Forced to Move, Some Find Greener Grass
Ngozi Odita at her boutique on Flatbush Avenue. Forest City Ratner’s plans to build Atlantic Yards forced her shop out of its old spot, which was ultimately beneficial, she said.
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesCorrection Appended
When Bruce Ratner first announced plans to build Atlantic Yards, a vast residential, office and arena project on 22 acres near Downtown Brooklyn, perhaps the biggest practical obstacle he faced was the hundreds of people who already lived and worked there. Many protested, hung banners from windows and joined groups opposing the project.
But others began negotiating buyout offers with the company. Now, more than two years after the project was announced, at least a few former residents say the negotiations with Mr. Ratner’s company, Forest City Ratner, provided an opportunity to leave spaces that had grown too small or run-down — and to make a profit in the process.
Erin Coffer, 32, a lawyer who used to live at 636 Pacific Street with her husband, recalled the first time she saw a map of the proposed arena on the local news. “I looked at the map, and looked at where the arena was, and realized, unless I have a skybox, I’m not going to be here any longer.”
Her brand-new apartment was beset with problems like burst pipes and faulty wiring. In 2004, with a child on the way, she and her husband sold their condominium to Forest City Ratner for about $1.1 million and moved to Manhattan. They had bought it the previous year for $419, 000.
“They were fair but savvy negotiators,” she said of the developers.
In March, Forest City Ratner announced that it owned or controlled nearly all the owner-occupied residential units on the project site, more than three-quarters of rentals and about two-thirds of the commercial properties there. The company owns nearly 90 percent of the square footage it needs to build the development.
Roughly two-thirds of those who owned or rented homes in the area have accepted buyout offers or left on their own, according to Forest City Ratner. About 40 percent of those still there live in rental buildings the company owns or controls.
Many found new homes in Brooklyn; others left New York City entirely. All faced the prospect that the state might take their homes through eminent domain to make way for the Atlantic Yards.
Most of those interviewed for this article said they had mixed feelings about the project; some were less sanguine about the buyouts, or said that the financial settlements Forest City offered could not compensate for the loss of their homes and neighborhood. But even many of those who would rather have stayed said the developer had worked diligently to ensure smooth transitions.
“It’s not a black and white thing,” said Salvatore Perry, 33, who lived in the neighborhood with his wife for a decade before selling their two co-op apartments at 475 Dean Street to Forest City Ratner for what he called a “very good price.”
“We’re still dealing with the reality that we lost our community,” said Mr. Perry, who now lives in Park Slope. But the developer, he added, “took the time and devoted the personnel to treat us as humans who were going through what was a very disruptive time that we were not going through voluntarily.”
Forest City officials said that the deals made good long-term business sense, though they added to the cost of the project. “In a public environment, you don’t pull together 90 percent of the land because you’re afraid to step up to the table,” said James P. Stuckey, an executive vice president. Forest City Ratner is the development partner in building a new Midtown headquarters for The New York Times Company.
For this article, the company agreed to waive contractual restrictions limiting what those who accepted buyouts could say. Several took the chance to air criticisms of the project and Forest City Ratner.
“I’ve been opposed to this development from the beginning,” said Mark Drury, 25, a social worker who moved into a rented one-bedroom apartment on Dean Street with his girlfriend in October 2003, the month the project was announced. Early on, he said, local property owners were the most active in mobilizing against Atlantic Yards. But they pulled back, he added, once buyouts were offered.
A year later, Mr. Drury said, he was at odds with the apartment’s owner, who wanted to sell, but needed him and his girlfriend to agree to move out first.
“What’s so insidious about the process, and the way it breaks apart the neighborhood, is that by then I was battling with my landlord, against whom I had nothing,” Mr. Drury said. He moved out in February 2005, after he and his girlfriend broke up. Eventually, they shared a $5,000 settlement from Forest City Ratner.
“Financially, I’ve been unaffected by the move,” said Mr. Drury, who now lives in Park Slope but will have the option to move back if the project is completed. “Regardless of how they treat me, it’s sort of like someone smiling at you and showing a wad of cash while they take your house. Money can’t buy you love.”
For some owners, however, it appears to have secured at least a little affection. Citing the company’s agreement to keep confidential the prices it paid home- and business-owners, Forest City Ratner declined to provide specific figures, but interviews with former owners and an analysis of city tax records indicate that some sold their properties for more than twice what they paid for them after owning them for only a couple of years.
According to a report released in February by the Real Estate Board of New York, a real estate trade group, the median apartment price in the neighborhood, Prospect Heights, increased by about 36 percent last year.
At 24 Sixth Avenue, a condo building which opened in 2002, several apartments bought for less than half a million dollars sold for more than $1 million in late 2004. Nearly all the owners who sold received at least twice their buying price.
Ms. Coffer, who helped negotiate a group buyout agreement between Forest City Ratner and most of the condo owners at 636 Pacific, said the amount of “profit went from the upper 90’s to 165 percent.”
Mark Klein, the former president of the condominium board, said, “We got a premium on this lemon of a building that turned into a great investment for us.”
City records show that Mr. Klein received about $1.1 million for his apartment, more than twice what he paid for it in 2003.
But one owner refused to sell: Daniel Goldstein, the sole owner now living at 636 Pacific and the spokesman for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, an umbrella organization for opponents of the project.
In early 2005, he went to a condo board meeting at the company’s office — since the Forest City owns most of the building, the board meets there — and asked what would happen if he didn’t sell. “One of their attorneys said, ‘Then the state will condemn your property,’ ” he said.
As the company purchased buildings, it also became a landlord to many renters. Mr. Stuckey said that they were offered the chance to move back into units of comparable rent and size in the completed Atlantic Yards project, if it is approved. The company also paid moving costs and broker’s fees for those tenants and covered any increase in rent for transitional housing. For those who declined the offer to move to Atlantic Yards, Mr. Stuckey said, the company paid a lump sum, “representing some value of what they would have gained coming back.”
Tenant laws generally require similar recompense when a landlord wants to demolish a building. Jennifer Levy, a lawyer with South Brooklyn Legal Services, said that the company was providing “at best what the law already requires.”
Those protections, however, would be erased if the properties were handed over to the Empire State Development Corporation, the state agency sponsoring the project. In such cases, the agency is bound by a different, less stringent set of obligations. Mr. Stuckey said that the promise to place tenants in the new complex was beyond what the development corporation would be required by law to do.
“I felt that my choice was, ‘Don’t accept the buyout and live next to a construction site for the next 10 years,’ or ‘Accept the money and move on,’ ” said Marc Wancer, who lived at 24 Sixth Avenue until 2004 and now resides in Mississippi. “The whole process was unpleasant.”
For some businesses formerly on the site, especially shops, moving has been particularly complicated.
In 2004, Ngozi Odita and her partner, who run a boutique on Flatbush Avenue called Harriet’s Alter Ego, were told by their landlord that they would need to move out within a year. Though they found a new space a few blocks away, it cost $1,000 more a month in rent and eventually required three months and $50,000 to renovate.
“It was a real struggle,” Ms. Odita said. They asked for help from Forest City, which gave them $10,000 up front — most of which went to moving costs — and agreed to subsidize the rent increase for three years.
“I would have liked to have more time to plan it,” she said. But the new space was larger and the location better, she said. “Things are blessings in disguise.”
Correction: April 12, 2006 An article on Monday about Brooklyn residents who accepted buyouts to move and make way for the Atlantic Yards development project misstated the given name of the former president of the condominium board at 636 Pacific Street, a building on the project site. He is Matt Klein, not Mark.
