Under the city's redevelopment plan, it can condemn property for the project.
In 1998, the transit administration solicited proposals from developers for the property, and the project was awarded to A&R.
The rest will be used to buy property for the project and for other aspects of West Side development.
Others have questioned the city government's decision to sell Pfizer the property for the project for a token $10, to let the private New London Development Corporation use eminent domain to acquire properties around the Pfizer project for related development, and to give the company tax breaks that will phase in its assessment over 10 years.
The property is the project of Edward A. Lashins, a developer based in Armonk who, like a number of other developers, spent much of the mid-1980's building offices in the county on speculation, without having tenants lined up.
On Oct. 14, the Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments challenging the state's use of eminent domain to take private property within the project site on behalf of the developer.
Columbia University won a major court victory for its $6.3 billion plan to build a satellite campus in Harlem on Thursday, when New York's highest court ruled that the state could seize private property for the project.
"You used to be able to buy property around the project area for 500 Turkish lira per square meter eight years ago," said Keith Boyle of Lilimont Istanbul Real Estate, referring to a price of about $26 a square foot.
In most U.S. states, if a project developer represents to prospective purchasers, either explicitly or implicitly, that all the property in the project will be subjected to servitudes to carry out a development plan, the plan becomes binding when the first lot is sold subject to the servitudes.
For his tenacity, he was rewarded Wednesday by the state and the developer Forest City Ratner, which said it was losing millions every month that it could not take full possession of the property in the project footprint, with a nice chunk of change: $3 million to walk away from a 1,300-square-foot 1,300-square-foot 1,300-square-footars ago.Some have condod hem Mr. Goldstein a hero.
