Ratner looking to sell large stake in AY project

From the Daily News:

After years of lording over Atlantic Yards, Brooklyn developer Bruce Ratner is looking for some help to get his apartment towers off the ground.

Ratner's Forest City Ratner Co. is now seeking to sell a 50 to 80 percent stake in the 22-acre development's housing component.

This is not the first time Ratner has sold a stake in portions of the Atlantic Yards project. In 2009, he sold a stake in both the Brooklyn Nets and their arena, the Barclays Center, to Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, raising more than $200 million to get the arena built. He also sold off a 49 percent stake in 15 of the company's retail centers in the metropolitan region, including the Atlantic Center mall across the street from the arena, to raise cash toward construction.

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Ratner wins Coliseum bid

From the Queens Courier:

Nassau Events Center, LLC an affiliate of Barclays Center builder Forest City Ratner Companies, announced Thursday that it won the bid to renovate Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

Nassau Events was picked over the Madison Square Garden Company, and will oversee a $229 million renovation of the Long Island sports arena.

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Arena owners battle on Long Island

From Crains:

Out on Long Island, it is shaping up as the heavyweight bout of the decade—the Knockout in Nassau County. It's a winner-take-all contest in which the prize, potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the coming decades, is the right to rebuild and run the badly faded Nassau Coliseum.

In one corner stands a team captained by Madison Square Garden Co., a squad led by hometown heroes James Dolan and Scott Rechler, aided by MSG Chief Executive Hank Ratner. The Dolans control the island's biggest cable television network and newspaper, while Rechler is the island's largest office landlord. In the other corner is the Barclays Center team. Call them the Brooklyn Globetrotters, coached by developer Bruce Ratner with a bench that includes Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov and Jay Z.

Round 1 in the contest kicked off in May, with the announcement of four bidders, which was narrowed to just two the following month. Final proposals for the 63-acre property in Uniondale were submitted on Aug. 9. Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano is expected to announce a victor any day.

Both sides are aggressively swinging for the prize, which includes a share of ticket sales to events, dinner bills, bar tabs and receipts from the shops that both bidders plan to erect around the arena. The winner will control the property for 20 to 30 years.

Local officials say they are delighted at how the bout has shaped up—especially after two previous taxpayer-financed attempts to revamp the Coliseum went nowhere. Those setbacks prompted the Islanders hockey team to skate off to the Barclays Center, which will be its home as early as the 2014-2015 season.

"We're thrilled we have two industry giants prepared to reinvent the Coliseum," said Mr. Mangano.

For MSG, the contest is an opportunity to add another gem to the crown of its ever-expanding entertainment-venue business, which includes managing Radio City Music Hall, the Beacon Theater and the LA Forum. For Barclays, coming off a blockbuster inaugural year at its downtown Brooklyn arena, winning the Coliseum contract could mark the first step toward the launch of a business that not only competes with the Garden in New York City but around the world.

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"A decade of kickbacks"

From the NY Post:

Forest City Enterprises, the real-estate behemoth whose subsidiary built the Barclays Center, has taken pay-to-play to new levels, an explosive new report charges.

The company has gotten indirect government subsidies totaling $2.6 billion over the last decade — or 23 percent of its $11.4 billion in revenues over the period, according to the report.

At the same time, the company and its subsidiaries, Forest City Ratner — which developed the Atlantic Yards, site of the Brooklyn arena — spent $23 million on political campaigns, according to Cause of Action, a nonprofit that conducted a detailed investigation of Forest City.

The oversight group accuses the company of a “decade of kickbacks” and coordinating its campaign contributions, and says it is investigating multiple companies that use “political connections for profit.”

In key election years, 85 percent of the company’s political contributions went to candidates where the company had real-estate projects, the group found.

Looking just at New York City, Forest City has spent $5 million on lobbying between 2002 and 2012.

Tell us something we don't know.

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Plumbers sue Ratner over prefab construction

From the Daily News:

Developer Bruce Ratner's plan to build pre-fab apartment buildings at his Atlantic Yards complex dangerously ignores key building safety rules, union workers charge in a bombshell lawsuit.

The Plumbing Foundation claims in its suit that the Building Department is wrongly allowing Ratner to build the first phase of the $4.9 billion, 15-building residential and commercial project without using licensed plumbers and fire suppression contractors.

Because Ratner is using pre-fabricated — or modular — units, more than 60% of the construction of the project surrounding the Barclays Center is expected to be completed off-site.

The modules currently being built at the Brooklyn Naval Yard includes plumbing, gas and sprinkler piping for the world's tallest modular building, a 32-story residential structure named B2, slated to rise at Dean St. and Flatbush Ave.

But that construction is not being done by licensed workers, a violation of the city's strict building Administrative Code, according to the lawsuit.

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The sordid history of the Four Sparrow Marsh project

From the Daily News:

Construction on a project that includes a major car dealership has quietly started on a controversial piece of land in Mill Basin twice tied to scandal-scarred politicians who have tried to help developers buy the land from the city.

In April, the Bloomberg administration announced it had sold the 110,000-square-foot parcel near the Four Sparrow Marsh and the Belt Parkway to Brooklyn auto dealer Lilaahar (Sammy) Bical, owner of Kristal Auto Mall, one of the biggest Cadillac dealers on the East Coast.

Bical was helped in his bid to obtain the land after paying tainted state Sen. John Sampson (D-Canarsie) a $10,000 "retainer fee" to help arrange a sit-down with Bloomberg administration officials, the News reported last month.

Those meetings occurred in early 2012, and this past March the city sold him the land for $4.2 million.

Sampson and his lawyer, Zachary Carter, did not respond to calls seeking comment.

The FBI is investigating whether Sampson broke the law by seeking and receiving retainer fees from Bical, and another businessman, in an unrelated case, who sought his assistance in dealing with the government, sources said.

Originally, the city planned to sell the land to Forest City Ratner to build a mini mall. That plan was scuttled in September 2011 after a Forest City Ratner official was revealed to have asked disgraced former state Sen. Carl Kruger for state funds, according to a criminal complaint.

As part of the new deal, the city also sold Toys R Us the land it currently occupies for $13 million.

The first part of construction, which has just begun, entails carving out a spot for a new parking lot for the toy store, which park advocates charge is being built on protected marsh land. The expanded car dealership will later be built on the old Toys R Us parking lot, city officials said.

Conservation groups and park advocates plan to sue to block the city's sale of the land on the grounds that it lacked proper state approval.

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