don't get me wrong, i am all for intensive scrutiny of this deal

I don't want to see insider dealings or favoritism ...or for people to be treated unfairly for the benefit of the rich.

Bloomberg was elected because he was a powerful businessman ... and was trusted to make these type of big decisions. This is what he was tailor-made to do .. you would have to believe that he is weighing the short term cost with the long term benefits ... and that he believes this is the right thing.

Of course he also wanted to ban 16oz soft drinks ...so the guy obviously should not be above scrutiny.

Yeah, the 16 oz. soft drink thing was a real face palm. I'm inherently suspicious of all city deals with sports owners, given the history.

It's a completely shameless gift to the Wilpons. Anyone involved on the city's side should be dismissed. This is going to be a mess equivalent to New Jersey's Xanadu project.

Get rid of those squators. All for this build condos and make that into a neighborhood while creating jobs

The city had a half dozen developers submit bids for this. I don't know if there's any evidence that the Wilpons got any special treatment here, or that any of the other developers offered a better deal. The way it's set up, the city is supposed to pay for some infrastructure, such as sewers and sidewalks.

But the private developers are going to have to spend over $3 billion on development, including some of the costs of environmental cleanup. All in all, this is ultimately supposed to create several thousand permanent jobs and generate an additional over $100M per year in tax revenues.

As for the land, much of this fist phase is on land currently being used for Citi Field parking lots. And the city has apparently backed away from using emminent domain, saying they already own 95% of the land and hope to acquire the rest without having to resort to emminent domain.

Everybody hates eminent domain, but if a deal is made public and of owners of a tire shop can ask for 50 times what the land their shop is on is worth . . . at least having the threat of eminent domain can keep the prices reasonable. Nothing wrong with making a profit, but I think sometimes, when there's public knowledge of a project like this, it gives the property owners there an unfair advantage. - but that's just speculation on my part. Not sure exactly how this is being worked out with the people who own property there.

Public risk, private profit. America 2012

Except they were squators, didn't own or pay for the land

I know the area has been a general eye sore for decades and that what is there is not entirely legal but generalizing all of them as squatters is dehumanizing.

Wake me up when the redevelopment has the businesses that even touch the diversity that makes up that area.

I also do not want to generalize gentrification and redevelopment as a bunch of trust fund kids that homogenize the city and make it more unaffordable but people need to understand why now some people empathize with those ugly chop shops and are skeptical about this.

Sorry, this is really bothering me: the word is "squatter", not "squator".

i was doing it through my phone, kept auto spell checking on me

Those chop shops had always been good at disposing of bodies too... My Father in Law who was high in the ranks in customs and city security has always had a watch on that area

so that is Dehumanizing