The Witt-y guy. (Aaron Short)

It looks like there is some competition on the Barnes and Noble shelves for pride of Atlantic Yards place. Norman Oder has been hard at work on a book about the Brooklyn megaproject for the past year, but now his chief rival has thrown his pen into the ring.

According to the Daily News, Steve Witt is working on a roman a clef lampooning the development saga—as if the truth weren't already stranger than fiction. Mr. Witt calls his take "gonzo," but for critics like Mr. Oder, who calls him "the notorious Steve Witt," might find it strange that he has chosen not to play the story straight.

The book follows a flat-broke subway musician who stumbles into contact with a high-powered developer named Thaddeus Hoover - a thinly veiled take on developer Bruce Ratner.

He ends up playing project supporters and opponents off against each other as he plots to get a hip hop song he’s written to a rapper dubbed Zack-J, based on Nets minority owner Jay-Z.

Witt said he found the project’s twists and turns better suited to an off the wall fictional take than a scholarly account. The story unfolds over six months leading up to the groundbreaking for the new Nets arena, but takes some artistic liberties. “It’s definitely a gonzo telling of it,” Witt said.

Who needs facts when you've got a great story?

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Prefab can even look cool! (Photo: Inhabitat)

The city needs to build. We are running out of apartments (more on that later), and part of the reason, argues a new report out from the Regional Plan Association, is the cost of construction in New York City. At a fiery breakfast this morning, developers, builders and labor unionists debated the report, which places a good deal of blame on the latter's ostensibly intransigent work rules. We're planning another post later on the meat of the meeting, but one subject in particular bears mentioning on its own.

In the past, The Observer has looked at the potential for the city to revolutionize its construction practices through prefabricated buildings. It's been a dream of architects and builders for nearly a century, almost since the first Model-T rolled off the line, but it has had limited impact on construction in the country, and almost none whatsoever in New York.

But that changed when Bruce Ratner began pursuing a prefab tower for Atlantic Yards, which at 32 stories would be the largest such structure in the world. It gets very much at the issues brought up today, namely labor costs, because not only are the materials for prefabricated building cheaper, but less skilled laborers are needed to produce the projects.

Our pal Norman Oder asked a question of the panel about the prefabulous building in question, and the response from Jeff Levine, chairman of Douglaston Development, was telling. "It should act as a warning bell," he said. "Just as our elected officials are telling us that the high cost of oil is beneficial to alternative sources of energy, whether it be wind or  nuclear. But the reality is, we cannot build the perfect cost scenario, as evidenced by the lack of product going up. Having said that, alternatives are being sought. At some point, if it's not non-union, then it's modular. A solution will be found. We have to live somewhere."

So is modular construction coming around? Mr. Oder suggested in asking his question that this may just be a bargaining tactic on Forest City Ratner's part, but whatever the case, it appears it may become reality, if not at Atlantic Yards, then somewhere in the city.

Even the unions are reluctantly gearing up for it, said Robert Ledwith, the business manager and financial secretary for Metallic Lathers Local 46. "We are already in discussion about modular construction," he said, referring to recent meetings among the union leaders. "We are aware of the technological change, we want to grasp it and make it work for ourselves. So that whatever Bruce Ratner does regarding modular construction, we are prepared for it."

The look of the city, and the fate of a good portion of its middle-class, could be in for some big changes.

Yesterday, State Supreme Court Justice Marcy Friedman ruled that the Empire State Development Corporation erred in producing a modified timetable for the project last year, when it finally won state approval, and thus violated the state's environmental review process.

The courts have criticized the project before, but none have ever ruled against it, arguing that it is the legislature and its constitutionally mandated authorities, such as the ESDC, whose responsibility is to determine right from wrong when it comes to eminent domain and the like. This time, though, Friedman found the fecklessness to be actionable:

The Development Agreement has cast a completely different light on the Project build date. Its 25 year outside substantial completion date for Phase II and its disparate enforcement provisions for failure to meet Phase I and II deadlines, read together with the renegotiated MTA Agreement giving FCRC until 2030 to complete acquisition of the air rights necessary to construct 6 of the 11 Phase II buildings, raise a substantial question as to whether ESDC's continuing use of the 10 year build-out has a rational basis.

Plaintiff and Atlantic Yards chief adversary Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn was thrilled with the news, but others were skeptical it would matter much, except for posterity. "Nothing was announced today that's going to impact construction," Jeff Linton, a spokesman for Forest City Enterprises, told Businessweek.

Yet skeptic of skeptics Norman Oder believes that the requirement for ESDC to issue new findings could impact the project's later phases, which are already struggling, and he even points out today that, at its Investor Day, Forest City showed marked caution toward the ruling.

If you are generous enough to lump The Observer in with the rest of the MSM, then -- full disclosure -- we have fallen short, too. But for two brief mentions, the Real Estate Desk has yet to take a serious look at the EB-5 saga. Perhaps it is time to address this "dereliction of duty," to quote Mr. Oder, and closely consider this latest twist in this most tangled of projects.

The EB-5 program has been around for two decades, and there is nothing particularly pernicious about it. While the idea of "selling" visas sounds sketchy, the program is intended not only to drum up foreign capital for domestic projects but also to employ American workers -- which is where the first bit of controversy arises. As Mr. Oder explained in a thorough summation of his work for Huffington Post:

The NYCRC's agents in China advertise that this "project" would generate 7,696 jobs, far more than the required total of 4,980, or ten per investor. [Each visa is required to create or retain 10 jobs.]

The math doesn't seem to work. Should 7,696 jobs be produced by $249 million, that suggests that the entire $4.9 billion project would result in some 154,000 jobs. Nor should the 7,696 total be attached to the base $1.448 billion "project," since the arena's already funded. Could this investment be seen as saving future jobs? No, because they would depend on other funding streams, like tax-exempt housing bonds.

In other words, the required job levels of the EB-5 program are unlikely to be met by the Atlantic Yards project, at least in Mr. Oder's estimation. Furthermore, he suspects that the Chinese investors are being misled into thinking they're funding parts of the project, like the arena and public infrastructure, that are already funded, as opposed to the riskier pieces for which their money is actually needed, namely the apartment towers planned for the post-arena phases of the project.

Bruce Ratner has said he expects to break ground on one tower by early next year with another to follow six months after. Given the newfound uncertainty in the markets, a burst of foreign investment could be just what he needs to realize those goals.

That said  -- and even Mr. Oder seems to admit this -- it is not clear that Forest City Ratner or the state are doing anything illegal here. Just because Mayor Bloomberg, Marty Markowitz, Jay-Z and the Nets are shilling for this project (as hilarious graphics Mr. Oder turned up show) does not mean they are doing anything wrong. In fact, it tends to fit with the behind-the-scenes, bending-the-rules nature that has plagued the project from its inception.

Then again, his frustration with the media for ignoring the story is understandable. Illegal or not, the papers have written about far more minor infractions by developers, politicians and joe sixpacks all over the city. Why they continue to ignore this story is a mystery. Whether they can for much longer remains to be seen.

As Mr. Oder recently told The Observer, he has plenty more bombshells to come. "This story is far from over," he said.

mchaban [at] observer.com / @mc_nyo

But that is exactly what Mr. Oder is setting out to do, when he announces later today—in his 3,748th post—that he is leaving his full-time job (that's right, he's got a day job) at Library Journal to dedicate himself to writing a book about Atlantic Yards.

The Real Estate Desk has a call in to Mr. Oder for more details, so check for an update soon.

UPDATE: "It would be nice if I were David Remnick and could get up in the morning and finish a monumental best-selling book in my pre-office hours. But I need to go back and really wrap my head around this."

And that is why Norman Oder is leaving his job of 14 years to strike out on his own. He doesn't even have a book contract yet. "I'm giving up significant income to do this," Mr. Oder said on the phone from his Park Slope home not far from the Atlantic Yards site. "O.K., not significant income. I'm giving up reasonable income." (As fellow journalists, the Real Estate Desk can attest to the truth of this statement.) Mr. Oder said he has saved up some money and can make do by living frugally--in New York, no less--though he will continue to supplement his income with his New York Like a Native tour service.

But why quit? After all, this is a guy who regularly posts hundred- to thousand-word, exhaustively reported blog items before 6:30 each morning. Putting together a book should be a breeze. "I'm tired. Very, very tired," he said. But that can't be the only reason.

"I think the story needs to be told," Mr. Oder said in his demure way. "It's been told in dribs and drabs. It will be mythologized, and it will be spun, and parts of the story will get lost. The story needs to to be synthesized and made sense of. And made compelling."

Therein lies the challenge--how to make DEISes, State Appeals Court cases, and eminent domain sexy. No one knows this stuff better than Mr. Oder. He had yet another blockbuster scoop this morning (more on that in an upcoming post) that was so juicy it was apparently leaked to the Journal to stem the bleeding. But can he write a best-selling book?

"I don't profess to be writing the next Power Broker," Mr. Oder said. "I hope it will be substantial and interesting." He points to Times Square Roulette and Little Pink House as inspirations, but says the former is too long and the latter "scants on policy." What he so loves about the prospects of the book is all the complex pieces involved.

"It's about a certain project in a certain time. It's about development in a certain time. It's about Brooklyn in a certain time. It's a story about our time. It's got politics and planning and architecture and neighborhoods. And journalism, that will be a big subplot." (The blog started as the Times Ratner Report, a critique about the lack of coverage of the project.) "This is a story about a whole bunch of things."

Here's hoping he can get that all sorted out before the arena opens in the fall of 2012. It would make a way better door prize/giveaway than Ratner bobbleheads.

mchaban@observer.com

Norman Oder takes some questions on Atlantic Yards.

The Goldman Sachs p.r. offensive gets borderline offensive.

Would NBC Universal really go public?

Famous people will put on scrappy plays.

A female writer recalls the bad old days at the Late Show.

David Chang plays nice.

Choire Sicha uses graphs to explain the way newspapers write about the death of newspapers.

Everyone is getting on famously at The Times.

Doree Shafrir chats with Gail Collins on Jezebel.

Attention Mets fans: Philly.com wants to know why you hate the Yankees.

The Nook is hot, despite its name.

In a segment of the Independent Film Channel series Media Project, former Daily News reporter Deborah Kolben says she was barred from writing about Atlantic Yards after the the developers complained about her coverage.

Kolben makes her claim around the 4:21 mark, prompting one of the movie’s narrators to confront Dunn outside his home.

“I don’t even know who you’re talking about,” Dunn says. When pressed, he adds, “You obviously are not an editor, right? I run a newspaper. I can do what I like.”

Norman Oder has more on Kolben and Atlantic Yards.

The Real Estate has calls into Forest City Ratner and will update this post when it gets a response.

- Matthew Schuerman

The Real Estate's Matthew Schuerman recently had coffee with the guy who is showing how this project is costing the public more and giving it less.

The Real Estate: Daily News columnist Errol Louis once called you "The Mad Overkiller," and NoLandGrab calls you that, too, albeit tongue-in-cheek. What do you think about being called that?

Norman Oder: I think it is sort of amusing and encouraging, because it implies that I care about this enough to look really, really carefully. I think that I would be less of a mad overkiller if we lived in a city with a daily devoted to Brooklyn. Can you imagine that a project of this size received just one op-ed in the Times? So, if I write versions of op-eds, does that make me the mad overkiller or does that mean I am filling a vacuum that should be filled?

To read more, jump.

TRE: Tell me a bit about your start in journalism.

Oder: I was on my college newspaper, the Yale Daily News. I took a class, I think I it was pretty important, about my thoughts about journalism, with John Hersey. He said something about how journalists have a tripartite responsibility. You have to be responsible to yourself, to your subject, and to your audience. What that means is that you really want to write things that are as thorough and complete as possible.

I ended up going to Charleston, W.Va., and worked for the Charleston Gazette. I covered a lot of different things. When the Bhopal disaster occurred in India, the only other place where they made the same chemical was outside Charleston, and I ended up covering the chemical industry partly because no one else was covering it. It was just a void, which is a big parallel.

TRE: What do you do at Library Journal?

Oder: I'm a news editor. I write news. I write features. I edit news. I edit features. I cover funding, legislation, intellectual freedom.

TRE: How old are you?

Oder: 45

TRE: How did you get started on the Atlantic Yards Report?

Oder: In March of '04, I went to a meeting in one of the schools in Park Slope and [Forest City Ratner executive] Jim Stuckey was there, BUILD was there, and someone from [architect Frank] Gehry's office was there. I thought, 'Why are they selling this thing so hard to us?' And then at the end of November '04, there was a public hearing of community boards. I went with a couple of friends and again, 'What's going on here?' And then in '05, I wrote three letters to The New York Times criticizing their coverage of Atlantic Yards, and, of course, they were ignored.

And so I decided that I was going to write an article about the Times' failure to cover this project. I proposed an article for Extra, which is the magazine of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. The day they rejected it for being too local was the day that the Times came out with 'Instant Skyline Added to Arena Plan.' I was like, 'Instant Skyline'? We knew there was going to be a skyline.

I thought I was going to write this 20-page paper. It turned out to be this massive thing that nobody read, and some of it could have been more judicious and some of it stands up enormously well, like the error about downtown Brooklyn, which they finally corrected.

TRE: How many people read your blog?

Oder: I have no idea. I don't have a counter. I know that people who are very interested in the project read the blog, people in the neighborhoods, people at the developer's office, various people dealing with this in government and nonprofits. One person said, 'You know, I wasn't able to go to that event, but I was pretty confident that you would cover it pretty thoroughly.'

TRE: How much time do you spend on your blog?

Oder: At the time the [Draft Environmental Impact Statement] came out in July, I said to interviewers it was 20 to 25 hours a week. Since that point, it's been 30 to 35 probably. I used to review books, and I don't review books any more. Every year for the past seven, eight, nine years, I have taken a significantly lengthy international vacation, and last year I didn't. I don't have a wife and kids. If I had a wife and kids, it would be much harder.

TRE: What's your relationship like with the project's opponents?

Oder: My relationship is, we talk, and some of them talk to me more than others. But I don't speak for them and they don't speak for me. They like a lot of what I do. Sometimes they don't like what I do, or they don't like aspects of what I do.

I'll give you one example. The judge came out with a decision that said the demolitions are OK, and she was going to remove the lawyer from the case, and Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn put out a press release that said, 'Victory! Remove lawyer from the case,' and, parenthetically, 'demolitions.' I did get one opponent that day who said, 'I saw what you wrote. You really should have emphasized the lawyer--that's the big part of the story.' And I was like, 'Well, that's my judgment.'

TRE: Do you have ambitions to turn this into a book?

Oder: I have interest in making it a magazine article. I submitted it to The Nation, The New Yorker, Salon--not even a 'no thank you'--well, I got a 'no thank you.' It's a little hard to get your grip around, and I'm not Jonathan Lethem. He got a piece in Slate. I do think it's worth a book. I know I can't do the 360-degree version of the book in which you get inside Gehry's office, but there is a lot out there in terms of the public events, all these documents. There is a lot of a narrative there. It just needs to be woven together and contextualized.

Mayor Bloomberg's preliminary capital budget, released last week, has $586 million in funds set aside for the stadiums, up from an original $360 million, according to the Village Voice. And this funding doesn't include tax and lease breaks.

Play ball, indeed.

- Tom Acitelli