Atlantic Yards holdouts refuse to leave, force postponed Nets sale

Developer Bruce Ratner and a rendering of the Barclays Center at AY

There are a few holdouts left in the footprint of the New Jersey Nets’ new home in Downtown Brooklyn, and despite losing their bid to block the state’s use of eminent domain to boot them from the site, they’re still not going down without a fight. Last month, the state sent letters to the home and business owners saying they had to leave by April 3. The letters were ignored because the state hadn’t yet paid for the seized land, so eviction proceedings couldn’t get off the ground, plus, the holdouts are challenging the value of the properties. Evictions could take months, and in the meantime, the residents are holding up the sale of Bruce Ratner’s majority stake in the Nets to Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov. The NBA Board of Governors announced yesterday that it would indefinitely postpone a scheduled April 16 vote on the sale until “a firm date is set for the state of New York to take full possession of the arena site.” Ratner broke ground on the new $800 million Barclays Arena in Atlantic Yards last month and is looking to move the team there by 2012. [Post]