Ratner gets pressed to fulfill B’klyn deal
MORE THAN a decade has passed since Barclays Center developer Bruce Ratner signed the Atlantic Yards “Community Benefits Agreement” that Michael West believed would generate jobs and help small businesses prosper in Brooklyn’s African-American community and low-income neighborhoods.
West, a former official with one of the eight organizations that signed the CBA in 2005, has kicked off a campaign to force Ratner and his partners to live up to the promises they made about the Barclays Center and the 15 high-rise towers planned for central Brooklyn.
“It’s been 10 years,” said West, a longtime educator and community organizer who was the former director of small-business development for Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development (BUILD). “I still don’t see any evidence that the Community Benefits Agreement has been fulfilled.”
West, now president of a fledgling organization called Devotion NYC that is dedicated to spurring economic development in poor communities, said Thursday that it is time for Ratner and his partners to live up to the agreement.
West said he is meeting with Forest City Ratner executive Ashley Cotton next week to discuss a proposal to have an affiliated organization, HigherSelf Lifestyle, take over job training, business development and other programs promised in the CBA.
West recently sent a proposal to Forest City Ratner, which he shared with the Daily News, to have HigherSelf Lifestyle administer the economic development programs promised by the CBA for $149,000.
“I came in as a supporter,” West said. “I believed in what the Community Benefits Agreement was supposed to do. But we still have high unemployment in the minority community.”
West’s campaign was first reported by journalist Norman Oder’s Atlantic Yards/ Pacific Park Report.
When Ratner unveiled plans in 2003 to buy the Nets and move them from New Jersey to a Brooklyn arena that would anchor his massive Atlantic Yards project and 15 high-rise towers, the developer and his political allies, most notably former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, promised the project would generate jobs and spark economic development.
The CBA, signed in June 2005, was trumpeted by Bloomberg as a groundbreaking document that would ensure the community as well as the developer would benefit from the massive project. The document promised, among other things, that jobs would be set aside for minorities and women and that at least 20% of the money spent on construction would go to minority firms.
But critics said the document was more of a public relations stunt than an enforceable contract. Many of the groups, including BUILD, appeared to be little more than fronts for the developer rather than independent grass-roots organizations.