September 26, 2013
Reiss on Atlantic Yards Litigation
The New York Daily News quoted me in a story, Bruce Ratner Will Have to Pay His Opponents’ Legal Bills: Judge, about the litigation over the construction of the Barclays Center and the other buildings in the Atlantic Yards project. It reads in part,
Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn and Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council will get hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay their legal eagles — a ruling that followed a rare court victory over Ratner in 2009.
That win, which forced the state to conduct a new study of the project’s environmental impact, led to Supreme Court Judge Marcy Friedman’s ruling this week on the legal reimbursement.
The opposition groups said their battle against Ratner’s Atlantic Yards proposal – which at one time included 16 skyscrapers, the Barclays Center, a hotel and thousands of units of housing, but now only consists of the completed arena and two pre-fab apartment buildings — cost $323,000.
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Real estate law expert David Reiss cautioned against seeing the opponents’ victory as a big win the little guy.
“It is hard to call it a David-versus-Goliath win when Goliath is still standing and still going strong,” said Reiss who teaches at Brooklyn Law School. “It is a tactical victory. The war has been lost. The arena is built.”
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