This Week In Brooklyn: Coney Island, Atlantic Yards and The Feds

A crime scene in Prospect Heights/Photo by Zachary Goelman

This week in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Paper rounds up a few city council primary races, including Letitia James’ opponent Delia Hunley–Adossa, "a pro-Atlantic Yards neighborhood activist" who has raised an astonishing $22,585. 

Speaking of the yards, the Atlantic Yards Report has a great summary of Wednesday night’s meeting with representatives from Forest City Ratner and the Empire State Development Corporation.  They report that, "Representatives of Forest City Ratner (FCR) and the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) got thrown some hard questions—about the total amount of subsidies, the details of a cost-benefit analysis, and the absence of any site plan or arena renderings–and managed to evade or deflect many of them. In essence, they said the project–now $4.9 billion, previously $4 billion–could be approved by the ESDC board in September without such information being made subject to public scrutiny or comment."

A blog called Epichorus reports on a shooting in Prospect Heights that left two victims dead.  A detective tells the local blogger, "I’ve had white shirts show up at a scene, see the photographers, and tell us to put more evidence markers down on the street, so it looks like we’re really working this one hard or something. So we do that. And you take your pictures. Then we put the markers back and properly mark the scene and take our own photos. But it happens that when the case goes to court, a defense attorney will show the newspaper pictures don’t match our pictures, and ask who tampered with the crime scene? And I’m on the stand, and all I can do is testify that our photos are the right ones." A post on Brooklynian asks if there will be a community meeting on the issue.

McBrooklyn has a great round up of Coney Island redevelopment news.  The Brooklyn Eagle ran excepts from an AP story on Thor Equities’ Joe Sitt, who owns most of the land planned for redevelopment.  “I’m the stakeholder. I’m the guy who controls this — it’s my sandbox,” he told them.

Finally, YourNabe.com reports on the 14 Brooklynites, including a few prominent rabbis, that were rounded up in the recent federal investigation that also scooped up a number of New Jersey mayors and assembly members.