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tel/fax:
718.362.4784
Please note our new postal address when sending
contributions to the legal fund:
121 5th Avenue, PMB #150
Brooklyn, New York 11217
About DDDB
Our coalition consists of 21 community organizations and
there are 51 community organizations formally
aligned in opposition to the Ratner plan.
DDDB is a volunteer-run organization. We have over 5,000
subscribers to our email newsletter, and 7,000 petition
signers. Over 800 volunteers have registered with DDDB
to form our various teams, task-forces and committees
and we have over 150 block captains. We have a 20 person
volunteer legal team of local lawyers supplementing our
retained attorneys.
We are funded entirely by individual donations from the community at large
and through various fundraising events we and supporters have organized.
We have the financial support of well over 3,500 individual
donors.
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Streets Open, but Who's in Charge?
After
posting a plethora of signs proclaiming that streets around the proposed Arena site would close February 1, FCR
and the ESDC followed through on their promise to defer closing until after Judge Abraham Gerges' decision on the transfer of title. But in the course of
so doing, the organizations revealed just how entangled the two entities have become, and
how once again, there's no one looking out for the public
interest. Atlantic Yards Report explains: Forest City
Ratner waited well over two days to change digital signs warning that Fifth
Avenue between Atlantic and Flatbush avenues would close on February 1--despite
a judge's decision last Friday to defer any decision on transferring title to
properties and streets in the Atlantic Yards footprint to the Empire State
Development Corporation (ESDC).
So
a lot of people walking and driving this weekend had a right to be confused when the street turned out to be
open this morning.
Who's in
charge?
And no one really knew who was in charge.
Was it
the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT)? Not really, even though
FCR said it would have to ask for DOT permission to close the streets without a
judicial order. After all, I couldn't even get an on-the-record statement out of
DOT.
Was it the ESDC? Maybe, given that an ESDC attorney said in court that no request for street closure would
be made until title had been vested. But I couldn't get any further statement
from the ESDC last Friday.
Was it the developer? Well, it appears that
FCR has a pretty long leash, if it can place signs on streets and sidewalks and
decide when the message gets changed.
And remember, Bruce Ratner told Crain's last November in another context,
regarding project designs, “Why should people get to see plans? This isn't a
public project." Norman Oder continues his look at the tangled
relationship here.
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