Another “Screw Staten Island” Moment
First, a little history:
Back when President Reagan was tossing the gauntlet at the Soviet bear’s feet and beefing up America’s military, part of that included expanding the Navy’s compliment of ships. Instead of basing the bulk of these forces at mega-bases, like those in Norfolk or San Diego, the plan included creating smaller naval stations around the country. We got one here on Staten Island because Team Molinari recognized bacon when it showed its snout. It drove almost every other elected official insane when it was first proposed. But later, when the Navy decided to mothball it, they tried, unsuccessfully, to keep it open.
It’s pretty much lain fallow since then, with the city spending over a decade trying to figure out what to do with the place, which commands spectacular, unobstructed views of lower NY Harbor from the Hudson River to the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and beyond. The infrastructure the Navy left behind slowly eroded from neglect, except for a couple of small buildings used as a court annex and a place to park various city vehicles. Oh, and for a brief, silly period, a bagel factory.
Enter Danny Aiello & friends
Actor, singer, native NY son, Aiello was the public face and member of a group of investors proposing to house an enterprise called Stapleton Studios, a movie studio/entertainment complex, at the Homeport. Their plan was to build a large, state-of-the-art film studio, to bring the movie production business back to NYC, which had pretty much been relegated to a place for grabbing exterior shots, and then producers fled north to Canada for the production work. Included in the deal would be support facilities for the Hollywoodies, a hotel (keep your enemies closer, but keep your film crew at the set!), restaurants and a marina. With no better idea before them, and Aiello’s group in possession of the closest thing anyone had ever presented as a business plan to revive the 36 acre site, the city agreed and signed a deal in January, 2002. Within a short while, in inexplicably calloused fashion, the city decided to kill their asses.
Well, not really inexplicable. This is Staten Island, after all.
So Stapleton Studios, with a deal from the city’s Economic Development Corp. tucked in their pockets, went about building their dream. They initially sunk $2 million into converting the refrigerated building that housed the bagel factory into a working soundstage to prove they meant business. The studio’s first production, “Max and Grace” was filming by the Fall of 2002. They were signing up more small, scale projects. They had Paramount Pictures showing interest in using their facilities to make a big-dollar flick called School of Rock. Everything was looking bright.
Meanwhile, over in Brooklyn, the Steiner family, through their Steiner Equities Group, had decided they would begin building a studio complex of their own at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The City had gone a bit movie studio-happy around this time…there is also a “vertical studio” project called “Studio NYC” planned for an office building in Manhattan that still on the books.
The Steiners (based in New Jersey) are Big Swinging Dicks, especially in the local political (read: Democratic) heirarchy (see here (bottom)). With Stapleton Studios off and running and Steiner squeezing Bobby DeNiro and Miramax out of the Navy Yard action, somebody at the EDC suddenly decided that maybe there was a glut of new sound stages being constructed. Somebody had to go. So of course it had to be the studio that was actually producing movies. When it was time to sign an extension to their development agreement, EDC skyrocketed the lease’s pricing high enough to blow Stapleton Studios straight to Mars.
The EDC insists it based the decision to screw Stapleton Studios on sloppy paperwork and the fact that a son of one of the investors–who had nothing to do with the project’s financing or management–had been indicted for conspiracy in a stock fraud case. He was such a felonious bastard the court system fined him one hundred bucks and told him “go to your room!” for four months. But that was excuse enough to kill the deal.
So Stapleton went to court. Their biggest question: What kind of deal is Steiner getting over at Brooklyn Navy Yard? You jacked our costs up so high and bad-mouthed us so bad you drove away potential clients, investors and partners who see the city pouring dough into helping Steiner get up and running…what kind of deal are those bastards getting? (It must be a pretty sweet one, since all these other tenants of the Navy Yard are getting booted to make way for the Steiners.) The EDC, an appointed outfit that does everything out of the public eye and never explains any of its decisions, said “piss off” and let NYC judges–not the most trusted bunch of jurists around when money and politics is involved–put Stapleton Studios in its place. You see, in NYC, the EDC never loses…once they say “fuck you, die,” you are dead.
Stapleton Studios is running out of courtroom options as judge after judge accedes to the EDC’s decree. The EDC monkeys have been busy for the past year deciding what they want to do with the Homeport once they’ve finally bludgeon Stapleton Studios into dust. They’ve got a spiffy new mish-mash of a plan similar to crap they’ve floated before. It’s centered around building 350 “loft-style” apartments that the Staten Island real estate market will immediate price up at ‘Yuppies Escaping Manhattan’ levels, with retail spaces and waterfront access that said yuppies will never like sharing with the public (like at the grandly planned, then scaled-back Bay Street Landing), but will still drive the neighborhood’s existing realty/retail scene bonkers. The permit fees for the athletic facilities will probably be too rich for your average sandlot leagues to afford. The planned cafes and restaurants will kill local joints. It’s got all the making of a disaster to make the Navy’s original abandonment look like a drill on how to kill a communities economy.
The EDC practically brags that for investing $66 million in helping to create this, the city won’t actually gain much of any revenue from the place, but the developers who lease the property at sweetheart prices (it’s in an “Economic Develpoment Zone’ which roughly translates to “pay jack shit taxes and utilities costs”) most certainly will. And guess what the EDC’s madcap plan could possibly also include, just to prove they’re a pack of twisted pricks?
You hit the nail on the head. I’m the founding partner of the Studio and have worked on the project for 8 years!!
I am so sad to read this. I am buying a house in Staten Island and See the potential.
OLD NEWS IS BAD NEWS:
I am buying a house in Staten Island and am doing some research and was sad for the workers of Staten Island to read about the squashing of Stapelton Studios which would have supplied some good paying jobs vs. minimum wage jobs for the restaurants and retail going in instead. Now Retail Corporations will make money while locals get a low paying service job. All those trendy studio people need to eat and retail and restaurants would have sprung up anyway. I am retired at 43 so it’s no skin off my back, but sad I’m buying a house into a community just like every other community I have lived in with a government and/or council who doesn’t THINK. In L.A. 1 studio supports 5 restaurants, stores, coffee houses, markets etc. Im sure some S.I. kid would have rather worked on a movie than as a bus boy and those service jobs would have been there anyway.
The truth of the matter is that Stapleton Studio’s Robert Marlowe Walker Jr. has a son named WalkerIII who is a convicted stock felon. He was banned from selling securites by the SEC as early as 1991, but continued in his securites business without interruption until he hooked up with a notorious and well known stock swindler named Abraham Salaman. It was Salaman’s contacts that caused Connecticut Governor to resign from office, and later arrested for his dealings with those connected to Salaman.
Robert M.Walker III was actively raising money for a company named Harbour Entertaiment, a company that was supposed to reap the benfits for its backers when Stapleton took off. Mr.Walker III collected as much as 1.25 million dollars from investors who believed they were to be part of Stapleton. The money disappeared as fast as the summer wind.
Mr.Walker was convicted with Mr.Salaman in a stock fraud scheme to which he was sentenced to one year in the Fort Dix Federal Prison. He then enticed one of the investors, a former Suffolk County police officer to invest his money and his family’s money to the tune of 1/4 million dollars.
He manufactured a false burglary report that he said happened on 12/24/01 where he said the above officer engineered the burglary that he lost up to 285K in cash and valuables. The next two days Walker made two phone calls to Suffolk Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau and told them that the officer could have been the only person who could have known the sophisiticated camera equipment he had hidden in his home to monitor that home. He would go on to tell IAB that the officer was a drug dealer. He was recruited by IAB to have the cop securing cociane for him. He did this because he knew the cop and other investors believed their investment was in peril. He then wired up his home with video equipment placed in his home by a private company that he never paid.
The object of the exercise was to place the officer in such fear and desperation to get his investment back that he would do most anything to accomplish that. It was then that he introduced the cop to two ‘hollywood investors’ whose money was needed to keep the investment solvent. The ‘investors’ were actually two undercover NYC police officers who were borrow from the NYPD just for this purpose. The cop refused this accomodation many times, and finally relented after believing he was not a drug dealer in that he didn’t procure the drugs for profit. All he wanted to do was to have these people invest money to protect his own investment. It was foolish, and of course, illegal.
Walker succeeded with two of his inteneded purposes:
1. to get the cop off of his back demanding a return of his investment by giving him other things to do, i.e., defending himself as a drug dealer to which he was sent to prison for 1-3 years, and for Walker to wiggle out of a jail sentence he had already been assigned to begin on June 4, 2002. He was successful in both endeavors.
It was only proven later that Walker lost no such amount that he claimed. At best he lost less than a few hundred dollars in cash and valuables, and there is reason to believe the safe had already been broken into by Walker himself when his estranged wife changed the combination in one last attempt to harass the thieving bastard.
I have been told that Mr.Walker took upwards of 1 million in restricted stock and out-placed it with a small investment company on Long Island known as Veluto Brothers. They, as well as the investors lost all their money as well.
Is it any wonder that Mayor Bloomberg said when he cancelled the 11th hour deal structured by America’s Mayor Giuiani before he left office, and after 9/11 accolodes for his ‘heroic’ efforts on that day, that Mayor Bloomberg would simply say when cancelling the deal in Mid-2000 that, “The City of NY doesn’t do business with crooks”.
There are some who were swindled out of their money that believe Stapleton was never about building a movie studio, but to get valuable zoning, lease, and other concessions that would boost the value of the land where Stapleton would stand and then sell it for upwards of a $40,000,000.00 profit.
It is also my understanding that Mr.Aiello had no investment in Stapleton, and his stake in it was the issuance of restricted stock that would have value if Stapleton succeeded. Which I don’t believe was ever the case. Mr.Aeillo was also known as a friend of Mr.Giuliani, and investors believed that it would open doors for Giuliani to grant those valuable considerations needed to make this project take off.
Pure and unadulterated BS.
Well constructed; not one link backing it up, though.
FAIL.