Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn...

We Need Your Help to Defend Against Ratner and ESDC Legal Appeal
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>> We Wish You a Very Happy and Healthy 2012!

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> Please Help Defend Against Ratner and ESDC Legal Appeal
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Three weeks ago Forest City Ratner and the Empire State Development Corporation filed legal papers appealing last July's ruling in the community's favor that the state agency acted irrationally, and misled the court and public, when it approved the modified project plan for Atlantic Yards. The court ordered the agency to undertake a supplemental environmental review of the project. 

Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, the lead plaintiff on the case along with BrooklynSpeaks and 26 other community groups, needs to mount its defense against this appeal and we need your support. Our reply to the appeal briefs is due on January 13.

While the arena construction moves ahead for a September 2012 opening, the rest of the project is a huge question mark which requires some semblance of a meaningful environmental review, something it has yet to receive. This review must include a public hearing. 

Should Forest City and ESDC prevail in their appeal, the supplemental review and public hearing will not occur—and the project will, yet again, evade a proper review of the impact it is having and is going to have on Brooklyn.


We need your financial support to help pay the legal bills to defend against the appeal and should a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement occur, as it should, we will need to finance lawyers and experts to give a proper review to those findings.

Won't you please consider DDDB's legal fund when making your end-of year donation considerations? 

All donations to DDDB are tax-deductible.

You can donate online at: www.dddb.net/donate

Or if you prefer you can mail your donation to:

Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn
121 5th Avenue, PMB #150
Brooklyn, New York 11217

As long as Forest City Ratner continues to fail to deliver on its promises while maintaining its stranglehold on 22 acres in the heart of Brooklyn, the community must demand its opportunity to have a say in what happens to our neighborhoods; upholding this ruling is one important step towards that goal.

Please help us defend this legal ruling—the first court ruling to hold the ESDC accountable for its Atlantic Yards misdeeds. 

(The back-story to the ruling now under appeal is long and tortured. For more about that we recommend reading Norman Oder's account of the case history.)

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