At Atlantic Yards Site, the Last Holdouts Must Now Leave
It was a busy week next door, too. Just across Sixth Avenue, past the prefab apartments and satellite trucks, sits a squat gray warehouse that has stood since the 1930s and has been home to Atlantic Wool since 1997.
Inside, Aaron Piller, the second-generation president, was hurriedly sorting, stacking and selling off thousands of rolls of fabric, from $2-a-yard T-shirt cotton to $100-a-yard cashmeres.
“The more I sell, the less I have to move, not that I know where I’m going,” Mr. Piller said on Wednesday.
Five years ago, Atlantic Yards’s most vocal opponent and obstacle, Daniel Goldstein, agreed to walk away from his three-bedroom condominium for $3 million. His building then came down so that Bruce C. Ratner’s arena-and-apartments complex could rise.It is Mr. Piller and several other property owners who are keeping the bulldozers from their half-dozen buildings on the 22-acre site. But they all must be gone within the next month or two, by order of State Supreme Court, to make way for the second phase of the development.
The holdouts thought they had years ahead of them, given the expected delays from lawsuits and the reverberations of the recession. But last year Mr. Ratner’s firm, Forest City Ratner, sold a majority stake to Greenland Holdings, a company based in Shanghai. Greenland is eager to see the project, rebranded Pacific Park, completed in less than a decade; condemnations began last June. Those left must now leave.
“We’re so lucky to have found a partner who is impatient, just like we are, and their message to us is let’s get this done,” Forest City Ratner’s vice president for external affairs, Ashley Cotton, said in an interview. “We know our neighbors, we’re sympathetic to whatever experience they’re having, but this is really another enormous milestone on the path of Pacific Park.”
Jerry Campbell, one of two homeowners left, must soon hand over the keys to a pair of rowhouses that his grandfather bought in the 1940s and 1960s after immigrating from Barbados.
Sitting on a couch inside the tin-ceilinged living room of 493 Dean Street, the larger home, Mr. Campbell said he would gladly leave — if only his terms were met.
“I honestly had a firm belief in the rule of law and the project, which, as described, seemed a genuinely good thing for the neighborhood,” Mr. Campbell said, his Barbadian accent coming through (his mother moved back to Barbados and he grew up there). “As long as I could replace what I had afterward, I had no reason to object.”
His idea was novel, if unrealistic to everyone but him.When Forest City first approached Mr. Campbell in 2005 — the year after his grandfather died and left the homes to him and some overseas relatives — he countered its offer to buy the property with a swap. Mr. Campbell, who is handling the family’s negotiations, said he suggested that Forest City give him 12,000 square feet of space in the 27-story tower that would rise from his lots.
“I said they should make me a junior partner,” he recalled.
The proposal was rejected out of hand, but Mr. Campbell still clings to some kind of trade, rather than a sale. Like the homes, he has his grandfather to thank for that: “He said: ‘Jerry, look, I’ve been around. You don’t want that money. Money can be gone tomorrow. Tell them you want property, because you can always make do with that.’”
Or so they thought.
For Mr. Piller, it is his father, Louis, who gives the property at 666 Pacific Street special meaning. Louis Piller arrived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan by way of Paris after the Holocaust, having survived the Paszów concentration camp in Poland as the rest of his family perished. In 1954, he started a jobber business, buying, selling and recycling fabric scraps.
The business grew and he moved to Greene Street in SoHo, where it thrived until the rent tripled in the 1980s. With their first taste of gentrification, the Pillers resolved to always own their facilities. In 1986, they arrived in Brooklyn, in Fort Greene, and 11 years later they relocated across the street from the rail yards.
Mr. Piller vividly remembers the day the twin towers fell. “We were standing on the corner, watching in disbelief,” he said. “Not that we could now, since they ruined our view with that ugly arena.”The next humbling came a few years later, with the arrival of Forest City. It took a toll on Louis Piller, his son said.
“I don’t want to trivialize what happened by comparing this to the Holocaust,” Mr. Piller said, “but in the end, he felt like here was the government again, coming to take everything from him.” His father died in 2013.
What bothers both men more than having to leave is that Empire State Development, the state agency handling the eminent domain proceedings, is offering them less in compensation than Forest City once did.
“Take one look at this crazy market and tell me how can they say he’s worth less now than 10 years ago,” Jennifer Polovetsky, a lawyer representing Mr. Piller, said.
In condemnation cases, the government seizes the property first, then the negotiations begin, often with a low offer from the state. The owner then counters, and they either settle or let a judge sort it out.
“We will continue to work closely with the entire community, including the affected residents and businesses, to address and meet their needs and concerns,” said Marion Phillips III, president of the state’s Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation.
Both men may not like the state’s numbers, but ultimately they may be the ones who miscalculated the situation.
They were party to some of the lawsuits trying to stop Atlantic Yards, but unlike Mr. Goldstein, neither was particularly outspoken about it. Even so, Mr. Campbell said he would have done everything the same way.
“It’s not that I’m anti-Ratner,” he said. “I’m just for myself.”
As the cheering crowds stream by on the way to the arena, he may be the only one.