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BROOKLYN’S REAL NEWSPAPERS Including The Brooklyn Heights Paper, Carroll Gardens-Cobble Hill Paper, DUMBO Paper, Fort Greene-Clinton Hill Paper and the Downtown News Published every Saturday — online all the time — by Brooklyn Paper Publications Inc, 55 Washington St, Suite 624, Brooklyn NY 11201. Phone 718-834-9350 • www.BrooklynPapers.com • © 2005 Brooklyn Paper Publications • 18 pages •Vol.28, No. 36 BWN •Saturday, September 10, 2005 • FREE RATNER DOUBLES DOWN Higher bid still far short of MTA site’s value By Jess Wisloski The Brooklyn Papers Forest City Ratner this week doubled its bid for development rights over the Metropolitan 9-11 • FOUR YEARS LATER • 9-11 Transportation Authority’s Atlantic Avenue rail yards, but is still offering less than half of what the property is estimated to be worth, according to a published report. The right to build over the Long Island Rail Road storage yards in Prospect Heights is a crucial compo- nent of the development company’s plan to build a 19,000-seat professional basketball arena and 17 of- A WIDOW’S TALE fice and residential high-rises, including several sky- scrapers that would tower over the surrounding area. The development site of the proposed Atlantic Memoir recounts experience of 9-11 hero’s wife Yards is bounded by Dean Street and Flatbush, At- Callan / Tom lantic and Vanderbilt avenues. By Ajla Grozdanic Fontana recalled in her book of Citing unnamed sources, identified only as “two ex- The Brooklyn Papers the last words she spoke to her ecutives involved in the talks,” the New York Times husband. “That’s it. No profound on Wednesday reported that a special meeting might Americans will commemo- discussions. I can’t even remem- be held as soon as this Tuesday, Sept. 13, to approve rate this Sunday, Sept. 11, as the deal because developer Bruce Ratner had upped ber if I told him I loved him.” Papers File The Brooklyn the fourth anniversary of the his company’s bid from $50 million to $100 million. Fontana’s memoir records the Bruce Ratner doubled his bid for the Atlantic tragic day when the United events of 9-11, as she experi- An appraisal of the property for the MTA put its Yards site this week to $100 million. States was attacked on its own enced them, as well as her per- value at $214 million. soil and lost thousands of sonal journey of coping with The MTA put out a request for proposals, or RFP, innocent lives. grief, widowhood and the chal- for the site on May 26. Although Ratner’s bid was the Lapp nor Kalikow had been around when the Times For Marian Fontana the date lenges of being a single parent. A lower of the two bids submitted by the July 6 dead- story broke. also marks the 12th anniversary performer, writer and comedi- line, the MTA board on July 27 chose to negotiate ex- “I can’t verify that [the Times article is correct] be- of her marriage to David enne by profession, Fontana fills clusively with Ratner. cause I don’t know about it,” said MTA spokesman Fontana, a firefighter with Park her heartbreaking story with The competing bid, by Extell Development Com- Tom Kelly, a spokesman for the MTA. pany, was for $150 million for the three parcels, and Slope’s elite Squad 1 who per- love, friendship, compassion and, “Kalikow has been away and Lapp has not seen a as surprising as it might seem, offered to pay to build platforms above them. final [bid], so I don’t know,” said Kelly, who insisted ished in the line of duty on 9-11, The MTA board is made up of 17 appointees, most leaving her a widow and a single humor. that whatever information had been leaked was likely She writes about a priest who, of them direct or indirect appointees of Gov. George coming from the developer. mother to their then-5-year-old Pataki. upon learning that Sept. 11 marks “This is not an MTA source,” Kelly said. “The ‘of- son, Aidan. At the July 27 MTA hearing, the board’s chair, Pe- Fontana, 39, who has since be- her and David’s anniversary, ficials,’ as far as I can see, could be Ratner people; this ter Kalikow, read a prepared motion to further discuss could be their way of getting this out there,” he said, come a leading voice among the said, “God is incredibly tacky.” the bidding solely with Ratner, a Columbia Law See CASH on page 13 families of 9-11’s heroes and oth- Firefighter David Fontana with his son, Aidan. Fontana’s wife, She writes about going to one fu- School classmate of Pataki’s. The governor has been a er World Trade Center victims, Marian, has written a memoir about her 9-11 experience. neral after another, memorizing supporter of the Ratner plan since it was announced in will mark this year’s anniversary eulogies and laughing with other late 2003. widows over an increase in de- with the release of her book, “A of what happened.” planned to celebrate their eighth Forest City Ratner executives argued at the July 27 PAGE 7 Widow’s Walk: A Memoir of Fontana said that she was wedding anniversary by spend- mand for grief makeup and elab- meeting that their bid was greater despite only offer- 9/11” (Simon & Schuster; $24). pleasantly surprised at how well ing an undisturbed day together orate wreaths in the shape of golf ing $50 million up front, because it included $29 mil- On Sept. 9, she will be hosting a the personal memoir was re- walking around Manhattan and clubs, football jerseys, surf- lion in renovations of the rail yards (to help pay for private party for close family and ceived by both critics and the going to the Whitney Museum. boards, cigars, logos of bands their relocation required under the Ratner proposal), as friends — among whom she public. (The most recent issue of The couple’s plans were inter- and movies and even a Harley well as $20 million in environmental remediation of counts the former First Lady, Vanity Fair featured excerpts rupted before they even started, Davidson motorcycle. the property (which needs to be done in order to de- Sen. Hilary Clinton. from Fontana’s book.) when the first passenger jet But most of all, she writes velop the site for housing), $182 million to build a In an interview this week with “I’m pleased with how mov- crashed into one of the North about David, a loving father and platform (to build the housing and commercial prop- The Brooklyn Papers, Fontana ing it was for people,” she said. Tower, 10 minutes before husband, a courageous firefighter erties over the shifted rail yards), $25.4 million in said she wrote the memoir for “A Widow’s Walk” records David’s shift ended. Instead of with a passion for art and history, MTA operating expenses and $23 million in projected her son as a testament of her ex- Fontana’s personal journey, start- meeting Marian, David, who, a lifeguard and a beach lover. sales tax revenues. perience of that tragic day and ing early on the morning of Sept. Marian wrote, “would never miss Fontana spent his career at Squad The MTA board voted to give Forest City Ratner 45 the year that followed, because, 11, 2001, when she was rushing a fire,” was one of the 12 Squad 1, a specially trained firehouse days — until Sept. 10 — to negotiate exclusively with she said, she knew that she to drop off Aidan at school, so 1 members (both his shift of six that covers a broad terrain, in- Kalikow and Katherine Lapp, the executive director of would forget the details as the that she could make it to a Con- men and their relief shift) who cluding three quarters of Brook- the MTA and a former Pataki aide, leading to the $100 D’Onofrio fathers years passed. necticut Muffin coffee shop in answered their final rescue call at lyn, all of Staten Island and parts million, according to the Times report. “I really wrote it the whole Park Slope on time to meet the World Trade Center. of Lower Manhattan. Neither MTA nor Forest City Ratner officials would time with my son in mind,” she David, then 37, after his shift at “OK. I’ll see you at Connecti- “It was the most difficult thing I comment for this article. ‘Thumbsucker’ said. “So that he has a document the firehouse ended. The two cut Muffin in 10 minutes,” See 9-11 WIDOW on page 6 Additionally, an MTA spokesman said that neither Events mark 9-11 4th anniversary By Jess Wisloski on Sunday. The Brooklyn Papers In the following week, Congre- gation Mount Sinai will hold serv- Colliding with a natural dis- ices for “special remembrance and aster so different in nature but response, to come together and close in the scale of casualties, learn about what can be done,” the fourth anniversary of the said Potasnik, to connect 9-11 sur- terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, vivors with the victims of Hurri- 2001 bears an inextricable con- cane Katrina. nection to the floods of Louisi- The Church of the Assumption ana this past week. of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also Brooklynites and other New known as Assumption Parish, a Yorkers are revisiting through the Callan / Tom Roman Catholic church on Cran- suffering down South the pain of berry Street between Hicks and destruction, and remembrance of Henry streets in Brooklyn the thousands of lives lost when Heights, will hold a 12:15 pm airplanes turned into missiles and Mass in honor of all those who Mango / Greg smashed into the World Trade died on 9-11 and especially the Center towers.