NYCkayaker interesting read on chelsa pier subsidization by nyc

[mike]

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:f8ntmeQf8KIJ:www.gothamgazette.com/

Reconstruction Watch - Lower Manhattan Development Corporation profiles
ROLAND W. BETTS - Appointed by Gov. Pataki
Roland W. Betts is a film financier and a real estate developer who
helped George W. Bush
become wealthy through their 1989-1998 shared ownership of the Texas
Rangers major league
baseball team. Betts is the developer of Chelsea Piers, the mammoth
sports and entertainment
complex on the Lower Manhattan Hudson waterfront. He also co-founded
Silver Screen
Management, a film financing company. Betts identifies himself as a
liberal Democrat, yet he
committed to raise $100,000 or more for Bush's 2000 campaign.
Betts and his business partner Thomas Bernstein are part of President
Bush's inner coterie from
Yale. According to Betts, "[t]he conventional wisdom on George is that
the turning point of his
life was giving up drinking. I don't believe that. The turning point in
his life was buying the
Texas Rangers, being successful with the Texas Rangers." When the
partners sold the team in
1998, Bush received $15 million.
A September 24, 2000 article in The New York Times points out that the
Rangers investment was
immensely profitable in part because Betts and his partners "charmed and
bullied the city of
Arlington into giving them a great deal, with the local taxpayers paying
more than $135 million
to help build the Rangers a stadium." Key to that deal was the 1991
passage of a sales tax
referendum by the voters of Arlington; Bush, as team president, played
the most public role
advocating for the referendum.
The son of a wealthy investment banker, Betts grew up in Syosset, Long
Island. He received
degrees from Yale University and Columbia Law School. Between college
and law school,
influenced by the culture of the sixties, Betts spent seven years in
Harlem and taught in public
schools. He met his wife, a teacher from a poor black family, during
that time.
After graduating from law school, Betts joined the entertainment
department of the New
York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton and Garrison. There he met
Bernstein; they
became long-term business partners. The two founded Silver Screen
Management in
1983 and raised $83 million in a limited partnership to help Home Box
Office produce
feature films. Between 1985 and 1991, Silver Screen raised $1 billion
for 70 Disney
films.
Betts and Bernstein launched their next project in 1992, the $100
million Chelsea Piers sports
and entertainment complex in Lower Manhattan. The partners invested
$11.7 million themselves
and raised another $17 million from friends and family. While the
project was largely privately
financed, it involved payments in lieu of taxes that were not due for
two decades; a large part of
the rent was also deferred for three years. The New York Dept. of
Transportation owns the piers
and had used it for parking before Betts and Bernstein redeveloped it.
The project was criticized
for cost overruns and lack of public participation. The two other
competing bidders for the
project also criticized the state for selecting Betts' group.
Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried denounced the deal as having been
"negotiated entirely in
secret," particularly the fact that the initial 20-year lease had been
extended to 49-years. At the
public hearing convened later, Gottfried said that, "The reason for the
extension of the lease is
Page 11
Reconstruction Watch - Lower Manhattan Development Corporation profiles
Roland Betts - continued
simply so that Chelsea Piers Management can make more money. The interim
use of this land is
being converted into a virtual sale of this land. I don't think this
should be tolerated."
The Clean Air Campaign and other community groups criticized the project
for having too little
open space. Despite the disagreements, Betts and Bernstein persuaded the
community board and
legislators to approve a project that would focus on retail and
recreational activities, rather than
high-rise residential buildings that have anchored other waterfront
developments.
Betts is a shrewd and convincing negotiator with extraordinary
interpersonal skills. Council
member Thomas Duane said of his experience in negotiating with Betts
over Chelsea Piers,
"[Betts and Bernstein] are unusual because they come to meetings with
people who are opposed
to their plans. Usually developers aren't at the table with the
community. They just send their
lawyers."