The biggest city in the country is really just a small town — for
the developer of the Atlantic Yards project, that is.
One of the eight brokers hired last week by the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority to assess properties is none other than Mary Ann Tighe, a longtime
adviser to Forest City Ratner.
Currently, Tighe finds commercial tenants at the tower that FCR is building
for the New York Times, as well as at Metrotech in Downtown Brooklyn,
another FCR site.
And her spokesman said Tighe has no plans to leave the FCR payroll.
The MTA is reviewing how it will sell or lease space and air rights at
14,000 of its properties. Tighe joins the team after the transit agency
sold the air rights to the Atlantic Yards to her client Bruce Ratner for
$100 million — far less than the agency’s own appraisers said
it was worth.
A decade ago, she was commissioned by the New York Times to find a developer
for their new building — and she brought in Ratner.
She did not work with Ratner — or the MTA — on the Atlantic
Yards deal.
