Half of Ratner's Project will be Government Funded

RATNER'S $2B GOV'T SUBSIDY

By RICH CALDER

June 7, 2007 -- More than half of Bruce Ratner's $4 billion Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn will be funded by government subsidies, a blockbuster court disclosure reveals.

The developer expects $1.4 billion in tax-exempt bonds to finance the project's 2,250 units of affordable housing, according to a state document obtained by project opponents through the courts and posted online yesterday.
The city is already kicking in $205 million and the state another $100 million.

The project's Frank Gehry-designed arena would be financed primarily with another $637 million in tax-exempt bonds. At least $2.34 billion of the estimated $3.97 billion - 58.9 percent - of the development costs would be financed by government-backed money.

"It is now starkly clear that Ratner's project . . . would hoard scarce housing subsidy resources from all over New York City," said Daniel Goldstein, spokesman for the opposition group Develop-Don't Destroy Brooklyn.

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apparently luxury condos and a stadium for a professional basketball team (whose players earn 8 figure salaries, and corporations pay hundreds of thousands for luxury skyboxes) requires government subsidies to get built.