[via The Daily Gotham - Chuck Schumer at Stuy-Town Press Conference]

Upon reviewing these video clips, there's one thing that I just realized about Schumer's shpiel : He's calling out MetLife's possible use of public land for free due to eminent domain as a playing card in the negotiations.

Does this mean, if it is true they did not pay for the land, that there are potential grounds for demanding from the company to pay what is owed to the city and with interest? Could there actually be any repercussions to MetLife's weaseling out of paying for the land they used to develop Stuy-Town?

More importantly, what effects, if any, could this have on development projects like Atlantic Yards and Williamsburg?

Hmmmmm.

You can find this clip at YouTube as well.

Location

[via YouTube - The Daily Gotham - Stuy Town Press Conference - Dan Garodnick]

An anonymous tipster alerted me of this press conference and so, I was part of ... ahem ... New York City's media taping the whole thing. It was fun to see Dan in all his incumbent glory dealing with the heavy issue of the selling of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper.

Dare I say he sounds ... ahem ... mayoral. This is a guy NYC Democrats ought to keep an eye on for taking back City Hall in 2009.

Go.

Read it.

NOW!

[via Bloomberg.com: Opinion | Hillary Clinton Betrays Brooklyn at Grass Roots]:

In an expansive interview with the local papers at the Sunset Park Senior Center last month, Clinton explained her views. ``Public land should be public land,'' the Brooklyn Paper, a weekly, reported her as saying. ``If parks had to be self-sustaining, would anybody have ever built a park?'' Another paper reported Clinton as saying that ``by definition, a park should be enjoyed for recreation.''

Clinton said it was a ``a little disingenuous'' to build luxury condos, concluding, ``I think we can do better than that.''

She is running for re-election, and she had just finished reading the autobiography of a Kenyan Nobel Prize winner, the environmentalist Wangari Muta Maathai. Clinton said of Maathai that ``one of her great accomplishments was stopping luxury housing in Uhuru Park in Nairobi.''

[...]

.... within a few days, Clinton had adjusted. In a mid-August letter to Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corp., she wrote of the importance of a ``revenue stream'' for such parks, saying, ``I do not support legal action to oppose the park.'' The senator didn't give a reason for her transformation to Development Democrat, but pro-development officials were visibly lobbying her.  read more »

If we do, here's a fantastic reminder created by National Geographic and made available to the public through www.video.google.com :

I agree with the National Trust for Historic Preservation : Don't build anything until all details for preservation are sorted out.  read more »

Herewith are the paraphraghs that boggled my mind.

[via Donations Slow for Memorial at Ground Zero - New York Times]:

The foundation is preparing an ambitious worldwide marketing campaign to raise the remaining $197.7 million to cover the costs, at a time when many groups are continuing to solicit donations to aid victims of the Asian tsunami, two Gulf Coast hurricanes, the Pakistani earthquake, the Philippine mudslide and other disasters far more recent than the 2001 terrorist attacks.

"I would say this is a challenging goal, because the foundation can't now rely on the shock value of the original tragedy," said Leo P. Arnoult, a fund-raising consultant not connected with the memorial. "But given the magnitude of the event, perhaps the fund-raising could be presented as something very affirming."

First, what does it say of our government that it won't pony-up the money for a memorial?

Second, what does it say of NGOs or non-profit organizations that, and I quote, "rely on the shock value of the original tragedy" to justify their existence? And let me add to that, rely on the marketing of a tragedy to pay the bills?

The US government should have covered the cost of the memorial and then have a foundation manage it. What does it say about the Bush administration that they could care less about what goes on at Ground Zero?

That they knew it was a necessary loss to further their dreams of Empire? That 2K Americans are dispensable in the quest of untold riches in the Middle East? That a hole in the ground in New York City is a little loss --good thing we don't have something like the war that has destroyed Iraq? Or that, what's the rush since more calamities will be coming our way anyhow?

Mr. President, what does your administration's silence over the fate of Ground Zero really, truly mean?