Negative role model Joe Biden's four-letter influence has taken hold, at the corner of Flatbush and St. Marks, where mischievous Brooklyn protested developer Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards gentrification party today. Ratner is not amused. But everyone else is!

It's been six years since real estate developer Bruce Ratner first proposed Atlantic Yards and now one of the last remaining legal obstacles preventing its construction has been swept aside by the New York State Court of Appeals. No need to worry about booking Nets tickets just yet, though. The arena won't be ready until June 2012 at the earliest. [NYT]

• Clive Davis is spreading out at the Ritz Tower. The legendary music exec, who already lives in a duplex on the 36th and 37th floors, paid $1.125 million for a two-bedroom apartment in the Park Avenue building. [Cityfile]
• Richard Bressler, Viacom's former CFO and a now a partner at Thomas H. Lee Partners, has unloaded his duplex at 850 Park. The five-bedroom co-op, which Bressler purchased for $9.75 million in 2005 and put on the market for $13.5 million in March, sold for $11.4 million. [Cityfile]
• Two months after Bruce Ratner sold his Montauk estate for $10 million, the real estate developer has picked up a more modest weekend retreat in Long Beach. Ratner paid $2 million for the three-bedroom oceanfront home. [NYO]

It's official. The richest man in Russia, Mikhail Prokhorov, has taken control of the New Jersey Nets. The 44-year-old oligarch, who is worth $9.5 billion according to Forbes, signed a $200 million deal today with real estate developer/Nets owner Bruce Ratner that will make him the principal owner of the team, as well as a major investor in the Nets' long-delayed new home in Brooklyn. This makes Prokhorov the first foreign owner of an NBA team who isn't Canadian, and the "the only NBA owner who can dunk," according to Prokhorov. And the tri-state area now has its very own Mark Cuban, clearly. [NYT]

• Blackstone Group co-founder Steve Schwarzman and his wife Christine have put their East Hampton home on the market. The 2.1-acre property, which the couple purchased for $2.3 million in 1996, is listed for $7.2 million. The couple will hardly be homeless if and when they sell it. The Schwarzmans are finishing up construction work on the much larger estate in Water Mill they agreed to buy in 2005 for $34 million. [WSJ, BHS]
• Developer Bruce Ratner has sold his 4,500-square-foot home in Montauk to art dealer David Zwirner for $10 million. He's reportedly looking for a "less pricey" estate in Quogue. [NYP]
• Actress Molly Shannon has sold her apartment at 66 Ninth Avenue for $2.61 million. The three-bedroom pad, which Shannon bought for $1.6 million in 2003, had been listed most recently for $2.85 million. [Real Deal]

The MTA approved the deal that will allow Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner to defer $100 million in payments to the state over more than two decades, instead of paying it all upfront. Critics took to the podium before today's vote to deride the deal as a "massive bailout." And, shockingly, the MTA didn't pay any attention to the last-minute counterbid that landed in its lap when the main Atlantic Yards opposition group, Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, "tried to upstage the meeting by offering $120 million for the development rights over the Vanderbilt Yard." [Brooklyn Paper]

In 2005, Bruce Ratner agreed to pay $100 million to build his controversial Atlantic Yards on state-owned land. Under terms of a new deal that was revealed just this week (and goes to a vote tomorrow): Ratner will only have to pay the MTA $20 million upfront, and he'll get to spread out the other $80 million over the next 21 years. Critics of the deal are up in arms about the compromise, per usual, but there's some good news: Forest City Ratner, says it will cough up an extra $200,000 a year to stamp "Barclays Center" to the Atlantic Ave.-Pacific St. subway station. Small miracles! [NYDN]

Developer Bruce Ratner's plans to erect a $1 billion, Frank Gehry-designed Nets arena in the middle of Brooklyn isn't happening. Ratner is planning to move ahead with a new, cheaper design, one that will end up costing $200 million less. Don't expect to look as pretty, though: "Officials who have seen the design say that while it resembles Conseco Fieldhouse it also bears a likeness to an 'airplane hangar.' [NYT]

Law & Order's Mariska Hargitay turns 45 today. Developer Bruce Ratner is turning 64. Broadway heir James L. Nederlander Jr. is 49. Citigroup investment banking chief (and Obama BFF) Raymond McGuire turns 52. Tiffani-Amber Thiessen is 35. Legendary French actress Jeanne Moreau is 81. And Princess Caroline of Monaco is turning 52. Weekend birthdays after the jump!

The Observer sits down with attorney Jonathan Mechanic, widely considered to be one of the city's best-connected real estate attorneys. His clients? How about Jerry Speyer, Steve Roth, Stephen Green, Mike Bloomberg, Bruce Ratner, Doug Durst, Mort Zuckerman, Harry Macklowe, Miki Naftali, William Zeckendorf, Gary Barnett, Bill Rudin, Donald Trump, Kent Swig, Joe Moinian, and Larry Silverstein. We're exhausted just reading that list. [NYO]

• Despite incessant talk of the real estate bubble bursting, not only are resale prices at 15 Central Park West holding up, they're soaring. Dan Loeb's $45 million penthouse is looking like the bargain of the century! [NY Mag]

Bruce Ratner is orchestrating a big demonstration today in support of his increasingly doomed-looking Atlantic Yards project! So which celebs did he enlist to headline the rally and win over skeptics? Former Nets Darryl Dawkins and Alan King, neither of whom has played basketball professionally since the 1980s. A-list! He also managed to persuade shrinking violets Al Sharpton and Curtis Sliwa to overcome their aversion to attention and speak at the rally.

Hey, so about the economy. It's not that good. And the overzealous real estate market is partially to blame. As consequence, overzealous realtor Bruce Ratner has admitted that the crisis will slow down his Atlantic Yards project. Go to any bar in south Brooklyn and start hating on Atlantic Yards and you'll be talking about developing, not destroying Brooklyn in the morning. Still, it must be said: the part of downtown Brooklyn that Ratner wants to destroy is a dump. Of course it's dubious that a Nets stadium, which Ratner wants to start construction on this year, will make the area any nicer. [NYT]

One of the most prolific—and controversial—real estate developers in New York, Ratner is the chairman of Forest City Ratner. He's also a minority owner of the New Jersey Nets.

As we continue our perusal of the latest issue of the most important literary magazine of our time, we skipped over that long part in the middle so we could get to the fun part: the letters section! And we must admit, we weren't disappointed. There, nestled between a somewhat rambling note from Jacob Shell (ooh, he's utterly cute!) and one from "S.C. Gummer" (a pseudonym? Perhaps) on Berlin was this squirmy missive from one Jonathan Lethem.

We've always wanted a Big Brother named Bruce, or, better yet, a Big Brother named Ratner, but not so much when we're lurching toward Flatbush Avenue looking for a train after watching Amos Lee perform at Freddy's Backroom.

• What do you want from A.M. New York, accuracy? It's free!
  

Bruce Ratner's sprawly, ugly Atlantic Yards development finds an unlikely ally in n+1 magazine, the literary journal famously helmed by book-hot Ben "Indecisive" Kunkel. "The authenticity of a place as volatile and heterodox as Brooklyn, and New York in general, lies in incongruity, the disorienting juxtaposition of century-old brownstones and Gehry's warped, twisting towers." Purty-soundin', yes, but all the grad-school adjectives in the world won't sell us on the desirability of a massive new development that can't be supported by the neighborhood's infrastructure. If the n+1 article is the backlash to the backlash, then consider this the backlash to the backlash to the backlash. Undulate that, NYMag.

We know this has been around a bit already, but we couldn't resist noting the anti-Bruce Ratner Passover Haggadah ("for an Atlantic Yardseder") that's been circulating for the last few days. Because, hey, if this doesn't say, "Oh no, we're totally not a bunch of barely sane kvetchers," we don't know what does.

Bruce Ratner is happily bulldozing his way through Brooklyn, molding Marty Markowitz's borough to his whims. Nothing can stand in his way; nothing can stop him. Well, only one thing, according to the Sun: Fake email.