Get Stuffed!

It’s that time of year (again) when allegedly overlooked outer borough restauranteurs attempt to stuff their way into Zagat:

The Myrtle Avenue Business Improvement District is offering local caterer Jive Turkey assistance in the three-and-a-half-year-old business’s bid to get listed in a new Zagat guide.

On March 1, the BID’s Web site urged residents to “vote for Jive Turkey.”

“We encourage you to submit your vote and rank your other favorites in the coming week,” the entry continued.

Jive Turkey, on Myrtle Avenue between Clinton and Waverly avenues, serves up a wattle-dropping 15 flavors of deep-fried bird and is a candidate for entry into the new Zagat’s “Marketplace” guide, which will feature caterers, florists, and other stores “ranked” thanks to snarky reviews from actual patrons.

But in order to make the cut, Jive must accrue a minimum number of reviews. Zagat, whose highly unscientific ratings are based on votes by consumers, never reveals exactly how many are required.

“If you have a low vote count, unless you’re considered a really superlative place, you won’t be included,” said a former Zagat employee who would only speak anonymously. “[Encouraging people to vote is] frowned upon, but a lot of people do it. There’s no way to stop it.”

Empire State Building: 1 Year, 45 Days; Rockefeller Center: Seven Years; Mount Freaking Rushmore: 14 Years

So if the Atlantic Yards project is going to take 15 years, it must be the most awesome development ever:

Forest City Ratner claims it will take 10 years to construct its Atlantic Yards development, with an arena opening for the 2009-10 basketball season.

But earlier this week Chuck Ratner, cousin of Bruce and CEO of FCR’s parent company Forest City Enterprises, stated that it would take longer.

“This is going to be a 15-year buildout,” Chuck Ratner said at the Citigroup 2007 Property CEO Conference in Naples, Fla. The arena would open by the 2010 season, he added.

The comments, which were first reported yesterday by Atlantic Yards watchdog blogger Norman Oder, come on the heels of landscape architect Laurie Olin telling The New York Observer he believed the project would take 20 years.

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

Every Good Development Deserves A Holdout

In the same way as the great cities have pie-shaped buildings, every development worth its salt has at least one quirky holdout that serves to humble ego-driven architects and pointy-headed planners. So will Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project get its very own version of Hurley’s? The courts are paving the way for that possibility:

A property owner threatened by the Atlantic Yards project enjoyed a victory after a judge ruled that two of his leases were improperly acquired by the developer, Forest City Ratner.

Property owner Henry Weinstein can keep his six-story building and a parking lot on Carlton Ave., Supreme Court judge Ira Harkavy ruled Tuesday.

But it was unclear how the ruling would affect the project, which broke ground last month.

“The leases in question clearly and unambiguously required tenants to first obtain the written consent of the landlords before any assignment of the leases,” Harkavy ruled in an 18-page decision invalidating both leases.

Weinstein leased his property to Brooklyn developer Shaya Boymelgreen in 1999, but he didn’t expect Boymelgreen to sell the leases to Forest City Ratner, Weinstein said.

Weinstein, a critic of the Atlantic Yards project, never gave consent to the deal between Boymelgreen and Ratner, which would have allowed the latter to hold onto the leases until 2048.

“We believed from the beginning that Ratner and Boymelgreen had no right to do what they did, so this decision is no surprise,” said Candace Carponter, a member of the opposition group Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. “As far as I’m concerned, this decision is unassailable upon appeal.”

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

See also: Architectural Holdouts.

Post Is Shocked, Simply Shocked — Maybe Even Outraged — By Planning Costs Literally Soaring Into The Millions

The Post notes that a full 14 and-a-half comfort stations* could have been built for what has already been spent on the as-yet-unbuilt Brooklyn Bridge Park:

Planners of the long-delayed Brooklyn Bridge Park project have spent more than $16 million in taxpayer money in the last five years — more than it cost to build the bridge in the 1880s.

Most of the cash went to the project’s architect and consultants, records obtained by The Post reveal.

Despite that, critics point out, the 85-acre park along the Brooklyn waterfront, which was supposed to break ground three years ago, has yet to be built.

“It cost $15 million to build the Brooklyn Bridge, so [the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corp.] has already spent more with little to show for it,” said Cobble Hill activist Roy Sloane.

*See for example.

For The Moment, The Domains For “Coney Island Neighborhood Association” And “Coney Island Block Watch” Are Still Available*

I’m sure there are loads of people who would want to live right next to the Cyclone (think Annie Hall!), but then again, you probably wouldn’t hear much when you’re 50 stories up in the air:

He has spent $150 million buying out dozens of landowners, according to reports, prying heirlooms from the families which created Nathan’s Hot Dogs and brought the Ferris wheel to New York City with the promise that he would put them to worthy use. After flipping land west of Keyspan Park to a residential developer for $90 million, [developer Joe] Sitt is left with the four-block area next to the Cyclone roller coaster, the so-called amusement core.

The full-color renderings that he commissioned from architects Ehrenkrantz, Eckstut & Kuhn show a grown-up Disneyland with a giant martini glass, a roller coaster that passes through buildings, a jumble of shapes and extra dimensions that completely obliterates the street grid — even though it would actually add streets.

Mr. Sitt contends that 975 residential units — an unspecified mix of time-shares and condos — would provide the eyes and ears (and pocketbooks) that would make the complex work year round, to say nothing of compensating for the losses he expects from running the amusement area. On a total square-foot basis, according to figures from Thor Equities, Mr. Sitt’s development firm, the apartments would constitute 34 percent of the square footage of the complex, while amusements would constitute only 14 percent. (Hotels, retail and parking would make up the rest.) The actual land area covered by the footprints of the residential towers would be much smaller, however — in part because one of the towers would rise 50 stories.

Despite Mr. Sitt’s confrontational rhetoric (a mark of desperation, or some sort of Brechtian government-relations strategy?), the Thor plan has a lot in common with the one dreamed up by the Coney Island Development Corporation, an offshoot of the city’s Economic Development Corporation with community members on its board. Hotels, restaurants and music venues would draw people until late at night; indoor amusements would be impervious to the cold; and together they would produce enough revenue to justify the latest gizmos.

“Thor is not necessarily the enemy. A lot of what they are proposing is exactly what we want,” said Dick Zigun, the founder of the Coney Island Circus Sideshow and a member of the Coney Island Development Corporation. “We want affluent people from around the world to come and spend a week here and spend a lot of money. But people who come here for a week want the noise and excitement; people raising families complain. People renting apartments across the street complain on a regular basis as it is.”

Location Scout: “So-Called Amusement Core”.

*I happen to think they’d be — or would have been — excellent band names, too.