How white is your knight? Part 1
Regarding Starrett City, which followed Stuyvesant Town as the next big-top extravaganza New York City affordable rental sale, a few weeks ago we paged a white knight, and in fulfillment of one of the easier predictions I’ve made recently, at the eleventh hour — really, at five minutes to twelve — in has rushed an out-of-town white knight:
When AHI calls, I come!
As reported in Friday’s New York Times:
With
Only days before the expiration of his $1.3 billion contract to buy a sprawling Brooklyn housing complex, David Bistricer is throwing the real estate equivalent of a Hail Mary pass.
If the Times can invoke a hoary metaphor, the least we can do is show the most famous one of all time
Federal and state officials have twice rejected his bid to buy the complex,
The grammarian in me asks, What precisely would be ‘fair vilification’?
When you deserve it, young man
Adds the spousal grammarian, peering over my shoulder, “What’s the point of privately vilifying someone?”
Now, with his deal for the nation’s largest federally subsidized project set to die on Tuesday [That would be August 7 — it’s been previously reported as August 9 — Ed.], Mr. Bistricer has gone to the sidelines, sending in a new team to try to buy the project: the Provident Group, a nonprofit housing developer from
Not one but two white knights — and an interesting pair of allies.
Provident. I know absolutely nothing about them [Is that a Narcissistic indictment? — Ed.; No, it’s just an observation — Auth.], so what follows is from their Web site.
Who’s the cleverest blogger of them all?
Provident appears to come from the health-care side of the business, not housing:
In the pursuit of its charitable mission, it is Provident’s goal to become a national non-profit organization committed to the development, ownership and operation of state-of-the-art health and senior living facilities and communities and supportive services across the country.
Its affordable housing portfolio is limited:
As of
In terms of development,
They don’t cook like this in
Its nearest property to
Hey, it’s only 900 miles, y’all
The long reach to Baton Rouge for a non-profit, where you’d expect a Cajun to be working in the Big Easy and you’d expect the Big Apple to be a-swarm with non-profits (which, by the way, it is), invites this question:
Why is it Mr. Bistricer found no
It’s almost as if he were being shunned by the
Mr. Bistricer, you’re just not one of us
Well, that’s reassuring, isn’t it?
Should organized labor even be here? What do I have to do with housing?
(One presumes their sterling qualities are political rather than cyberspatial.)
Remarkably, as of Saturday, neither partner’s Web site makes any mention of the
The groups say they would work with Mr. Bistricer, but unlike him, they say they would preserve the complex forever as a haven for moderate and middle-income families at a time when housing costs are escalating beyond the reach of many tenants. Mr. Bistricer, they add, would become a bit player, with a stake in the shopping center and any future development, but little power.
All along, Mr. Bistricer has emphasized the site’s increased development potential, some of which is visible from space:
Particularly south of the ironically named
I believe him when he says that this additional land development is part of his plan.
Yet the land-development potential has been largely ignored by all commentators and stakeholders, who seem united by a single goal: to stop Mr. Bistricer:
But this last-chance gambit is likely to suffer the same fate as previous proposals, judging from the reaction of housing advocates and state and federal officials who were briefed on the plan this week in
Even if I sacrifice my profits, I’m still rejected?
Deborah Van Amerongen, the state housing commissioner, said she was waiting to see the details, but both sides acknowledged that their meeting did not go well.
I believe I understand your position
“When it comes to
A safe non-answer, Mr. O’Halloran, appropriate when responding at short notice to a late-arriving and complicated proposal.
Knowing nothing but what I read in the paper [Yikes, how credulous are you? — Ed.], plus my experience, I suspect that the commenters are correct, Mr. Bistricer’s latest proposal will fail as well, because he is suffering a public relations hangover from the bad reputation he made with his original bid.
One point three bill?
The $1,300,000,000 price was so jaw-dropping that many people immediately concluded it could be achieved only by jumping rents and evicting current residents.
Shaun Donovan, the city’s housing commissioner, said that the new proposal, like the previous two, seemed to be predicated on raising rents to market levels and subsidizing what he called an extravagant purchase price with large government subsidies. “That would not be acceptable to the city,” he said.
Shaun’s both smart and fair, so I give his criticisms meaningful weight. He was also careful enough to caution his comments with ’seemed’ and a conditional conclusion (’would’ not ‘will’). With Section 8 enhanced vouchers, rents can rise to market and residents can remain in place. Many agencies, such as
For this deal to be successful, Mr. Bistricer, Provident and the unions need some sign of support from government officials over the next four days in order to persuade the owners, Starrett City Associates,
1. To lower its sale price by as much as $200 million and
2. To grant a contract extension that would allow them to work out the details.
There lies Mr. Bistricer’s biggest problem with his whole transaction:
[Continued tomorrow in Part 2.]
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