Bruce Ratner is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Forest City Ratner Companies (FCRC), a real estate development firm. He is also the owner of the New Jersey Nets.

Background:
Born on January 23, 1945 in Cleveland, Ohio.

After law school, he joined the administration of Mayor John Lindsay as the director of a Model Cities program and later as the head of the Consumer Protection Division of the Department of Consumer Affairs. Following a four-year stint as a professor at New York University Law School, Ratner returned to government as the Commissioner of Consumer Affairs under Mayor Edward Koch, where he was responsible for designing major initiatives in consumer-fraud protection that became models for subsequent national legislation.

First major development project of FCRC was One Pierrepont Plaza, which opened in 1988. It was the first new office construction in downtown Brooklyn in a quarter of a century. Since then, Mr. Ratner and FCRC have steadily developed MetroTech Center, a $1 billion, 16-acre campus with 14 buildings in the heart of downtown Brooklyn, which now hosts 20,000 jobs in its 6.4 million square feet of commercial, academic and high-tech office space.

In 1996, Ratner opened Atlantic Center, a 400,000-square-foot shopping mall in Brooklyn, adjacent to the Atlantic Terminal transportation hub.  In 2005,  Ratner  finished the Atlantic Terminal Office and Retail Complex, a 10-story, 350,000-square-foot office building constructed above a four-story, 470,000-square-foot retail shopping center, located next door to Atlantic Center.

On a site adjacent to Atlantic Center, Ratner is preparing to construct Atlantic Yards, a 7.7 million-square-foot mixed-use development designed by internationally acclaimed architect Frank Gehry. Encompassing 8 acres of public open space, more than 2 million square feet of commercial space and more than double that amount of residential space—at a variety of price points, including affordable housing—Atlantic Yards will be anchored by the 850,000-square-foot, 18,000-seat Barclays Center arena, designed to be the home of the Nets professional basketball team, recently purchased by a group of investors led by Mr. Ratner.

In Manhattan, FCRC developed the headquarters for the New York Mercantile Exchange in lower Manhattan, near the World Financial Center. FCRC played a key part in the rebirth of Times Square with the 42nd Street Entertainment and Retail Complex, a 335,000-square-foot development that features a 25-screen AMC Cineplex and a Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, topped with a 25-story, 455-room Hilton Hotel with sky-lobby restaurant. Forest City joined forces with The New York Times Company to build the newspaper’s new headquarters near Times Square, a 1.5 million-square-foot structure that includes approximately 700,000 rentable square feet of Class A office space. Designed by renowned architect Renzo Piano, the 52-story building is the first high-rise in the U.S. to feature an all-glass curtain wall with a sunscreen made of ceramic rods. In Battery Park City, FCRC developed a 617,000-square-foot mixed-use complex that includes a 14-story Embassy Suites Hotel, retail stores and a 4,000-seat, 16-screen United Artists Theater. Additional FCRC projects include The Shops at Bruckner Boulevard in the East Bronx; the Shops at Gun Hill Road in the Pelham Gardens/Baychester section of the Bronx; the Shops at Northern Boulevard in Woodside, Queens; Columbia Park in North Bergen, New Jersey; The Heights on Court Street in Brooklyn, and The Stores at Richmond Avenue on Staten Island.

Other FCRC projects under development include lower Manhattan’s 76-story Beekman Tower, designed by world-famous architect Frank Gehry with a glass-and-titanium curtain wall. Most of the building will house luxury residential units. In East Harlem, FCRC has teamed up with Blumenfeld Development Group to transform the former Washburn Wire Factory into East River Plaza, a 485,000-square-foot shopping complex just off the FDR Drive. And in Westchester County, Mr. Ratner is developing Ridge Hill, a mixed-use project that will include some 1.3 million square feet of retail space, 160,000 square feet of office and research facilities, and up to 1,000 mixed-income apartments, all arranged around a landscaped town square.

Education:
Cum laude graduate from Harvard College 1967 
JD Columbia University School of Law 1970

Personal:
Divorced from his first wife in 1999. Remarried in 2008 to plastic surgeon Pamela Lipkin.
Two daughters: Rebecca graduated from Brown University in 1995 and Elizabeth from Harvard College in 1997.

Boards:
Trustee, Brooklyn Academy of Music
Board chairman, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 1992-2001.
Trustee, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Board member, The Futures in Education Foundation
Former board vice chairman, Long Island University
Overseer, Weill Cornell Medical College
Board member, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Board member, City Parks Foundation
Board member, Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce
Board member, International Rescue Committee
Board member, Museum of Jewish Heritage/A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
Board member, New York City Partnership

Awards: 
Honoree, 2008 Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty Builder’s Luncheon
Honorary Doctorate of Law, Pratt Institute, 1996
New York State Governor’s Arts Award, 1994