There’s a store in the Atlantic Center on the site of the former Circuit City (which declared bankruptcy a few months ago) called, appropriately, Pay Half. Actually there’s no space between the words — they can’t afford it! — but I can’t help but think that Bruce Ratner must have been inspired by their credo. 

It is the developer’s company, Forest City Ratner, that is responsible for the big box that is the Atlantic Center, and it is FCR that wants to develop the Atlantic Yards project right across the street. As reported in the New York Times this weekend, Atlantic Yards — a series of skyscrapers fronted by a basketball stadium for Ratner’s team, the New Jersey Nets — is in a bit of trouble right now. Thanks to a series of lawsuits brought about by Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, a growing sense of outrage over the land giveaway that the city and state seem determined to hand him, and the tanking economy, it looks like he may not break ground on the project this year after all. Which would be a good thing for everyone who lives in this area. 

But the MTA, which was already selling him the land on which he wants to build the stadium at a deeply discounted $100 million, announced that he could have it for half that — even less! — at the same time they are preparing to raise subway fares 25 cents to make up for the historic shortfall — huh? We pay more and the billionaire developer pays half? The whole thing seems nonsensical, possibly even crooked…

DDDB will be hosting a community meeting Tuesday, June 9 at the Lafayette Avenue Church for those who want to be updated on the status of the project and the opposition. It’s a perilous time for our cause; just as those of us who opposed Ratner five years ago were told it was a lost cause, and that you couldn’t fight city hall (and Albany, and Washington), the conventional wisdom now is that the project is dead and we can all go back to sleep. But with incentives such as the one the MTA has just given him, the AY remains a zombie project, the kind that can reach out of the grave and grab you. Be vigilant! It’s your neighborhood. Don’t let the thugs drown you out.