Acadia Realty Trust, the developer behind the mixed-use development City Point in Downtown Brooklyn, is accused of lying in a newspaper advertisement. The ad attacks Assemblyman Walter Mosley for opposing Acadia’s 1.9 million-square-foot, 650-unit rental project, alleging he is keeping “48 desperately-needed low income units,” from the market.
Acadia bought space in local weekly newspaper Our Time Press to run “letters” from Isabella Lee of the Whitman Tenants Association and Mary Andrews of the Farragut Tenants Association in support of City Point, Mosley said. But Lee and Andrews say they had no role in writing or signing the published letter, the New York Daily News reported.
“This latest and most brazen lie … demonstrates Acadia’s deception and desperation,” Mosley told the paper.
Mosley was part of a coalition of unions, community groups and Brooklyn residents that filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court in the spring in an effort to halt construction at the site, as previously reported. The suit claims that some workers are earning $7.25 per hour with no benefits.
“It’s unfortunate that Assemblyman Mosley continues to deny the fact that City Point is currently providing good wages of at least $20 an hour to all workers, and has achieved extraordinary levels of minority and local workforce participation and construction contracting,” Acadia told the News in a statement.
The towers at the corner of Flatbush and DeKalb avenues should be complete in 2016. [NYDN] — Mark Maurer