EARTH TO BRUCE

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is negotiating the sale to Ratner’s
company, Forest City Ratner, of air rights that would allow the developer
to build over roughly 11 acres of rail storage yards in the area. The
remaining 13 acres in the project site — which is bounded by Dean
Street and Flatbush, Atlantic and Vanderbilt avenues — are occupied
by city streets and privately owned buildings.

Atlantic Yards would be a mega-development of 17 high-rises, the tallest
office tower as high as 62 stories, as well as a 19,000-seat arena for
his Nets basketball team and 4,500 units of housing.

Ratner has repeatedly claimed to have purchased at least 80 percent of
the private land — whose owners otherwise face condemnation at fair
market value under eminent domain — for above-market value.

The figure was touted at an Oct. 7 press conference, when Ratner stated
that he already owned the 80 percent; Joe DePlasco, a spokesman for Forest
City Ratner, emphasized the figure last week to The Brooklyn Papers; and
several news reports have used the figure, citing interviews with Ratner.
In a recent Associated Press article the developer even claimed he owned
up to 90 percent.

And while Ratner has reportedly negotiated the sale of condominiums, primarily
in three high-rises, the owners of several sizable properties in the footprint
of the Atlantic Yards site plan said they have yet to decide, or in some
cases, even be confronted about selling.

Faced with the seeming disparity between Ratner’s comments and the
reality, Forest City Ratner Executive Vice President James Stuckey effectively
denied the percentages thrown out by Bruce Ratner.

“I think what we said is that we own a significant portion of the
land,” said Stuckey at a Community Board 8 meeting Monday night.
He also pointed out that owners who have agreed to sell have signed confidentiality
agreements with Ratner, and cannot to discuss the negotiations.

Though a few property owners did not return calls for comment, and one
refused, many of the most obvious lot owners, based on the lot size of
their properties, said they have not been approached at all.

“I haven’t even heard from him,” said Michael Burnam, CEO
of Storage Mart, a Missouri-based chain of storage facilities that operates
at 718 Atlantic Ave. Burnam told The Papers he’s received several
calls about the property, on which he operates a 70,000-square-foot storage
facility, but only from attorneys wishing to represent him in the potential
sale and from news reporters looking for a scoop; nothing from Ratner.

He said the facility on Atlantic Avenue is “one of the best performing
properties in the company,” which has three New York locations and
45 stores nationwide.

“I want to encourage redevelopment,” Burnam said, “but
the neighborhood has been really good to us, and I don’t want to
intervene with that.”

Though not averse to negotiating — he estimates the property is worth
about $20 million — and aside from being in the path, he’s heard
little about the project or the figures Ratner has cited.

“It leads me to believe that he’s not as far along as he says,”
said Burnam. “We are one of the more expansive properties on the
site.”

Neighboring lot owner Drew Tressler, of Global Exhibition Services, at
700 Atlantic Ave., said he hadn’t been contacted by Ratner about
his property, which contains storage and manufacturing buildings next
to the rail yards.

Both commercial sites fall within the same block as the MTA rail yards,
between Sixth and Carlton avenues, where three housing complexes, public
open space and retail is to be built under the Forest City Ratner plans.

Pack It Away Storage, at 808 Pacific St., also has not sold, and sits
on a portion of Pacific Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues
that would no longer exist under the plans. The commercial and residential
buildings on both sides of the street and the north side of Dean Street
would be razed to build new housing complexes, retail storefronts and
public open space in the expanded block. Pacific Street would be demapped.

One landowner whose property encompasses a full city block in the Atlantic
Yards site, said that not only hasn’t he been approached, but has
no intention of selling.

“I love that property,” said the owner, who spoke on condition
of anonymity. He said he harbors serious doubts about the likelihood of
the arena being built.

Two other property owners, who say they have been approached about selling,
said they declined to strike any deals.

The U-Haul landowners at 622 Atlantic Ave., for example, said they’d
met with the developers but made no agreements.

“We have been contacted by Ratner, but haven’t made decisions
yet. We’re reviewing our options still,” said Joanne Fried,
a spokeswoman for the Arizona-based company, which holds a third of an
acre of land that would hold apartments under the plan.

Jason Bijur, a real estate agent and lawyer from Park Slope who owns a
16-family apartment building at 473 Dean St., between Flatbush and Sixth
avenues that, according to the arena plan site map, would be toppled for
an office tower abutting the arena, said that while he spoke to Ratner
directly, “he didn’t really make a real offer.”

“I think they were just trying to meet me,” he said.

Bijur is concerned about the rent-controlled status of some of his tenants
in the event of a buyout, but said he was told his building wouldn’t
be replaced by the development.

“Supposedly, I’m not in the footprint,” he said Ratner
officials told him. “I said, ‘That sounds good to me.’”

When asked about the responses from the landowners interviewed, Forest
City Ratner’s Stuckey shook his head.

“I won’t comment on land ownership,” he said.