With homeowners in the path of Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards arena,
office towers and housing project set to accept lucrative buyouts, a group
of residents who have been there the longest — and stand to lose
the most — are now banding together.
The more than 200 renters in the swath of Prospect Heights where Ratner
plans to build the $2.5 billion residential and commercial development
— including a professional basketball arena for his New Jersey Nets
— are fearful that they will be left out in the cold.
As part of the plan, Ratner, principal owner of Forest City Ratner, seeks
to either buyout or have the state condemn 11-acres of privately owned
land. The arena development site encompasses six blocks, primarily in
Prospect Heights, and is bounded by Dean Street and Flatbush, Atlantic
and Vanderbilt avenues.
In January, property owners, business owners and tenants in the area banded
together to hire civil liberties attorney Norman Siegel after learning
about Ratner’s plans to purchase the New Jersey Nets and bring them
to Prospect Heights.
When the nearly 100 residents piled into the Dean Street studio of Simon
Liu — who stretches canvases for museums throughout the world in
his 10,000-square-foot studio — to interview Siegel, the attorney
warned that Ratner would try to “divide and conquer.”
Many shirked the warning and the group forged ahead, opting to hire Siegel
and form a new coalition, called Develop Don’t Destroy-Brooklyn,
to fight the plan.
But this week, tenants said they wound up with the short end of the stick.
While owners of the condo buildings at 636 Pacific St. and 24 Sixth Ave.
are negotiating deals with Ratner at rates far above market value, tenants
— most of whom have been in the neighborhood decades longer than
the homeowners — say they have been ignored by both Ratner and their
neighbors.
“This is my neighborhood. This is my community. This is my home,”
said David Sheets, a paralegal who has lived in the area for 24 years
and moved into his rental apartment at 479 Dean St. seven years ago.
That four-story, brick, row house would be razed to make way for one of
the soaring office towers planned for the development.
Sheets, like many of his neighbors, says he moved into the area because
it was “fantastically cheap” and has lived there for so long
that he has a “great deal” and moving could mean tripling his
cost of living.
Over the past several years, Sheets, who lives in the bottom two floors
of the former SRO building, has watched as the old Spalding factory and
a nearby warehouse were converted into luxury condominium lofts.
The neighbors who bought those apartments within the past two years are
now about to walk away with fat checks in exchange for their apartments
and their silence, says Sheets, referring to a gag order prohibiting criticism
of the Atlantic Yards plan that is part of their deals with Ratner.
But what about the renters?
“The horrible fact about tenants is that they receive very little,”
said Michael Rikon, a partner in Goldstein, Goldstein & Gotlieb, a
Manhattan law firm specializing in condemnation law.
Ratner has vowed to fairly compensate property owners and relocate displaced
renters. But renters face much more uncertainty since the state does not
guarantee any relocation assistance, said Rikon.
“We’ve become collateral damage,” said Joel Towers, an
urban designer who has rented at 475 Dean St. for the past 12 years.
“When the fight was about eminent domain and the people losing their
homes, we were all together,” said Towers. “And when the fight
became about money, everyone seemed to say, ‘Well, the tenants don’t
have any legal rights and that’s their tough luck’.”
The former sewing factory is home to many artists who also use the space
as their studios. Only six of the 17 units in the co-op are owner occupied;
27 renters occupy the other apartments.
“The tenants have not only been financially supporting the fight
but putting in a lot of time. We have raised public awareness and the
owners seem to be getting large amounts of money,” said Towers, who
estimates that he has put more than $100,000 into renovating the apartment
he now shares with his wife and 19-month old son.
Towers, who has also helped draft alternative plans for the site, said
he and his wife don’t think they can afford anything else in the
area.
The owners in the building are negotiating with Ratner, but declined to
discuss what those dealings entail.
Tenants throughout the footprint of the plan are now joining together
and are planning a special meeting with Siegel to discuss their options.
The tenants interviewed for this article all said that nobody from Forest
City Ratner has contacted them.
“Every time you hear a politician talk about this, they say Bruce
Ratner will take care of these people. But in fact, there is a whole group
of people being left out — and that’s the tenants,” said
Towers.
“We’re not going to discuss publicly negotiations with any residents,”
said Beth Davidson, a spokeswoman for Forest City Ratner. “When the
time comes, as we’ve said, we’ll work with residents to find
comparable housing.”
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a major supporter of the arena plan, has touted
Ratner as a “class act” who will take care of the displaced.
“This developer had a pretty good reputation when he built Metrotech,”
Bloomberg said earlier this year.
Ratner is best known for developing the Metrotech office campus that encompasses
10 blocks in Downtown Brooklyn.
A group of artists living in a building torn down to make way for the
Metrotech site initiated a lawsuit against the developer.
As part of the Metrotech settlement, Ratner renovated an abandoned school
building at Vanderbilt Avenue and Sterling Place and turned the Renaissance
Revival-style building into luxury lofts.
Those apartments were offered to displaced artists. But only nine of the
22 units went to those artists, and the rest were sold at market rate,
according to a New York Times report from 1989.
Park Slope attorney Jason Bijur bought a four-story, painted-yellow building
at 473 Dean St. just last year and says he has been approached by Ratner
but has not yet made a deal.
Last week, Bijur, a point guard when he attended the private Brooklyn
Friends School — as he likes to point out — hosted a barbecue
for his mostly rent-stabilized tenants and told them that he didn’t
want to sell the 16-unit building.
“I would definitely like to stay and I think the tenants want to
stay,” Bijur told The Brooklyn Papers.
Included among them is Joe Pastore, 59, who several neighbors describe
as “a real Brooklyn character.”
Each day, Pastore, a retired youth worker, walks the blocks of Prospect
Heights, chatting with neighbors and picking up records and household
items that others have cast away.
Since 1967, Pastore has lived in a small, rent-stabilized studio apartment
along Dean Street between Flatbush and Sixth avenues.
“This is my neighborhood, and it’s a beautiful neighborhood,”
Pastore told The Papers in January.
James Maloblocki, a jazz musician, who has been living in one of the rent-stabilized
studios at 473 Dean St. for the past 17 years, says he does not want to
lose his $600-a-month studio apartment.
“We’re going to have to hold the politicians to what they promised
us,” he said. “We keep hearing that Bruce Ratner is a good guy,
but we haven’t seen any evidence of that.”