Manhattan, Eminent Domain, Robert Moses . . . Does It Get Any Better Than This?

It’s the American Songbook . . . and it always goes back to poor old Robert Moses:

The city wants to use its power of eminent domain to push out an almost-finished arts venue in Fort Greene to make way for a Manhattan-based dance troupe and 150 new housing units that comprise the centerpiece of the so-called BAM Cultural District.

“Our goal was to create a live music-and-arts venue,” said Todd Triplett, one of the three friends behind the Amber Art and Music Space, which is being built in a former liquor store at Fulton Street and Ashland Place.

Lured by the promise of the burgeoning “Lincoln Center of Brooklyn” that the city envisions for the area around BAM, Triplett and his partners invested more than $1 million, and spent a year and a half turning the run-down, three-story space into a performance venue, recording studio and an arts non-profit.

That grand idea was shattered on Aug. 21, when Jack Hammer, the director of Brooklyn Planning for the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, informed the three partners that the agency wants to seize the site by eminent domain to make way for the Dancespace Project, a Manhattan-based dance group.

“We were four weeks away from completion, and we get this letter. The city is f–king us,” said Triplett, who has already gotten a liquor license and booked musical acts into 2008. “I’ve never seen anything this egregious. This is in the tradition of Robert Moses.”

The partners claim that no one — including the broker who secured them the space and the landlord, who let them sign a 10-year lease and has collected $200,000 in rent so far — informed them of the city’s plans for the site.

“We refinanced our homes to do this,” said Triplett, standing shell-shocked amid construction materials in the area that would have housed the main lounge. “We took second jobs.”