Don’t fork over money to reserve seats for the Brooklyn Nets just yet.
Developer Bruce Ratner is running into trouble securing funding for his controversial $4 billion Atlantic Yards project, which would bring an NBA arena for Ratner’s Nets and 16 skyscrapers with residential and commercial space to Prospect Heights, according to court documents obtained by The Post.
The papers, filed Friday by Ratner’s firm in an attempt to speed up the appeal process in a lawsuit by project opponents, reveal for a first time that the biggest development in Brooklyn’s history is in jeopardy because of dragging litigation and a slumping fiscal market.
“The credit markets are in turmoil at this time . . . There is a serious question as to whether, given the current state of the debt market, the underwriters will be able to proceed with the financing for the arena while the appeal is pending,” one affidavit says.
The document says that although financing isn’t locked up, Goldman Sachs “has been selected” as lead underwriter on the bond financing of the arena, estimated at “several hundred million dollars.”
As The Post reported last year, the proposed 18,000-seat arena is slated to be called the Barclays Center through a record $400 million naming-rights deal. It would be formally owned by a local development corporation set up by the Empire State Development Corp. and leased to an affiliate of Ratner’s firm.
The court papers contend Ratner and the new corporation “are likely to encounter significant difficulties and cost increases in concluding the bond financing that is essential to the arena’s completion” should the appeal not be decided quickly.
Bruce Bender, a vice president for Ratner’s firm, said in a statement the company is committed to building Atlantic Yards, and “regardless of the opponents’ delay tactics, we will continue to move forward as quickly as possible.”
But Jeffrey Baker, the opponents’ attorney, said the financial market knows “how much of a risk” the project is when the litigation is factored in.
The papers were filed by Ratner’s company regarding a suit by opposition group Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn that alleges the project was approved by the state in December 2006 without a proper environmental review.
The case is now before an appellate panel in Manhattan after Ratner won a lower-court ruling. Develop Don’t Destroy is also appealing a decision in a federal suit it filed opposing the use of eminent domain to take private land for the 22-acre project.
While preliminary work on Atlantic Yards began in March 2007, construction on the arena hasn’t started. The Nets recently announced that their anticipated move from the Meadowlands to Brooklyn has been pushed back from late 2009 to sometime in 2010.
Project opponents say they believe the litigation will make reaching the new goal difficult.