to queries on Atlantic Yards, so either she's out sick today, or the ESDC is still figuring out what its answer will be. I'll report back here as soon as I hear anything.
UPDATE: Copen did reply today, it turns out, to Oder, issuing a brief statement explaining that the new figures were the result of the reduction in the size of the project by 8%. How an 8% cut in size turns into a 33% reduction in net new revenues isn't exactly clear, though Oder does his best to puzzle it out; one hopes it won't take another Freedom of Information Law filing to get the full story behind the new numbers.
