This Morning With Bruce
Bruce Ratner (whom we snapped this morning with his successor as CEO of Forest City Ratner, MaryAnne Gilmartin, at a ULI event at Shearman & Sterling's 599 Lex office) launched Brooklyn's renaissance with the 3.7M SF MetroTech and capped it with Atlantic Yards and the Nets (despite a non-basketball pedigree: a 5'3" dad and 5'1" mom). Along the way, he brought big-box retail and megaplex movie theaters to New York City. He also attributes Brooklyn's success to NYC's growth in intellectual capital, a national return to urbanism, and BK's solid housing stock. The future of NYC will involve finding land and cost-efficient ways to build housing and getting a handle on the direction of the digital industry here. It'll also involve him, considering he asserts that "68 is the new 25."
