Ratner touts Net
gains to nabe

BY DEBORAH KOLBEN
DAILY NEWS WRITER

Developer Bruce Ratner promised free basketball tickets, a day-care center and affordable apartments yesterday as part of a deal to let him build a $3.5 billion arena and housing complex in downtown Brooklyn.

"This ... is historic and something warm to my heart," Ratner said at a Brooklyn waterfront ceremony.

The legally binding document - the first of its kind in the city - is based on the landmark Staples Center agreement in Los Angeles. While he still needs city approval, Ratner won the backing of eight community groups by signing the pact.

Terms of the agreement, which was also signed by Mayor Bloomberg, require 35% of the 8,500 construction jobs to go to minority workers and another 10% to women.

For each game, 54 tickets and one luxury box will be set aside for community residents. The arena also will be available to community groups for 10 events each year at "reasonable rent."

Ratner bought the New Jersey Nets last year and hopes to move them to a 19,000-seat arena at Flatbush and Atlantic Aves.

Critics charge too many businesses and residents will be displaced because of the controversial project.

The largest private development in Brooklyn history also includes soaring office towers and up to 7,300 apartments in more than a dozen high-rise buildings.

Half of the rental units are promised to low- and middle- income tenants, and a day-care center is planned.

The city and state have pledged $200 million in public money for the development.

The agreement was signed less than a week after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling upheld the right of government to condemn land for private development - which is what Ratner may need to build the 21-acre project.

"The Atlantic Yards project will be the real crown on the county of Kings," Bloomberg said.

But Bettina Damiani of Good Jobs New York, a watchdog group that monitors how government subsidies are spent, said the eight groups that signed off on the deal don't fully represent the community.

"It's a good-faith effort, but it falls short," she said. "Where are the unions? Where are the environmental groups?"