Mikhail Prokhorov, a 44-year-old bachelor, Russia’s richest man with assets of some $9.5 billion, came to New York the week of Oct. 19 to ink a deal to buy 80 percent of the New Jersey Nets and 45 percent of Bruce Ratner’s planned arena in the Atlantic Yards of Brooklyn, the Nets’ projected new home.
But he apparently thought that the “Little Odessa” of Brighton Beach, the center of America’s Russian-immigrant community, was not worth his time.
“We’re just not on his [financial] level,” said Sergey Kovalyov, executive director of the Russian-American Community Coalition based in Brighton and Sheepshead Bay.
Nonetheless, earlier in October, many area Russian-Americans expressed good feelings about Prokohov’s investment in their adopted country. “He’s going to spend a lot of money in Brooklyn,” said Mikhail Kurov, a graphic designer who emigrated to the U.S. from St. Petersburg in 1996. “He loves basketball – when he owned a basketball team in Russia, it won everything possible.”
Kurov said the all-but-done deal reminded him of the purchase a few years ago of a London soccer team, the Chelsea, by another Russian billionaire, Roman Abramovich. “He invested billions into it,” Kurov said. “It became a top soccer team in Europe, and it was very good for England.”
Kovalyov said of the Nets deal, “I think it’s a positive thing.”
