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New Developments in the News

JANUARY 4, 2010




Art continues to make public spaces interesting; The Fed removes a limit on aid to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac but nixes a bailout for Tishman-Speyer.

Artist Robert Lederman has been given permission to sell his art on the High Line after having been arrested twice for doing so. Lederman had previously sued the city and won in a similar situation due to a consent order making it legal to sell art as a form of free speech in public city parks.

On Christmas Eve the government removed a $200 billion limit on aid to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The companies buy home mortgages from banks and package them into bonds sold to investors. The Obama administration is banking on them to help end a three-year housing slump.

Locally, Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock were denied $1.5 billion in federal bail-out funds for Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, the 80-acre housing enclave east of First Avenue for which the partnership paid $5.4 billion in 2006. The value of the property declined by more than 50 percent, in part because of a court ruling which prevented the owners from raising regulated rents to market rates.