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Fulton Street Mall

City Point Tax-Exempt Bond Financing

Testimony last updated September 10, 2009

Testimony to the New York City Capital Resource Corporation
on $20 million stimulus bond financing for City Point retail complex

September 10, 2009

New York City is fortunate to be receiving tax-exempt bond financing under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for the vital purpose of restarting stalled development projects. The issue is whether the City is driving a hard enough bargain and sufficiently advancing public objectives given its investment in providing this source of financing. In choosing Albee Development LLC to be a recipient of the bonds’ benefits, however, the New York City Capital Resource Corporation and other public authorities involved with City Point must recognize the need to make this project work as part of a vibrant and diverse mix of retailers in a shopping district that hundreds of thousands of Brooklyn residents depend on. In exchange for taxpayers’ support to make this project possible, the Capital Resource Corporation must make sure that Fulton Street continues to be a place where independent retailers can thrive.

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"Street Value" Profiles Fulton Mall Work

News last updated July 7, 2010

Street Value, a new book by Rosten Woo and Meredith TenHoor with Damon Rich (Princeton Architectural Press), delves into the history, streetscape, culture and politics of Brooklyn's Fulton Street Mall. It includes an interview with the Pratt Center's Vicki Weiner and Randall Mason of Minerva Partners, who collaborated on a Pratt Center report recommending strategies for the Fulton Street Mall's preservation. Weiner and Mason sought to preserve not only the architectural legacy of Brooklyn's premier shopping street but also its role as a home to local retailers serving a large and diverse base of longtime customers.

As Weiner told Woo: "Our big 'ah-ha' moment in the analysis of the data happened when we read through and analyzed the shopper surveys and found that a lot of the perceptions of the mall that we'd heard before were just not true - i.e., it's not successful, it's all discount stores."

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