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Demolition Man

As for Brooklyn, even more is envisioned. The planners see Flatbush Avenue and Fulton Street lined with office towers to bring back-office business home from Jersey City, plus high-density residential and retail building. It is pure old-school urban renewal, all on private land. At least 100 businesses of the modest type common in downtown Brooklyn will likely be forced out, along with 130 residences. This doesn’t even include Bruce Ratner’s much-talked-about Nets arena on Flatbush Avenue, ringed by seventeen high-rises. The whole thing will require condemning some 70 buildings and removing 100 residents (Ratner’s estimate), or 569 residents and jobs (Siegel’s number).

So far, the Empire State Development Corporation claims “nothing has been decided” about whether the state agency will step in and take property for the arena. The MTA denies that the sale of its air rights to Ratner is a fait accompli. But, as Forest City Ratner vice-president Jim Stuckey points out, when Ratner announced his acquisition of the Nets, he was flanked by Bloomberg and Pataki.

Activist groups such as the Prospect Heights Action Coalition have sprung up since the Ratner plan was announced, staging public rallies and hiring Siegel, who’d like to make the situation a test case. “The question becomes,” in Siegel’s view, “what did the framers of the Constitution mean when they talked about public use?”

Stuckey, for his part, intends to have shovels in the dirt a year from now. He has political momentum on his side. And New York State has the most developer-friendly eminent-domain laws in the country. “The problem with New York State is judicial,” explains Dana Berliner, a property-law expert with the libertarian Institute for Justice in Washington. “It’s public use to engage in any development project—it almost doesn’t matter what.” Berliner points out that New York is one of a handful of states that don’t give notice to owners in time to challenge a condemnation. (A published notice is the only announcement; 30 days later, the challenge period expires, all before the owner gets a formal letter.) A bill was passed by the State Legislature last year to rectify this Catch-22. It was vetoed by the Master Builder himself, George Pataki.