Fact Check

Zuccotti Park - Brookfield Properties

Is Zuccotti Park owned by Brookfield Properties?

Published Nov. 10, 2011

Claim:

Claim:   Zuccotti Park is owned by Brookfield Properties, which has other political connections.


MIXTURE OF TRUE AND FALSE INFORMATION


Examples:   [Collected via e-mail, October 2011]


Whaaaaaaaaaaaat a coincidence!

Hey, this is great! Imagine the odds of this happening.

Do you know the park in NYC that the Wall Street protesters are occupying?

Zucotti Park.

DId you know this park is not owned by the city?

It is owned by Brookfield Properties.

Who was just hired by Brookfield Properties as an attorney?

Vice President Joe Biden's son.

Who sits on the board of Brookfield Properties?

Mayor Bloomberg's live-in girlfriend.

Now, guess what company just recieved some of the last of the Obama Stimulus $$$$$$$.

Thaaaaaaaaaaaaat's right, Brookfield Properties.

Isn't life great!

Hey, on a completely unrelated note, Wisconsin is shaping up to be the swing state in the 2012 presidential elections. Not Florida. Not Ohio. But Wisconsin.

Now, guess who owns the company that will be tabulating the electronic votes in Wisconsin.

Thaaaaaaaaaaaat's right, the biggest contributor to Obama, George Soros. Whaaaaaaaat a coincidence!

Remember what Stalin said. "He who votes does not have power. He who counts the votes has power".


 

Origins:  
Between Broadway, Trinity Place, Liberty Street and Cedar Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, sits 33,000 sq. ft. Zuccotti Park. Created by U.S. Steel, it was originally named Liberty Plaza Park. After undergoing renovations in 2006, the park was renamed by its current owners, Brookfield Office Properties, to Zuccotti Park in honor of John Zuccotti, the U.S. chairman of Brookfield Properties, who was also the chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York, former first deputy mayor of the City of New York, and former chairman of the New York City Planning Commission.



  • In mid-September 2011, "Occupy Wall Street" protesters began using Zuccotti Park as a rallying area and campground in part because it held the desirable combination of being a public plaza required to stay open 24 hours a day yet also a privately owned park not subject to the same curfew restrictions as New York's other public parks. Thus the protesters could occupy the park around the clock and could not be removed by the NYPD except at the behest of the park's owners, Brookfield Office Properties.
  • Robert Hunter Biden, the son of Vice-President Joseph Biden, is an attorney who was a founding partner of Oldaker, Biden & Belair (now known as
    Oldaker Law Group), a law and government relations firm, and who is now a partner at Rosemont Seneca Partners, an alternative investment and market advisory firm, as well as counsel to the Boies, Schiller, Flexner law firm.

    Back in 2002 and 2003, Oldaker, Biden & Belair was retained to undertake some lobbying efforts on behalf of Brookfield Office Properties. However, we could not find evidence of any professional or business connection between Hunter Biden and Brookfield Office Properties since 2003. Biden quit working as a federal lobbyist in 2008, and we found no connection between Brookfield Office Properties and either of the firms with which he is currently associated.

  • Diana L. Taylor is often described in the press as being the "girlfriend" or "domestic partner" of New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg (a former Republican who ran for a third term as mayor in 2009 as an independent candidate). Ms. Taylor is a managing director at Wolfensohn & Company, an investment and advisory firm, and also sits on the board of directors of Brookfield Office Properties.
  • In September 2011, the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office finalized a partial guarantee (80%) of a $168.9 million loan to Granite Reliable Power for the development of a wind turbine farm (windpark) in New Hampshire "consisting of 33 Vestas V90 3.0-MW turbines, said to be enough to power 20,000 homes and offset 124,000 tons of carbon annually."

    The Granite Reliable Power wind farm project is headed by Brookfield Renewable Power and Freshet Wind Energy. The former outfit is wholly owned by Brookfield Asset Management, which is also the parent company of Brookfield Office Properties.

  • The state of Wisconsin utilizes a variety of electronic voting systems, including those provided by Election Systems & Software, Dominion Voting Systems, Populex, and Vote-PAD. Financier George Soros holds no ownership stake in any of these companies
  • The quote about voting attributed to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin is most likely an apocryphal one.

On 15 November 2011, a New York judge upheld the city's dismantling of the Occupy Wall Street encampment, ruling that the protesters' first amendment rights didn't entitle them to camp out indefinitely in the plaza.

Last updated:   15 November 2011


Sources:




    Chait, Jonathan.   "George Soros, Reverse Vampires Conspiring to Promote Occupy Wall Street."

    New York.   21 October 2011.

    Hoppock, Julia.   "Hunter Biden Quits Lobbyist Work."

    ABCNews.com.   13 September 2008.

    Taylor, Kate.   "Diana Taylor, Bloomberg's Girlfriend, Criticizes Obama."

    The New York Times.   30 September 2011.

    [New York] Daily News.   "Occupy Wall Street Protesters Stripped of Their Power."

    28 October 2011.


David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.