Maybe he’ll build his arena and surround Goldstein and the 12 other hold outs! Hockey on one side, basketball on another and the third side will be an open air monster truck rally site!

There won’t be any hockey. The current arena plans are too small for a hockey pad! Face facts – this is a bad plan that should never go through.

Dear Mr. Ratner, Viola and Prokhorov:
Wishing you great success with the final verdict in weeks to come.
I can vision the Nets Champioship Parade from Prospect Park down Flatbush Avenue pass the Barclay Center to Brooklyn City Hall. Wow! This parade will be larger then the Yankees Parade. Go Brooklyn Nets! Go Brooklyn Nets!

@MrT
Please don’t try to disguise your opinion as “facts” as in “face facts”. The lack of a hockey pad makes for a more intimate arena for basketball. The model for the Barclays arena is Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, annually cited as the best basketball venue in the NBA. Who cares if there’s no hockey. The NHL has one team too many in New York already.

0-15, with only Brook playing well. Did you see him go inside versus Garnett last night? We need the new ownership and the Arena to go forward, if there is ever going to be any hope for a deep into the playoffs team. Maybe we will know something by Thanksgiving? If the sale goes through, can Proky dress and play for us? GO NETS!

Newark

The Crain’s article is a must read for an overall history of Ratner.

He has no intention of sharing the designs for the complex. "Why should people get to see plans?" he demands. "This isn’t a public project. We will follow the guidelines."

If the project isn’t PUBLIC, then give back the PUBLIC’s tax-exempt bonds and subsides. Also, give back the PUBLIC mafia’s ability to kick people out of their homes so you can build.

If this project is private, fund it with private money. Also, buy the land privately, instead of depending on the government to do it for you.

amen brooklynbound, great point.

Ratner seems like a reasonable guy. I think I like him.
His Nemesis, Daniel Goldstein and his friends should “get out of town” after the Appeals decision is rendered!

Its a little confusing about the 1-2 weeks before the Prokhorov deal gets done. Isn’t that all conditional on NBA approval?, which would take many more weeks, besides the Brooklyn approval.

jerry,

Give up YOUR home to the public before you call anyone else to do the same. It’s easy for you to give up other people’s property, isn’t it?

@BB
Goldstein could always move into your backyard.

jerry,

Again, give up your property before giving up others. It’s not yours to give away.

I would give up my home (as would any person not on someone else’s payroll), if someone paid me 2-3 times its value, any day.
Everything is always about money or vengeance.

You probably know Goldstein’s TRUE motivation.

You suggest it is about “Principle”. Even if it was about Principle, he would be ignoring the “good of the many” over Principle for a handful of people.

^^Sad commentary on American society. Part of the reason we’re in such a bad overall situation in this country. We have all become a slave to the almighty dollar. It has become our new God.

@NI,

We’ll see where this is all going soon enough. I am confident in my view of the outcome. Are you?

^Give me a break. If someone offered you two to three more money for your actual house worth, you would jump all over it. You can say that you wouldn’t and try to be high & mighty but at the end of the day if the situation was actually in your face, you would do it.

You want the Nets to be in New Jersey that’s your motivation, just don’t sit there and lie about it.

Depends on the situation. And frankly, you don’t know me, so don’t call me a liar.

And yes, I want the Nets in Jersey. What exactly did I lie about?

jerry,

It seems you do not understand what fair market value is. Fair market value is what you would sell an asset for. If someone does not sell, it means they did not receive fair market value. Understand?

I don’t know Goldstein’s motivation. His motivation is irrelevant. He is the owner of the property and as such, he should be able to do with it as he sees fit. It’s not yours to give away. Give away your property but you have no right to give away someone else’s. This is really basic stuff. Morality 101.

Ignoring the good of the many? You mean the corporation? They are receiving a direct handout and it’s not justified to screw over property owners simply to give a handout to a corporation.

As for externalities of the project, that is uncertain. There isn’t significant evidence that positive externalities would occur. If there were, Ratner would have no trouble getting financing and we know that’s not the case.

If the court does rule against the abuse of eminent domain, it’s pretty much the final nail in the coffin for Ratner. The reason he tends to abuse eminent domain is because he knows there are those who won’t sell to him the normall way, so he must threaten by mentioning it to them to do so. Of course there are those such as Goldstein who don’t want to sell at all, so he feels that eminent domain is the only way. Basically, the court rules against the ESDC, Goldstein and the others no longer have to feel threatened by this. Even if they lose, there is still the chance of Ratner not getting the bonds due to other lawsuits, which will probably make him miss the deadline. Just hearing this project being dead will be a great New Year’s resolution as it shows that the populists can overcome the elite.

One more thing about “the good of the many.”

Check the history of nations who value property rights vs. those who do not. Which are more prosperous? So no, violating property rights are not good for the many.

Newark is better

I dont get why people say things like the “good of the many”. Do you mean the good of the many basketball fans? An arena doesnt exactly benefit the entire public. The majority of people simply dont even care about basketball. So how are they benefitting by paying for an arena for a sport that they dont even watch or care about? Sure there will be constructions jobs for a while and there will be employees at the arena, but i’m sure that number will be far less than the number of people who simply dont care about basketball anyway. Not to mention you also have to subtract the jobs from NJ, meaning people in NJ will lose out. So how exactly is this all for the good of the many? Just a question I have been pondering since this all began and those types of comments started rolling in.

The statement is just another excuse to get it built. The truth is that most of those jobs will not go to locals. As a matter of fact, union rules will give those who are already working at Nets games first dibs on the jobs. This will be similar when JP Morgan Chase located into MTC, another Ratner complex, and just relocated their existing employees rather than just looking for people who were there and allowing for them to ge the jobs. I still cannot believe those that still get it wrong about the number of counstruction jobs, it won’t be 15,000 total, it will be 1,500 for ten years, and those aren’t the same. Even if locals do get the jobs, what are they supposed to do to get money when the Nets are off or on the road for some part of the season? In other words, many of the jobs won’t even be permanent since the Nets are not there 365 days a year.

@TheMann & Tal,

Good questions. The issue becomes whether an arena is considered a “public benefit”. IMO, there’s no way it is, but that definition appears to be fungible.

As for the permanent jobs created after the arena is constructed, it’s unlikely Jerseyans who currently hold those positions would hold onto them, as most of them are low wage positions that likely don’t have medical or pension benefits (unless they are high level management jobs). They would be taken by Brooklynites, but since they don’t pay very well, they don’t really benefit the community. This is one of the core arguments when any new sports facility is built – whether the jobs created will benefit the surrounding area.

The Nets payroll in Brooklyn could be as high as $100 million, when you add up all the basketball staff. Thorn for example makes $5 million, Frank $4 million, Yormark $2 million and Vandeweghe $1.5 million. The permanent TAXES those players, coaches, front office types, ticket reps, dancers, etc. would pay is equal to the addition of a major manufacturer.

Imagine a manufacturer with 2,500 jobs, paying an average salary of $40,000. That’s the equivalent of the Nets moving from New Jersey to New York (and considering that higher wage employees pay a greater percentage of their income than lower wage employees, that’s a conservative estimate.)

Most, if not all, of the Nets live in New Jersey. To avoid double taxation, they would move across the river.

@ brooklyn Bound “It seems you do not understand what fair market value is. Fair market value is what you would sell an asset for. If someone does not sell, it means they did not receive fair market value. Understand?”

Apparently you are the one who does not understand, as your definition is completley incorrect. Fair market value is defined as the amount an asset would fetch on the open market (e.g. at an auction.) If you don’t receive what you want for an asset, it means you’ve overpriced it. I might want to sell my house for $500,000, but if the highest price someone is willing to pay is $300,000, that’s the “fair market value” of the house.

I tend to find fair market value a joke. The truth is that they are just buying out those who are living there, which is cheap and then rennovating or building over their property for something more than it was worth. Those that were originally living there most likely couldn’t afford to move back there, which is known as gentrification. Of course you don’t need Michael Moore to explain that in TV Nation, because that’s a common practice that goes a long way. I suggest some watch “The Right to the City” to understand more about gentrification that has been occuring very rapidly and how it prices out others. In the end, gentrification isn’t always the answer to helping areas.

I was speaking of arena jobs (ticket scanners, security, custodians, etc.)

Either way, none of those jobs at the arena are permanent since the Nets are not there all the time. Let’s say the Nets are on the road for that week and even though you normally work there, you can’t because they are on the road. However, you need money because you pretty much spent all of it when they had a homestand. The only answer is to have another job. Even if the locals do get those jobs, it won’t be full time. It’s not likely that they will get paid after the season for the Nets is over. Both of Ratner’s malls do not give good paying jobs either because many of them are minium wage jobs. BTW, rents and taxes don’t go up the same way that wages do, so these jobs won’t give much. In the end those arena jobs are just some half-truth statement that was hyberboled into a whole truth just like how Bloomberg promised free crosstown buses, which was found to be that he didn’t actually mean it. I cannot believe how some construction unions are so blind to support a project where a rich person won’t even think twice of hiring them. I betcha if you were to see this project being built, none of the construction workers will be them.

Yeah, and I was talking about real money. You have a very limited view of the economics here. It’s not just about low paying jobs INSIDE the arena. It’s about highly paid and highly taxed players, coaches, etc. It’s about jobs around the arena, in the service sector: restaurants, sports bars, retail stores. This isn’t the Bronx, where Yankee Stadium is an island in an economically distressed area…and it’s about the evolving economy of Brooklyn, in spite of the economy. Critics go bananas when someone reports the arena is in downtown Brooklyn as if downtown is some immutable, forever defined area…not to mention that the City Planning Commission says AY is in the Downtown Business District.

Same ol, same ol.

If the Yankees can’t seem to help the surrounding businesses in their area in The Bronx, then what makes you think that the Nets will do any better for local businesses in Brooklyn?

Sorry, there is no upside for this arena for Brooklyn. Please read this testimony from the New York City Independent Budget Office (2 page PDF document):

http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/52909AtlanticYardsTestimony.pdf

In 2005, the IBO estimated the benefit of the arena to NYC to be $25 million over 30 years. Now, it’s a loss.

Here’s the City Planning Commission’s map of Downtown Brooklyn:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/dwnbklyn2/dwnbklynplan2.shtml
Here’s the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership’s map:
http://www.dbpartnership.org/discover/gettingaround/
Guess what’s missing.

I like how Ratner said that it’s not a PUBLIC project but he’s claiming the right to eminent domain due to Barclays being a public benefit.

Arenas are not public benefits, it’s actually the other way around.

@Tal

I know. That’s the point I’m trying to make. He contradicted himself by saying that it’s not a public project yet he is claiming eminent domain since it’s a “public benefit”.

Changing the subject, I wonder what he meant by “I’ll figure something out”. Is he planning on trying to pay the holdouts off? That would be his only shot at getting the arena even if he loses the appeal.