There is a rail yard to nowhere in Brooklyn, and the possibility of New York becoming the poster child for misuse and abuse of stimulus funds—pork of the most rancid kind. To this we should say, "Thanks, but no thanks."
Here in Brooklyn there has been a 5-year long grassroots fight against a development plan known as Atlantic Yards consisting of 16 skyscrapers (6,400 housing units) and a $1 billion (yes billion) arena proposed to to move the New Jersey Nets who were purchased by the developer, Forest City Ratner, to enable a corrupt real estate land grab in the heart of the Borough (at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, at the Nexus of Prospect Heights, Fort Greene, Park Slope, Clinton Hill and Boerum Hill, to be precise).
Due to lawsuits and the financial crisis, the project has been indefinitely halted before the developer has done anything more than demolish half the neighborhood, and some preliminary work on the rail yard where part of the 22-acre project would sit (the rail yard is 8 acres).
And now the developer wants to abuse the stimulus bill to get a federal bailout for a private professional basketball arena already heavily subsidized.
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