Bruce Ratner
From the May issue: For a developer who prides himself on building with a “social mission,” the bruising battle to break ground on the mammoth Atlantic Yards project has not been easy — to say the least.
Over the last eight years, Bruce Ratner has been repeatedly excoriated by community activists and Brownstone Brooklynites, attacked in the press, and called everything from a “liar” to a “serial eminent domain abuser and corporate welfare queen.”
If you type the words “Bruce Ratner” and “scumbag” into Google, you get 567 hits.
It’s a strange twist of fate for the affable, rumpled Cleveland native, who spent his summers at Columbia Law School working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the rest of his 20s and 30s as a consumer advocate, defending the poor from the scams of small-time hucksters and corporate con men. [more]
