There goes Bruce Ratner’s latest plan to pump life into his stumbling, bumbling, Frank Gehry-designed Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn.
Only a few days ago, the New York Times reported, in “Slow Economy Likely to Stall Atlantic Yards,” that Ratner was still desperately trying to drum up tenants for the flagging project — which is heavily subsidized by hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and other perks for the developers — by invoking Gehry’s name:
In another indication of the problems facing the project, Forest City recently sent a letter signed by the project’s celebrity architect, Frank Gehry, to chief executives of many of the city’s biggest corporations, inviting them to become a tenant in the “centerpiece of the project,” Miss Brooklyn. It was originally scheduled to be completed in July 2009.
Brokers said that developers usually home in on companies actively looking for new headquarters, rather than cast such a wide net. Forest City’s approach was more akin to cold-calling to solicit interest, a possible sign, they said, that the developer was struggling to find tenants.