The $6 billion lie: why Ratner's fiscal claim is Swiss cheese

Would the Atlantic Yards project bring $6 billion in new revenue to the city and state over 30 years? That's developer Forest City Ratner's mantra, in meetings, in the Brooklyn Standard promotional sheet, and now in a letter (right) they're providing to state legislators in an effort to lobby Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. The state budget is supposed to be decided by April 1, and the developer seeks the inclusion of $100 million in state aid promised in a 2005 Memorandum of Understanding, even though the project is still in the early stages of review.

The $6 billion is the biggest lie in the whole Atlantic Yards controversy.

OK, syntactically, it's not a lie. The $6 billion has indeed been estimated in a study FCR commissioned, written by sports economist Andrew Zimbalist. But it's not credible. It results from manipulated statistics, an enormous (and methodologically flawed) overestimate of revenues, and an omission (and then an underestimate) of costs.

The study's conclusions--and FCR's manipulation of them--are challenged in reports by two city agencies and two outside analysts, not to mention an application of some economic common sense.

Here are some glaring flaws in the FCR-paid study. It ignores the cost of traffic and transportation improvements. It claims a new arena wouldn't increase police costs and lowballs other public costs. And, in claiming financial benefits, it relies on the dubious theory that building new luxury housing will bring new income tax revenue to New York. If so, any new luxury housing development in the city should be considered an "economic development engine," which is how FCR described the project (above) to City Council last May. (Note that FCR also fudges claims about construction jobs, and the number of office jobs promised has been cut by more than half since the City Council presentation.)

So here are 15 reasons to question the purported $6 billion.

1) The source is the developer's paid consultant.

Andrew Zimbalist's report, Estimated Fiscal Impact of the Atlantic Yards Project on the New York City and New York State Treasuries, was issued in May 2004 and updated in June 2005. (See p. 35 of the updated report.) Any report funded by a developer should be questioned, and tested against reports from government agencies and outside critics. No outside analyst has endorsed Zimbalist's conclusions; in fact, the September 2005 Independent Budget Office (IBO) Fiscal Brief declined to estimate revenues from the non-arena portion of the project, citing "methodological limitations."

FCR VP Jim Stuckey claimed at a 5/4/04 City Council hearing: It is really not our report, it is Professor Zimbalist’s report. But Stuckey’s statement is undermined by Zimbalist’s 2004 acknowledgement that he relied on information supplied by the developer: Many of the numbers used in this report concerning Nets attendance, ticket prices, construction costs and other items come from projections done by or for FCRC. I have discussed these estimates with FCRC and they seem reasonable to me.

Curiously, the acknowledgement in Zimbalist's 2005 update substitutes "Nets" for "Forest City Ratner Companies": Many of the numbers used in this report concerning Nets attendance, ticket prices, construction costs and other items come from projections done by or for the Nets. I have discussed these estimates with the Nets and they seem reasonable to me.
The Nets, however, are not responsible for the project construction--the team is owned by a group with numerous owners who are not part of Forest City Ratner. The change reads like a fig leaf to distance the economist from his patron.

And Zimbalist, who teaches at Smith College in Northampton, MA, hasn't been forthcoming. In their June 2004 critique of Zimbalist's first report, urban planner Jung Kim and anthropologist Gustav Peebles--both of whom have backgrounds in economics--write: Much of Dr. Zimbalist’s data is culled from biased or unsubstantiated sources, including data from consulting firms hired by FCRC or from FCRC itself, as Dr. Zimbalist himself admits throughout the paper. We contacted him several times in order to try to get precise citations for the numbers he produces, but all our efforts were in vain.

2) Zimbalist was working outside of his expertise.

A 2004 FCR flier refers to "respected Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist." Stuckey told City Council that we retained Professor Zimbalist because we wanted somebody who historically [has] been against doing arenas and stadium[s]. While Zimbalist has a long history of analyzing the fiscal impact of sports facilities, he has no such track record in analyzing broader urban development projects like this one, which concerns not just an arena, but also 16 mostly residential towers. (Zimbalist's long list of consultant jobs refers almost exclusively to sports, though one vaguely cites a “new civic center.”)

Zimbalist offers no indication that asked any other economists for feedback. By contrast, Kim and Peebles, who issued a June 2004 report dissecting Zimbalist's study, did test their conclusions with outside economists.

Referring to Zimbalist's study, "I would never have undertaken this exercise,” Washington State University sports economist Rod Fort told Neil deMause, a journalist specializing in the impact of sports facilities. “In essence, Andy is trying to forecast 33 years hence, and he’s forecasting housing markets, which there are other people spending all their waking moments on. What you see is assumption after assumption after assumption after assumption.”

3) The $6 billion estimate does not incorporate the costs of the project.

Zimbalist estimates those 30-year costs at $1.1 billion, as FCR's Stuckey told (right)City Council last May. (Project opponents Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn estimate nearly $2 billion--a figure that deserves further discussion.) Notably, a front-page article in the first issue (June 2005) of FCR's Brooklyn Standard promotional sheet said (below): "Expected to generate $6.1 billion over the next 30 years for the city and state...." An FAQ in the second issue (October 2005), on page 5, stated, "The project is expected to generate over $6 billion in new tax revenues for New York City and State over the next 30 years....." Neither of those passages mentioned the costs.

In an affidavit in the recent court case regarding FCR's effort to demolish five properties it owns, FCR's Stuckey did acknowledge the costs: "We also estimate that the Project will generate $6.1 billion in new tax revenues-and $5.0 billion in net tax revenues - for the City and the State over the next 30 years."

As noted, the governmental studies of fiscal impact have major flaws. A New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) analysis, dated June 2005 but likely completed months earlier, does not estimate any costs for the project, just revenues. And the IBO report ignores revenues from the considerable non-arena portion of the product. The critique of Zimbalist's first report, by Kim and Peebles, does try to assess the full costs and benefits, and estimates that the taxpayers could lose up to $500 million on the project over 30 years.

An 11/27/05 New York Times editorial attempted to draw a conclusion about the whole project, but failed because it was based on the incomplete IBO report: The Nets arena is not destined to be a cash cow, but the borough deserves a sports team, so long as the price is not too high.

4) Forest City Ratner manipulates statistics.

There are two ways to look at the revenues and costs: the 30-year aggregate or the figure in current dollars, known as net present value. (The aggregate is always significantly larger, since it incorporates interest and other capital costs.) The IBO report and the NYCEDC analysis use present value, as that is the standard for such economic evaluations. Zimbalist mainly uses present value; in the concluding section of his 2004 report, he provides the aggregate as alternative, but in the conclusion of the 2005 update, he leaves out the aggregate.

Forest City Ratner, however, typically ignores the standard and publicizes the 30-year aggregate. Why? Likely because the number is larger and accentuates the ratio between benefits and costs. For benefits, the 30-year total would be $6.1 billion, with a present value of $2.1 billion. For costs, the 30-year total would be $1.1 billion, with a present value of $572.6 million. Thus, the use of the aggregate also exaggerates the ratio between benefits and costs--from 6-to-1 rather than 4-to-1. (However, as noted below, neither set of numbers is reliable.)

5) Zimbalist's report makes a fundamental methodological error.

In its March 2005 analysis, "Slam Dunk or Air Ball?," the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development (PICCED) notes that the FCR-sponsored report, and as well as the Kim-Peebles critique, should not have treated housing as a contributor to economic development, because the new taxes paid by residents could also be counted in other economic development plans, such as job-retention efforts. The PICCED report states:
Zimbalist concludes [in his first report, in May 2004] that the FCRC project, after covering publicly-borne capital and operating costs, will produce a net benefit to the City and State treasuries of $812.7 million (present value terms). However, by far, the largest source of projected revenues ($896.6 million, or 57.9% of the total of $1.5 billion in present value revenues), is in personal income and sales taxes based on the incomes of the new residents of the housing component. Without these housing-related tax flows, Zimbalist’s estimates show that the balance of the FCRC project is a money-loser to the City and State treasuries, i.e., the only way the FCRC proposal overall makes fiscal sense is by including tax revenues from the housing component.
Major Flaw in Both Studies
These two studies share a major methodological flaw in that they both count the positive fiscal effect of the income of the residents who will occupy the 4500-unit residential development. While the two studies make different assumptions about the likely income of new residents, (Zimbalist assumes an average income of $80,000; Kim and Peebles assume and average of $50,000 to $60,000) both give the overall project credit for the income of new residents, and for the local and state tax revenues that such incomes would generate.
This is a very problematic assumption, tantamount to assuming that residents bring their own jobs to the City when they move in to a new housing unit. While residents who are new to the City will add to the City’s labor supply, unless they are self- employed, they do not “create” their own jobs. If the City started to give housing projects “credit” for the creation of jobs held by their residents, a double counting problem would result since the city routinely gives businesses “credit” for expanding employment or relocating jobs to NYC and this then often enters into the fiscal “score-keeping” for economic development projects receiving City (and State) subsidies.
(Emphasis added.)

I asked James Parrott of the Fiscal Policy Institute, who worked on the Pratt report, if there was any precedent for Zimbalist's methodology. He responded, "I don't know of any serious cost-benefit analyses of mixed-used economic development projects that count the taxes of residents. That's why we said it was a methodological flaw."

The IBO, as noted, did not analyze the non-arena portion of the plan, citing "the methodological limitations in estimating the fiscal impacts of mixed-use developments."

In his most recent report, Zimbalist estimates (p. 36) $2.1 billion in present value tax revenues and $6 billion in aggregate tax revenues. Nearly half of those new revenues would be attributed to residential income taxes.

6) Even if you accept the "methodological flaw," Zimbalist's assumptions are wrong.

The NYCEDC also estimates revenue from new residents, but uses different statistics, which would significantly lower tax revenues. As I've noted, Zimbalist, in his first report, projects that the average annual income of households in the development would be between $80,000 and $90,000. In his second report, in 2005, he projects that the average annual income would be $94,875. (If he were to do another report, acknowledging the addition of another 1,300 market-rate condos, his estimate undoubtedly would rise.)

But the city economic development agency says you can't count new Atlantic Yards residents as new taxpayers. Rather, the agency assumes that the new units "will represent an equivalent increase in households Citywide, either directly in the project itself or as infill in units vacated by households relocating to the project. Income tax revenue is based on an average income of $45,000, the Citywide average for all industries." Obviously, people earning $45,000 pay less in taxes than those earning more than $90,000, and revenues based on new city residents would be lower.

A comparison of Zimbalist's 2004 report and its 2005 update points out the fallacy of using new residents to estimate economic impact. His initial report estimates a 30-year aggregate of $4.1 billion in new revenue and about $1.3 billion in costs. His update, as noted above, estimates $6.1 billion in revenue and $1.1 billion in costs. The major contributor to this magical 50 percent leap in revenue: more well-off new residents. Based on this rationale, the city should subsidize high-end housing and recruit rich taxpayers. Except the city is now doing the opposite: cutting back on tax breaks for market-rate development.

7) Zimbalist overstates the market for office space.

In his May 2004 report, he writes that the project would eventually create 1.9 million square feet of first-class office space. He makes no mention of a study of Downtown Brooklyn redevelopment issued a month earlier, which estimates a glut of office space in the area just west of the Atlantic Yards footprint. He cites a "housing and commercial office space shortage in Brooklyn and New York City" and offers some questionable statistics: Since 1988, downtown Brooklyn has absorbed an average of 600,000 square feet of new office space per year. As of early April 2004, the vacancy rate of class A office space built in Brooklyn since 1985 was less than one percent.

In their June 2004 critique, Gustav Peebles and Jung Kim point out that Zimbalist fails to calculate a vacancy rate for the new Atlantic Yards office space, and that his observation regarding the Brooklyn vacancy rate requires a huge caveat. Most of the Class A office space in Brooklyn is at Forest City Ratner's MetroTech development, which has relied heavily on subsidies and government tenants to fill the space. (The NYCEDC more soberly calculates a 7% vacancy rate.)

Zimbalist, in his June 2005 updated report, acknowledges changes in FCR's plans that would create either 1.2 million or 259,078 square feet square feet of first-class office space. But he repeats the same decontextualized citations of a low vacancy rate and downtown Brooklyn's capacity to absorb office space even though Forest City Ratner had itself reacted to the market by proposing cuts of 43% to 88% from the originally announced space. Nor does he acknowledge any competing supply of office space from either the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning or from Lower Manhattan.

8) Zimbalist underestimates public safety costs.

Incredibly, Zimbalist doesn't assume additional costs for police coverage of a sports arena and a new development with some 15,000 residents. He writes: Based on conversations with former budget officials, FCRC concludes that the increment in fire and police budgets would be negligible.

Zimbalist doesn't even put that conclusion in his own words--does he believe it? Anyone who has attended a professional sports event knows that additional security is needed for crowd control and public safety. The arena also would be used for other large gatherings, and it would be adjacent to a major transit hub. It would also require monitoring as a potential terrorist target--which would also increase costs.

The IBO, surprisingly, leans toward Zimbalist regarding fire protection, saying that the additional costs "would be relatively low." (The agency, however, doesn't use the term "negligible.") However, the IBO disagrees with Zimbalist on costs for police, asserting that "costs to the city for policing the new Nets arena could be significant."

9) Zimbalist underestimates other public costs.

The IBO tried to estimate some public costs posed by the project as a whole, concluding that new education, sanitation, and police services over 30 years would be $530 million in present value. That's 65 percent more ($208.6 million) more than the $321.4 million estimated by Zimbalist. Such a wide divergence is no rounding error; it's a cry for greater scrutiny of the numbers.

Note that the public costs almost certainly would be even higher, since more housing would be built. The IBO's higher cost prediction was based on an estimated 6,000 housing units, not the 5,850 number used by Zimbalist. However, the developer now plans at least 7,300 units onsite, plus up to 1,000 additional units offsite. More people require more city services.

10) Zimbalist's report ignores significant costs for traffic, transportation, and parking improvements.

So do the other analyses by the IBO, and NYCEDC. Community Consulting estimated a $4 billion cost over nearly a decade for traffic, parking, and transit improvements in the Downtown Brooklyn area at large. Traffic engineer Brian Ketcham of Community Consulting, examining the initial configuration of the Atlantic Yards project, estimated the social costs of traffic alone at $76 million a year, with more than half of that coming from congestion. (The document isn't online.)

Architect Jonathan Cohn points out: If those who are calling for an arena at any cost really cared about doing it right, there would have been a study of a range of possible sites, with pros and cons identified and analyzed.

The PICCED report observes:
The developer has thus far provided no meaningful information on traffic impacts or mitigation plans. Traffic congestion in downtown Brooklyn is already severe and will grow worse in years to come as development in Downtown Brooklyn proceeds (following a recent rezoning). If substantial parts of Brooklyn can expect severe traffic gridlock on a regular basis because of the project, it could be a “no-go” regardless of other benefits. If the project does go forward, FCRC and the City should use this opportunity to engage in “big picture” thinking about Brooklyn’s transit infrastructure – not only traffic calming but also potential light rail, waterfront linkages, and ticket discounts for taking public transit. In any case, the public costs (and ancillary benefits) for mitigating potential traffic impacts from the project should be factored into the fiscal analysis of the project. (Emphasis added.)

11) Zimbalist overestimates the number of workers associated with the Nets who would pay city income taxes.

As noted in Chapter 3 of my report, Zimbalist assumes that 30 percent of the Nets players would live in the five boroughs and pay city and state taxes, while 75 percent of the arena workers would live in the city. However, NYCEDC estimates that 20 percent of the players, 35 percent of the executives and team staff, and 50 percent of the facility staff would reside in New York City. NYCEDC bases its estimates on "figures from other area professional sports teams." Zimbalist gets his estimates from Forest City Ratner.

12) There are unexplained inconsistencies between Zimbalist's two reports.

For example, in his first report, Zimbalist estimates that new income-tax revenues based on Nets players who relocated to New York City or State would be $4.88 million in 2008. In his update, he adjusts that figure to $7.47 million for 2009--a more than 50 percent jump in one year. He estimates similar leaps in income-tax revenues between 2008 and 2009 from Nets executives, staff, and arena workers. In his first report, he assumes arena-worker salaries would total $7.06 million. In his update, he assumes those salaries would total $16.4 million--more than double.

Similarly, in his first report, he estimates that new sales-tax revenue from the arena would be $6.43 million in 2008. In his update, he estimates $9.62 million in revenue for 2009--a nearly 50 percent leap.

In his first report, Zimbalist writes (p. 18), "I also assume that 10 percent of the workforce from among the Atlantic Yards households will work outside of New York City and, hence, not be responsible for paying New York City income taxes." In his update, the Massachusetts-based academic drops that assumption without offering an explanation: he apparently learned that New York City residents must pay city income tax no matter where they work.

13) Zimbalist overestimates the potential for revenues from the Brooklyn arena.

His 2005 report states: The Nets project that the arena will not host an NHL team and that it will host 226 events during the year (assuming the eventual closing of CAA, no new arena in Newark, no NHL and no minor league hockey events at the Atlantic Yards arena).
(Emphasis added; also note that his earlier report, in 2004, instead quotes the developer: "FCRC projects... 224 events.")

By contrast, NYCEDC forecasts a total of 192 events each year at the arena. NYCEDC forecasts an average attendance of 9,476 at events other than NBA basketball games; Zimbalist does not try to estimate the attendance at such events. As for competition, a new arena in Newark is already under construction and would compete for events.

14) Zimbalist's estimate of the number of current Nets fans who would attend games is questionable.

The Nets arena is estimated to offer a relatively small positive fiscal impact, and the revenue is dependent, in part, on retaining current Nets fans from New Jersey. Neil deMause, a journalist specializing in analysis of sports facilities, critiqued the IBO study, which, like Zimbalist's analysis, uses FCR estimates regarding the arena:
First of all, the IBO's conclusions result primarily from assumptions of how many current Nets fans would accompany the team from Jersey to Brooklyn, bringing their sales tax dollars with them - assumptions that, according to the IBO report, were provided by Ratner himself. Ratner's figures assume that "about half of those attending Nets games at the Atlantic Yards arena will be from the ranks of those attending now" - a debatable assumption given that it's quite a shlep from New Jersey to Brooklyn, not to mention that the proposed arena would hold 18,000 fans, and the Nets currently average fewer than 15,000 fans per game. Tweak the assumptions to have only 30% of Nets attendance represent new spending instead of 50%, and the arena would be a net loss.

15) Zimbalist's numbers are out of date.

His updated report assesses plans that would build either 6000 or 6800 dwelling units. Now Forest City Ratner plans 7300 units at the Atlantic Yards site, plus another 6000 to 1000 affordable condos, either onsite or offsite (more likely offsite). An increase in housing, by Zimbalist's lights, would lead to more revenues, and it also would lead to more costs. Still, the project is expected to shrink, as architect Frank Gehry said in January. Either way, all the fiscal reports are stale.

The year of magical thinking

A 2004 FCR flier sent to Brooklynites contained this passage:
Q. How will Atlantic Yards be financed?
A. Primarily through private funds.
…A study by respected Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist projects that Atlantic Yards will generate $4.1 billion in new tax revenue for the City and the State over the next 30 years. About one-third of that will help pay for construction and operating costs, leaving New York with $2.8 billion we didn’t have before to help fund better schools and safer streets.

A year later, the developer was predicting $6 billion in new tax revenue, a magical 50 percent leap, mainly from the increase in high-end residential units.

Does adding more market-rate housing really provide an economic boost to the city and state? Would the Atlantic Yards project really help fund better schools and safer streets, or would it be a fiscal drain?

We can't be certain, and the studies by government agencies have been inadequate. But we know that $6 billion claim is enormously overstated. It is a 30-year aggregate figure based on a tower of assumptions. It does not include public costs for such services as extra police for arena events and traffic amelioration around the project. It improperly relies on revenues from new residents. (FCR in the excerpt above sent to legislators also fudges claims about jobs.)

Whether it is FCR’s report or "Professor Zimbalist’s report," as Stuckey told the City Council, it is not a sound academic exercise. Rather, it's a tool in a deceptive public relations strategy.

Brewery's Hindy rewrites history on Atlantic Yards jobs claims

In a debate published today in Metro NY over the merits of a boycott of the Brooklyn Brewery by those opposed to the Atlantic Yards project, the Brewery's Steve Hindy states:
When Ratner unveiled his plan to buy the New Jersey Nets and bring them to Brooklyn, we were thrilled. The departure of the Dodgers in 1957 had left a hole in Brooklyn’s heart. We believe that the Nets could give Brooklyn a team to rally around again. And we were very impressed by the housing and commercial development surrounding the arena, designed by Frank Gehry. The development promised to bring 15,000 construction jobs and 3,000 permanent new jobs to Brooklyn, as well as seven acres of new public open space.

However, has been noted numerous times, the 15,000 promised construction jobs would actually be 1500 jobs a year over ten years.

Also, the number of permanent new office jobs unveiled in Ratner's plan was to be 10,000, not 3000; only in 2005, nearly 18 months after plans were announced in December 2003, did Forest City Ratner announce it would reduce office space and add market-rate condos. Actually, the development does not promise 3000 permanent new jobs, unless they're counting jobs in retail, the hotel, or the arena; FCR's Jim Stuckey said in a recent court filing: We estimate that the Project will create 15,000 construction jobs and, eventually, at least 2,500 permanent jobs.

As for the amount of open space, it was initially promised at six acres; the seven acres is a reconfiguration.

Fiscal impact of Atlantic Yards? The city keeps report under wraps

How much in new revenues would Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project bring, and what costs would it pose?

That's the $3.5 billion (and counting) question, but the Bloomberg administration's response is: trust us. The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) won't release the report it's used as a justification for the development.

At some point after 5/4/04--when NYCEDC president Andrew Alper told a City Council committee that the project was expected to have a positive fiscal impact--the agency apparently produced an analysis of the project. A 3/3/05 press release from the mayor's office stated: According to an economic analysis completed earlier this year for the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the net fiscal benefit to the City and State from the Atlantic Yards project is estimated at $1 billion in present value over the next thirty years. (Present value means the value in current dollars.)

The online version of the press release contains a link to the NYCEDC web site, but there's no report to be found.

I queried NYCEDC spokeswoman Janel Patterson: "There's a link to NYCEDC but I couldn't find the analysis on the web site. Can you point me to it, or send me a copy? And, given that the project has changed significantly, has there been, or will there be, a new analysis?"

Her response: "The analysis referred to in the release was an internal analysis and not made public."

Two press releases

Why was a city agency estimating the fiscal impact on the state? As I've pointed out before, there's strong evidence that the mayor's office, in that 3/3/05 press release, wanted to cite an analysis by a government agency rather than rely on one by the developer.

Similar press releases issued virtually simultaneously by the governor's office and the Empire State Development Corporation both relied on Andrew Zimbalist, the developer's paid consultant, for their fiscal projections.

A different NYCEDC analysis?

One analysis by the NYCEDC has surfaced. The document, obtained by Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn and dated 6/27/05, projected the fiscal impact for the city alone. It calculated a return of $524 million in present value--about half of that $1 billion figure estimated for both the city and state

Despite the date, this analysis had likely been completed several months earlier, since it was based on an earlier configuration of the project. At a City Council hearing 5/26/05, Forest City Ratner announced plans to reduce commercial office space and add market-rate condos. This was not incorporated into the NYCEDC analysis made public.

Did NYCEDC produce a second report, the one Patterson cited as an internal analysis"? Possibly. But the agency might have taken the analysis mentioned above and added calculations regarding the fiscal impact on the state. But that's just speculation until we see the report and its methodology.

Huge flaws

More importantly, the NYCEDC document contains a huge omission: while the agency calculated new tax revenues, it made no attempt to factor in increased costs, such as for public safety, schools, and sanitation. The term "net fiscal benefit" used in the city press release suggests that some costs were acknowledged--maybe they were in the report that's under wraps.

Some costs are calculated in the reports by Zimbalist and one by the Independent Budget Office (IBO), but each of those reports have their flaws. Notably, the 2005 IBO report focused on the arena rather than the project as a whole, citing the "methodological limitations in estimating the fiscal impacts of mixed-use developments."

The Zimbalist reports, issued in 2004 and updated in 2005, have numerous flaws, some of which I've outlined. Tomorrow I'll take a longer look.

Brooklyn’s Barack? Batson declares for Assembly, could block AY project

Bill Batson’s campaign kickoff, during a sunny-turned-cloudy (and back) afternoon on the steps of City Hall yesterday, was a rainbow coalition of Brooklyn’s ethnic groups. Add to them representatives from the Civil Services Employees Association (citing Batson’s work on the Lifespire agreement), the Green Party, the United African Congress (UAC, who helped Batson meet his birth parents), and ACRES—American Civil Rights Education Services, a nonprofit Batson cofounded that takes students on tours of civil rights landmarks.

A duo offered a graceful South African song. Civil liberties stalwart (and unsuccessful Public Advocate candidate) Norman Siegel wore a Brooklyn Dodgers jacket, a sartorial rebuke to those, like Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who invoke the departed team to justify the Atlantic Yards project.

And then there was the candidate, aiming to succeed (or is that defeat?) Roger Green in the 57th Assembly District, encompassing Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, and Fort Greene. There’s a whiff of the Barack Obama phenomenon about Batson: the biracial “son of an immigrant from Kenya” (in the words of UAC’s Sidique Wai), who grew up in the 'burbs (Teaneck and Nyack) but has lived in Brooklyn (mostly) since he began studying art at the Pratt Institute in 1979. (He's been in the district for five years.) Behind him, his adoptive mother (black) stood proudly and, off to the side, his girlfriend (white) beamed.

“Bill will build bridges across the racial divide that unfortunately still exist in subtle and sophisticated ways,” declared Siegel, who was referring to Batson's broad civic experience, most recently as head of community relations for Senate Democratic Leader David Paterson. (Batson later cited the need to bridge the gulf between Africans and African-Americans, as well.)

There was no one representing developers and Batson’s candidacy—however broad the issues he addresses—will be seen by some as a referendum on the Atlantic Yards project, which he opposes. That’s why a good handful of the three dozen or so supporters in attendance were from the Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn coalition. The issue has salience: Siegel lost big to incumbent Betsy Gotbaum in last year's election, but he won the 57th AD.

Replacing Green's voice on AY?

Batson may be hardly a one-issue candidate, but he's an excellent candidate for one-issue (Atlantic Yards) voters. The officeholder has enormous sway regarding the state’s $100 million contribution to the project. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who controls one of three votes on the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB; aka "three men in a room")--the agency that shot down the West Side Stadium--generally follows the lead of the local lawmaker. That Assembly member is now Green, a staunch supporter of the project.

Green may be leaving office; he has stated his interest in challenging incumbent Congressional Rep. Ed Towns. Though Green hasn’t formally declared for the Congressional race, Batson said he wasn’t expected Green to run for reelection. “It’s not about the names,” he added, thus avoiding mention of the other declared candidate, attorney Hakeem Jeffries, who ran a strong race against Green in the past and, as of February, had already raised nearly $60,000. (There was no talk yesterday of Batson's war chest.) Jeffries has called for a “principled compromise” regarding the Atlantic Yards plan. Batson’s unequivocally opposed.

Should the PACB have failed to vote by primary day, September 12--and there’s a strong case that a vote at this time, given the lack of a revised project plan, much less a Draft Environmental Impact Statement, is premature--the winner, if Green doesn't gain reelection, could steer Silver's vote. (In this district, as in much of Brooklyn, a win in the Democratic primary is tantamount to election.)

The candidate speaks

The Obama comparison isn't quite fair--the Illinois Senator-to-be was a far more polished speaker when thrust upon the national stage--but Batson took pains to come off as a candidate who was a bit unusual (an artist invoking artists) and, yes, a bridge-builder.

In his speech, Batson invoked a range of examples, each a “tough act to follow”: Joan Maynard, founder of the Weeksville Society; Shirley Chisholm, the Brooklyn Congresswoman and first black female presidential candidate; the Brooklyn Dodgers; and Walt Whitman. Later he cited as inspiring Brooklyn artist-activists Maynard, Whitman, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Spike Lee.

He recalled walking the district as a freshman art student at the Pratt Institute, when he arrived in 1979. “The communities of Fort Greene and Prospect Heights and Crown Heights once held the moral as well as physical high ground,” he said, citing the principles of public space, public participation, and public service.

“Today our community has become brownstone gold in a modern-day land rush," he said, saying our neighborhoods are desirable "not just because of the human scale but because of cultural institutions.”

Equity vs. livability?

In the crude equity vs. livability debate, Batson might seem to favor the latter: “While we welcome anyone who would like to live in Brooklyn, we also will proudly defend the rights of those who made these communities great, so they could stay on, as our neighborhoods get even greater.”

However, he added, “We need to use the power of public subsidies that virtually all these developers seek to ensure that decent affordable housing is built, and that the current housing stock is protected.”

Development on steroids

"Over 40 million square feet of new… development has been approved in Downtown Brooklyn in the absence of a master plan," Batson declared. "As cochair of the special [Community Board 8] subcommittee on Brooklyn Atlantic Yards EIS [Environmental Impact Statement], I have been a student of this wave of development on steroids. Out of context, out of scale development threatens to clog the arteries of the heart of our borough. If you combine the opportunity costs and the funds used in this development bonanza that could be used for schools or keeping hospitals open, with the public costs to mitigate negative impacts, and the ongoing perpetual costs associated with the resulting congestion and clogged traffic arteries, and the public subsidies, we have more development than we can afford.”

Batson then delivered a line that will be a stake in the ground against Jeffries, Green, or any other candidate: "Forest City Ratner's development is only nine million square feet of the problem. I say nine million square feet too much."

“They call it blighted, and then they give away to somebody to come in and build a massive private development because it’s going to help us, to work as service workers there—I don’t think so,” he said, in an ad lib apparently directed at Green, who told the New York Observer, in light of Ratner's shrinking jobs claims, that there would be spinoff jobs not initially touted in the developer's projections.

Fire and other issues

Batson, cochair of Community Board 8’s Fire Safety Committee, cited 18 suspicious fires on Pacific Street in the last 14 months; he has organized block watches and fundraisers. “How do you address the conditions that have left one half our district overdeveloped, while the other half is being burnt down to the ground?” he asked rhetorically.

Arson, he said, was the most pressing issue now, and--though it may seem to be more a city issue than a state one--he said, "There are things the state can be doing, in creating a more stable housing market."

Otherwise, Batson hedged on specifics beyond his stump speech, saying it was premature and that he wanted to talk to the community to build his platform. Not unlike a street photographer snapping shots of unsuspecting passers-by, Batson has made a practice of sketching people he notices on the subway. He'll be spending the next few months getting used to more attention on himself.

Critic Morrone: urban quality of Brooklyn at stake

Historian and an architecture critic Francis Morrone, speaking to an audience in Brooklyn Heights as part of a 3/23/06 forum on the Atlantic Yards project, declared that "nowhere is the urban quality of Brooklyn so at stake as at the Atlantic Yards" and called for community vigilance toward inappropriate development. He also warned that architect Frank Gehry's "disjunctive esthetic" was inappropriate for the site. [I wasn't at the meeting, sponsored by Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, but I listened to a tape.]

His comments echoed the thoughtful criticism he wrote last year for the Spring 2005 issue of the new magazine The Brooklynite, in an article titled Vanishing Vistas: Will the “borough of churches” become a borough of skyscrapers?.

Morrone said he wasn't well-qualified to talk about the political, economic, and legal issues, but said the controversy wasn't primarily about eminent domain, or traffic patterns: "It's about what Brooklyn wants to be....It's inevitably about what Manhattan wants Brooklyn to be. The Bloomberg administration looks at Brooklyn and fantasizes about Jersey City. In just a few years, Jersey City has acquired a skyline vastly more imposing than that of Brooklyn."

"Some people speak of the Manhattanization of Brooklyn. I think it's more correct to speak of the Jersey City-ization of Brooklyn," he said, suggesting that city officials seek to attract the offices moving to Jersey City. (Indeed, that has been true, but the Atlantic Yards project, which once promised 2 million square feet of office space, now would see that cut by more than two-thirds.)

"City officials don't get, don't begin to get, and don't want to get that what Brooklyn that what Brooklynites have made of Brooklyn over the last 20 or 30 years represents the single thing that New York City as a whole should be proud of," Morrone continued. "The painstaking reclamation, with not one iota of assistance from big developers, of neighborhoods that not very long ago were beyond physical or economic redemption."

Worthy of respect

Morrone reminded Brooklynites that the 19th century row house neighborhoods "have no rival in the U.S. and surprisingly few rivals in Europe. To put it as it should be put, these Brooklyn neighborhoods constitute a national treasure as great as the Grand Canyon. And I hope you wouldn't let Bruce Ratner build one of his mega-developments right next to the Grand Canyon."

The challenge, however, is that "the interstices among the landmarked neighborhoods" are unprotected.

Brooklyn scale?

"New Yorkers are blessed to have five boroughs," Morrone said, "each with a unique and remarkable character... Manhattan, with its skyline and tall buildings... but we are blessed also to have Brooklyn, with its low-rise scale and skyline punctuated by church spires and... the Williamsburgh Savings Bank building, the exception that proves the rule. How lovely the building: 512 feet in height, it wouldn't even register on the skyline of Manhattan, but towers mightily over the 'borough of homes and churches.'" (That phrase was coined by the Brooklyn Eagle.)

"All of this would be lost if the Atlantic Yards were to be redeveloped in the way currently envisioned by Forest City Ratner. The continuity and scale would be lost. The Williamsburg Savings Bank building would no longer be the exception that proves the rule. These yards are the crucial pivot of Brownstone Brooklyn. How they are developed will have everything to do with whether this Brooklyn shall remain as a truly great urban environment, or be reduced to a heap of baubles."

Overdevelopment

Morrone pointed out that growth has prompted inappropriate development throughout Brooklyn. The rezoning in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, he said, will allow buildings of "a truly shocking scale," efforts to preserve landmarks like the Austin-Nichols warehouse [a landmarking decision was overturned by City Council, influenced by City Council member David Yassky] "have met with shockingly cynical dismissals by our politicians," and "gaudy McMansions" plague several neighborhoods like Gravesend and Midwood and Manhattan Beach.

"But nowhere is the urban quality of Brooklyn so at stake as at the Atlantic Yards," Morrone said. ""A further point before I conclude my rant. Bruce Ratner hired Frank Gehry in a transparent attempt to curry favor with the fashionable opinions of Manhattanites...with all due respect to the culture mavens... his works, whatever their virtues may be, are desperately ill-suited to a central site in downtown Brownstone Brooklyn."

Back to the future

Morrone suggested that city leaders and developers have forgotten Brooklyn's virtues: "Make no mistake. The politicians and the developers are getting away with a lot of what they're getting away with because elite cultural opinion has momentarily grown bored with ideas like preservation and human scale. Let us be vigilant that the tragic disfigurement of the Brooklyn Museum not be merely a foretaste of what's in store for Brooklyn as a whole."

"Ultimately, though, it is not about culture, it is about civilization. It's about such things as how we manage change in our environment," he said.

Earlier echoes

Morrone, in his lecture, didn't offer an alternative, but in his article argued for more modest efforts:
Only the crudest short-term cost accounting could possibly justify playing so fast and loose with these treasures of comely urban form.
Incremental redevelopment, of a more modest scale, may lack luster in this age in which many architects and planners have swung back from the influence of Jane Jacobs to reembrace the values of an earlier generation that venerated Le Corbusier and his notions of towers and open spaces sweeping aside the shopworn vestiges of earlier periods of urban development. But for many, incremental redevelopment seems appropriate in Brooklyn—which has fought back from the brink to provide models for urban America, not of vast projects of wholesale transformation, but of rehabilitation and the tender loving care of the sorts of neighborhoods and places that we spent so many years trying to destroy.

That leaves the question of what incremental development means, especially at a site near mass transit: ten stories rather than 40? 12? 20? And it raises questions about how the city can solve its housing shortage. Should increased density be built in other parts of Brooklyn? In other boroughs?

These may not be Morrone's questions to answer--he didn't mention the community-developed UNITY plan for the MTA's Vanderbilt Yard or the Extell bid. But his voice is an important one in the ongoing debate about the appropriate scale for this site and project.

Will lawyer for ESDC remain disqualified? Tough to tell

So I was out of town and missed the state appeals court hearing last Thursday in which the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) challenged the disqualification of attorney David Paget because he had worked on the Atlantic Yards project for developer Forest City Ratner before switching to the state agency.

But the press coverage indicated that it was a lively, and inconclusive hearing, with judges offering skeptical reactions to arguments from both the ESDC and the community groups and individuals that sought Paget's disqualification. The New York Observer, handicapping the court, gave the edge to the ESDC, suggesting that two judges leaned in the agency's direction, while the other three were harder to read. The New York Sun, in a 3/24/06 article headlined Judges To Decide if Agency Can Rehire Lawyer Banned From Atlantic Yards Project, noted:
One judge said Mr. Paget’s dual roles gave the appearance of impropriety but on a deeper level might not be a conflict of interest. Another judge said the more appropriate forum for a challenge by opponents would come after the state’s decision.

Inherent problem in statute?

Mary Campbell Gallagher, in her Big Cities Big Boxes blog, interpreted the judges' questions as favoring the ESDC, but concluded that the environmental review process is inherently flawed:
By the close of the oral argument, however, the judges appeared to have worked it out in their own minds. First, the members of the citizens' groups in plaintiff Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn lack standing to bring the suit. Second, even if they have standing, now is not the time to object to Mr. Paget's dual role. If he influences the state wrongly in its dealings with developer Forest City Ratner, plaintiffs can bring an Article 78 action to challenge the final state determination. Needless to say, plaintiffs' counsel found that suggestion impractical.
I believe, however, that the problem is not with who the plaintiffs in this lawsuit are, nor with when they brought their suit. The real problem is with the environmental statutes, which in effect put the fox-developers in charge of the state environmental henhouse. As counsel for the state pointed out yesterday, the statute permits the developer to draft his own environmental impact statement (EIS). The EIS, however, is what the entire environmental regulatory process must examine. Although counsel for the state would doubtless not put it this way, we have environmental statutes that in their very nature positively require a conflict of interest. To enforce the statutes as drafted means to put the developer in control of the state process that is supposed to regulate him. No wonder, then, that in allowing Mr. Paget and his clients to follow the statute, it sounds to a layperson as though there is a conflict of interest.

New counsel

Meanwhile, the ESDC has hired a “provisional counsel” to work on the environmental review of the project--a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) is expected within the next weeks or months.

ESDC attorney Douglas Kraus had contended that "there is the distinct possibility that ESDC will not be able to find substitute counsel equivalent to Mr. Paget, since relatively few such counsel exist, and several of them are already engaged as counsel for other parties in the Atlantic Yards matter." As it turns out, ESDC did find such a lawyer, though the agency affirmed that it wanted the court case resolved, and would rehire Paget: "Mr. Paget remains ESDC's counsel of choice."

CBN vs. ESDC

The legal papers filed indicate a fierce argument over whether various parties could intervene in the case, with the ESDC resisting such "friend of the court" applications. The filing from Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods (CBN), which represented 28 community groups, goes to a fundamental question of whether the Paget-supervised environmental review could be fair.

Jim Vogel, the CBN Secretary, noted in an affidavit in support of the CBN's motion to intervene:
To that end, Amicus also asks that the Court permit the addition to the Record of a letter received by several local politicians from the ESDC denying their request for funding for CBN to retain technical experts in order that CBN, on behalf of the affected communities, can engage meaningfully in the environmental review process....
As the court can see, the ESDC refused the request for funding claiming that, because Sive Paget is an “independent firm retained by ESDC and taking direction from ESDC staff, . . . the review process will be unbiased.” In that the ESDC’s decision not to fund community participation in the environmental review, which would have had to be billed back to the developer, occurred during Mr. Paget’s watch, it is another example of the clear conflict between his role as attorney for both FCRC and ESDC which requires his disqualification.

ESDC, however, asserted that CBN failed to disclose that 11 of the 12 community group petitioners already in the case are already members of CBN and that Daniel Goldstein, both an individual petitioner and a spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, is on the CBN steering committee. ESDC also argued that "CBN's views are already well-represented by petitioners" and "CBN's arguments are virtually identical to those already made by petitioners."

CBN's Vogel responded that the information about Goldstein was incorrect and argued that the council had a broader mission:
Therefore, while CBN’s member organizations may hold a position on the proposed development, CBN is attempting to provide a community voice in the environmental review process. CBN as an organization has but one purpose and one goal – to insure that the community is able to participate significantly and meaningfully in the environmental review process of any proposed project over the Vanderbilt (Atlantic) Railyards. CBN’s role in the process has been recognized and supported by not only the 28 organizations which are its members, but by many elected politicians who have publicly called for funds for CBN to retain experts to review the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, when it is released.
ESDC is correct that CBN does share an interest with the petitioners herein; however, the interest that it shares is the public interest in fairness and transparency of the environmental process, something that ESDC is mandated to effectuate.
...Moreover, not only is CBN not an alternate ego of the petitioners, but CBN considered whether or not to become petitioners in the proceeding below, and decided against it, in large part because of the public perception it could have created that CBN, as an organization, opposes the project. However, once ESDC filed its appeal of a decision in which the lower court held that the involvement of Mr. Paget 'has such a severe crippling appearance of impropriety on a project of such great magnitude”, CBN’s membership felt it was bound by its mission to participate in defending the lower court’s finding in order to protect the integrity of the process in which it is CBN’s mission to participate.

Proposed Bronx CBA offers interesting contrasts to Brooklyn CBA

A proposed Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) regarding a new Yankees stadium offers some interesting contrasts to the CBA negotiated for Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, notably a local trust fund offering $700,000 a year, and a closer focus on benefits to the borough. Still, local residents critical of the plan have hardly embraced it. (And see more criticism here from Richard Lipsky of the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, who just happens to support the Atlantic Yards project.)

A New York Times article published today, headlined $28 Million for the Bronx in the Yankees' Stadium Plan, reports:
As part of the Yankees' proposal to build a new stadium, the team will contribute $28 million to a trust fund and distribute 15,000 free tickets each season to Bronx groups, according to the draft plan of a community benefits program.
The proposal also calls for the team to pay $100,000 a year to maintain parks around the stadium and distribute $100,000 a year in "equipment and promotional merchandise" to schools and youth groups in New York City. There was no requirement, however, that the $28 million, which would be distributed over a 40-year period, be spent in the South Bronx, the site of the stadium and its replacement.
Stadium opponents observed yesterday that the proposal for a 53,000-seat stadium calls for the trust fund to be administered by "an individual of prominence" appointed by an advisory group that would be selected by elected Bronx officials — who are nearly unanimous in their support of the stadium despite intense neighborhood opposition.
"It would be like the fox guarding the henhouse," said City Councilwoman Helen Diane Foster, one of the few Bronx officials opposing the new stadium.
The proposals, which include a pledge that a quarter of stadium construction jobs would go to Bronx residents, are part of the draft benefits program negotiated between the Yankees and Bronx officials.
The agreement is expected to be completed in a few days and will be part of the stadium package presented to the City Council before it votes on the stadium on April 5.
...It also calls for the Yankees to reserve at least 25 percent of the construction contracts for Bronx-based companies, at least half of which would be run by women or members of minorities. At least 25 percent of the construction and post-construction jobs would also go to Bronx residents. An administrator hired by the Yankees will monitor the team to ensure it is compliant, according to the draft agreement.

Contrasts with Brooklyn

The Atlantic Yards CBA, signed with eight groups, includes job training, a school for construction trades, and a goal to assign 35% of construction jobs to minorities and 10% to women. It also has a goal to assign 15% of retail space to community-based businesses, and specified percentages of preconstruction, construction, and professional services work to minority/women-owned enterprises.

The groups include ACORN, the New York State Association of Minority Contractors, and six smaller, Brooklyn-based groups. The CBA also incorporates the affordable housing agreement signed with ACORN. It also promises a community health center, a senior center, open space, and arena access, among other things.

Despite an emphasis on minority and community-based businesses and hiring, it does not require that jobs go to Brooklyn residents or that contracts go to Brooklyn companies. (The latter, at least might be more logistically difficult.) It does require reporting in which community board workers reside. It does not offer a trust fund. (It's not immediately clear that the signatories to the Bronx agreement represent broader-based groups than those in Brooklyn, but they elected officials are apparently involved.)

Press coverage

And when the Brooklyn CBA was under discussion in June, the New York Times did not emphasize the community opposition as prominently. When the CBA was signed 6/27/05, it got a brief in the Times, which gave one sentence to project critics: Some residents have expressed opposition to the project, saying it would raise rents. Somewhat more extensive coverage elsewhere included a Daily News article that included criticism from an expert on CBAs: But Bettina Damiani of Good Jobs New York, a watchdog group that monitors how government subsidies are spent, said the eight groups that signed off on the deal don't fully represent the community.

A followup Times article in October concerning Forest City Ratner's community outreach also missed some important angles. The Times did cover the housing agreement, signed in May, more prominently.

A thoughtful defense of eminent domain (but would it fit Atlantic Yards?)

The good liberal brownstoners of Brooklyn, and others troubled by the Atlantic Yards project, have some uncomfortable bedfellows in challenging Forest City Ratner and the Empire State Development Corporation on the issue of eminent domain. After all, the leading critics of the Supreme Court's Kelo decision come from the libertarian right (though there is a broad spectrum of critics).

Still, you don't have to be an absolutist on eminent domain to be concerned about eminent domain abuse--and to conclude that even a good defense of eminent domain for urban redevelopment might run aground when addressing Atlantic Yards.

Indeed, a recent article in the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, titled Public-Private Redevelopment Partnerships and the Supreme Court: Kelo v. City of New London, by Marc B. Mihaly of the Vermont Law School Environmental Law Center, offers a spirited defense of eminent domain in urban redevelopment projects. At the same time, it's difficult to fit the fact pattern of the Atlantic Yards project into Mihaly's description of how redevelopment does and should occur.

Redevelopment, not development

Mihaly begins by quarreling over terms; what the Supreme Court justices, in their spectrum of opinions in the Kelo case, call “economic development” should be considered, he writes, “redevelopment” or “public-private redevelopment,” reflecting the intent of government to correct the failure of the market alone to bring an area back to life after a substantial period of economic decline. The language of the phrase “economic development” implies the dissents’ conclusion, namely a process operating simply to create new forms of economic wealth. This essay employs the more accurate terms.
(Forest City Ratner uses the term development regarding Atlantic Yards, but then again, so do a lot of people.)

Has the market failed to bring the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Vanderbilt Yard back to life? It never was given the chance. The blocks around it had begun to gentrify; indeed, some old industrial buildings were turned into upscale housing.

Had the market failed to provide affordable housing? Very much so. But that would be an argument for first reforming city rules that provided tax breaks for luxury housing.

Misunderstanding land use?

Mihaly writes: But, without diminishing the success of the political right in framing the debate, more is needed to explain both the popular and judicial response to the Kelo decision. Simple ignorance of the transformed and transforming nature of city-center land-use development lies at the heart of the pervasive popular reaction to the Kelo decision. Redevelopment has failed to make its case. Most Americans enjoy the fruits of revitalized urban cores, but they do not understand how the transformation occurred. Nor do they know that the very nature of land development in the city center has evolved, altering both public and private roles, erasing traditional boundaries between what is a public use and what is a private use, and between what is government owned and what is privately owned.

Kelo an anomaly?

Mihaly writes: Much of the popular reaction to Kelo rests on the specter of Suzette Kelo being forced out of her home, a fact pattern recited in both the majority and dissenting opinions. The majority tells us that petitioner Wilhelmina Dery has lived in her home all her life, and that Suzette Kelo has made extensive improvements to her house and prizes its water view.... It is difficult to imagine more perfect plaintiffs to sound a case against redevelopment. And, that may be why the case reached the high court.

But this is a highly uncommon fact pattern, he says: Most landowners in redevelopment projects either negotiate a sale to the city or redevelopment agency or “participate” in the project, that is they themselves redevelop their properties in a manner consistent with the redevelopment plan, often in partnership with other landowners and with the assistance of public financing. Redevelopment and economic development agencies are reluctant to use condemnation because the total costs of acquisition, including legal fees, run higher than fair market value, generally by about a third.

He adds that residential condemnation is rare. For the Atlantic Yards case, there are several renters and homeowners who have yet to sell, though few may have stories as compelling as those in New London.

Mihaly offers further defense of New London's plan: The opinions do not mention New London’s allocation of ten million dollars for relocation assistance, nor that the plan for redevelopment provides for the construction of eighty new housing units in an new urban neighborhood. And we certainly are not told, even by the majority, that in many states the condemnation could not have proceeded without the likely consent of a committee representing Ms. Kelo and her neighbors.

There's no committee in Brooklyn, is there?

New amenities

Mihaly continues: These public-private redevelopment experiences tell a story different from the facts in Kelo. Yet these are the typical scenes of redevelopment. New public facilities, often in tandem with new affordable housing, rise on vacant or under-utilitized sites, producing uses and amenities that reinvent the urban center.

Could housing, including affordable housing, be built without eminent domain? That's what the community-developed UNITY plan envisaged, as well as the Extell Development Company's bid. Eminent domain may be needed to build the Brooklyn Arena, which would be built over and beyond the railyards, as well as to assemble other pieces of land. New amenities? Does the promised privately-run public space at the Atlantic Yards project qualify?

New London vs. Brooklyn

Mihaly places the Kelo case in context: The majority opinion commences with a recital (albeit characteristically brief and bland) of the facts leading to redevelopment, describing a city designated by a state agency as “distressed” after decades of economic decline, unemployment nearly double the state average, and actual decreases in population. The dissenting Justices do not acknowledge, much less address, these conditions. The truncated factual recitation in Justice O’Connor’s opinion begins with the petitioners and skips directly to the Pfizer development. She does not mention the economic decay, unemployment, or population loss.

Brooklyn is experiencing an economic upsurge, with a growing population faced with gentrification and a decreasing amount of affordable housing. One solution is indeed to build up, to take advantage of density. But the density bonus for affordable housing, for example in the Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning, was negotiated publicly. The density bonus for the Atlantic Yards project has been negotiated with ACORN but not the public at large.

How it should work

Mihaly's case for redevelopment suggests a rational planning process:
The typical city, recognizing the reciprocal advantages of a relationship with a private developer, may advertise for a “master developer.” The master developer will assist the city in planning, perform due diligence reviews concerning site issues such as contamination, and assist in the preparation of estimates of the cost of removal of old infrastructure and the cost of new project infrastructure and improvements, as well as eventually find and manage relationships with developers of sub-areas within the project. The request typically asks for experience and financial capability.

Is there a master developer in Brooklyn? There may be a leading developer--Forest City Ratner was prescient and willing to invest in Brooklyn, but the company has not been finding developers for sub-areas.

Public advisory committees often advise the city council on the selection process and the selection itself. Competing development teams make presentations to the council in open session. On the basis of these, the council selects one developer with whom to negotiate the documents that would guide a permanent relationship.

Competing bids in Brooklyn? It took 18 months before the MTA issued an RFP for the Vanderbilt Yard.

The course of each negotiation is different, but, especially for large project areas, the elements are similar. The parties first attempt to reach a mutual understanding of the project economics. They spend many months developing engineering estimates of project costs such as infrastructure and performing market studies to determine the likely revenues from the sale of land and sale or rental of buildings. This effort, when reasonably complete, allows the construction of a hopefully mutually agreed-upon economic model of the development, a spreadsheet commonly called a “pro-forma.”

Project economics? We still don't know.

Rate of profit

Mihaly writes: As they build the pro-forma, the city and the developer negotiate a reasonable rate of profit for the developer, based on the risk associated with the developer’s contributions. That profit is usually measured as the developer’s internal rate of return (IRR). The parties argue about the level of each sort of risk—regulatory risk (which the city asserts it will mitigate through the contract under negotiation), construction risk (the risk of cost overruns can be quite high), market risk (the risk that the rental and sales markets will change), and interest rate risk (the risk that interest rates will change).

If this had been done from the start, there likely would have been more public discussion about the projected number of office jobs and the percentage of affordable housing--and the bait and switch charge might have been averted.

Government as protagonist?

Mihaly suggests that the government is usually the leader: The government typically is the project protagonist, affirmatively pushing the redevelopment to achieve public benefits. This public-benefit package often achieves major public goals such as the production of low-income housing, creation of new jobs for a lower-income community, construction of new parks and recreational facilities, and needed infrastructure. The developer is more of an agent of the public, performing specified tasks for a return which allows it to function and attract the necessary private capital to make the project succeed. In some cases, this agency relationship is formalized such that the developer simply performs its obligations for a negotiated fee. Whatever the form, public gain and private gain intertwine.

If the government were truly the protagonist, it would do a lot better math on the costs and benefits of this project.

Ratner to investors: AY approval expected by fall, Nets losses downplayed, 15-year buildout?

Is the Atlantic Yards project on track? Despite delays from the original plan to open the arena in the fall of 2006, Forest City Ratner president and CEO Bruce Ratner told investors in the parent Forest City Enterprises that he expects goverment approval by mid-fall and construction to commence a few months after that. Ratner, sounding jovial and confident, also deflected concerns about losses suffered by the New Jersey Nets, saying he was confident the team would make money when it moved to Brooklyn. (Photo from Forest City Ratner web site.)

Ratner participated in a special investor event on 3/13/06. His portion goes from 1:22 to 1:54, but keep listening for another two minutes for an eminent domain anecdote. An investor conference call is scheduled for March 31.

The Atlantic Yards project, at 9.1 million square feet in its current configuration, would be larger cumulatively than the 37 projects that Forest City Ratner completed in the past 18 years. Those projects involve about 8.5 million square feet, with another 2.5 million square feet "in the development pipeline." Atlantic Yards is not yet in that pipeline, Ratner said, though he was optimistic.

Atlantic Yards

Ratner's discussion of the Atlantic Yards project came after he described several other projects, which I'll mention below. Either pressed for time or spinning for investors, Ratner left out some context: The Atlantic Yards project is 22 acres, it’s a great location, it’s an area that, as I pointed out, if you look across the street, for many years wasn’t developed, no one ever looked at it as a development opportunity. It’s kind of in the middle of various neighborhoods.
(If it wasn't developed, then whose responsibility was that? Also,Ratner is apparently not on board with the Downtown Brooklyn mantra.)

He continued: It’s an area where there’s railyards, older buildings and so on. It will include 4500 rental housing units, 2000 condos, retail, office and hotel. It’s a public-private partnership I would say in a lot of ways. What’s important to the city, which is affordable housing, residential housing, along with the importance of course of doing an arena and getting sports team.
(Has the number of condos been shrunk from 2800 to 2000, or was that just Ratner speaking casually? And what about the 600 to 1000 affordable condo units? If he didn't mention them, are they going offsite?)

Here's what he said about timing: That project is on its way to being entitled. Probably in early fall, middle fall of this year we should have our entitlement and start construction in the next four to five months after that.
(Maybe, but the environmental review process is still in the early phase, and legal challenges, including one over the use of eminent domain, could delay the process. Perhaps that's why Forest City Ratner has been renegotiating the lease on the Continental Airlines Arena, and may stay until 2010.)

Ratner hinted that the project, once launched, might take longer than initially planned: The master plan includes a basketball arena and 16 buildings designed by Frank Gehry. It’s multiphase, over ten to 15 years.
(Initially, a company press release stated: It’s estimated that the full Brooklyn Atlantic Yards development will take approximately 10 years to complete.)

He touted the Community Benefits Agreement: An MOU is a memorandum of understanding in our business, that’s been executed in 05, with a commitment of substantial funds. We signed something, which I think is terrific and extensive and I think will be a model for many other cities and many other developments. The Community Benefits Agreement, CBA, I can’t stress how important that is.
(Others, however, have their doubts.)

We sought it out. When we first announced this project, before any community came to us, I said 50% of rental units will be affordable and middle income, and we stuck to that it and will continue to stay with that.
(Actually, Forest City Ratner and supporters referred to all the residential units, which at that point were rentals.)

He offered a cursory account of the acquisition of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Vanderbilt Yard: We won the bid for the competition to purchase the MTA yards, there was one other bidder.
(Omitted was that the rival, Extell, made a higher cash bid, and both were below the appraised value.)

Regarding the Nets

Ratner was recruited to buy the Nets by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, and it's well-known he wasn't a longtime hoops fan:We are the principal owner of the Nets basketball team, it’s been a real experience for me firsthand… There’s 41 games, I try to go to every one. It was really the linchpin of this devpment. Without the basketball team and arena, we wouldn’t be able to do this development. It created the opportunity… We very often start our projects with an anchor, in this case it’s an arena and a basketball team. I think both will be very successful.

Is the basketball team making or losing money, Ratner was asked. "It’s losing money," he replied, though he didn't offer specifics. The Star-Ledger reported 3/19/06 that, despite gains in ticket sales, the team will lose between $20 million and $30 million, and Ratner hopes "to sell $60 million of equity in the team to help cover his costs until he can build an arena in Brooklyn and move the team."
(Note that Ratner has required two previous loans in the past two years.)

But Ratner was optimistic:
When it moves to Brooklyn, it should make money… It’s doing actually quite well. We’ve got a 20% increase in ticket sales and revenue…. I think eventually we will break even on the operating side. And I think it’s actually a business you can do decently well with… I look at as a business challenge, I think it’s one we’re really up to.… The arena will be brand new, Frank Gehry, it will do extremely well. The arena’s going to also make money, together with the team, we project a decent amount of cash flow going out in 2009-10.
(Note: Projections by Andrew Zimbalist, the Smith College economist Forest City Ratner paid to provide a report on project benefits, assume revenues from the arena premised on several factors, including no arena in Newark. The latter is already under construction.)

Beginning in Brooklyn

Ratner first described the MetroTech project, the company's first:
I used to start all my presentation, Brooklyn has the best downtown in America. And they laughed. It has great transportation, great housing stock, right across the river from Manhattan. It has a tremendous artists' community.
...Here you see the MetroTech site in 1986. And much like Atlantic Yards site, it was a combination of older buildings, some parking lots, some buildings occupied, some buildings not occupied. And if you look at it today… It was a long hard road, because when we first talked about Brooklyn, people really didn’t believe it could be… It was high crime area…But we capitalized on something very important. We capitalized on the strong economics of New York City.

Atlantic Terminal empty?

He described the project over the transit hub at Atlantic and Flatbush avenues:
Atlantic Terminal retail and office. That was the site that was cleared by Robert Moses in the late 50s, and it was cleared to be housing, at one point, the Dodgers were going to move there. It really was fallow for 40 years.
(Note: the aboveground Long Island Rail Road wasn't demolished until 1990)

He pointed to changes in public safety as spurring changes in retail:
Crimewise, you couldn’t walk around this site ten or 15 years ago… In 1992, I lived in New York, there were 2200 homicides. Last year, there was something like 560 or 570 homicides…. That gives you an idea how New York has changed.

Brooklyn's lost Kmart?

Ratner showed a picture of the Atlantic Terminal mall: So we took a piece of vacant land… I remember this piece of land--it’s probably about six acres… I remember taking Kmart in 1994 to look on the top of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, I said you could have this whole site if you wanted to put a Kmart on it all…Now this site today has 400,000 square feet of office space and almost 400,000 square feet of retail anchored by Target.
Part of our portfolio includes big box retail… We’ve done 37 projects in the city, and about half of that is retail. It’s all big box retail, nearly all…. We were the first after Home Depot to do big box in New York. That Target is between one and 10 nationally in terms of sales.

(Would there be big boxes at the Atlantic Yards project? The P.C. Richard/Modell's at Site V--currently slated to be demolished for a high-rise--are reviled as anti-urban. Forest City Ratner representatives have said they will encourage local businesses to have retail space at the Atlantic Yards project. Photo from Forest City Ratner web site.)

New developments

Ratner described five projects in the development pipeline, including Ridge Hill in Yonkers, East River Plaza in Harlem ("one of the most important largest retail developments in New York City for big boxes"), and Beekman Tower in Lower Manhattan. That building, which the company describes as "a 1 million square foot luxury condominium and rental building."
(Unlike with Atlantic Yards, there's apparently no affordable housing planned. Maybe company spokesman Joe DePlasco was only referring to Brooklyn when he told the New York Times, "Forest City Ratner Company believes firmly that supporting nonprofits and community groups, and working with them to identify and address needs, is at the foundation of what they do. It's that simple.")

Ratner's comments about the building likely apply to the residential component of the Atlantic Yards project:
We’re entering a very strong rental market. I think the NYC residential rental market, which has been good but relatively slack the last four or five years... as interests rates are going up, people are looking for other alternatives, and most importantly there’s been almost no development in the rental residential arena in New York City in five or six years.

On the Times

Ratner also described the Times Tower, designed by Renzo Piano built in collaboration with the New York Times Company, and expected to open at the beginning of 2007. The Timse will have 26 floors; FCR will rent 22 floors. “They’ve been wonderful partners, it’s a great company,” he said.

Given criticisms by me and others of the New York Times's coverage of Forest City Ratner, some might wonder if he was suggesting that the "wonderful" partnership extends to the pages of the newspaper. But it's clear he was referring to the parent company.

Eminent domain "wonderful"

After Bruce Ratner finished his presentation, a Forest City Enterprises official, apparently Bruce's cousin president/CEO Charles Ratner (I couldn't quite tell), offered an anecdote. “I have one wonderful story to tell you about public-private partnerships," he said. "We need those in order to make these projects competitive."

"As you all know there’s a lot of debate now about eminent domain. Clearly for us, in our business, eminent domain has been a wonderful avenue for development," he continued, noting that Chicago mayor Richard Daley called it the "most important tool" a mayor has to do development. (It wasn't clear if he meant the current mayor, Richard M. Daley, or his father, but it's likely the former, who, along with other big city mayors, signed a resolution supporting the use of eminent domain.)

The story, he said, had been told by Albert Ratner, co-chairman of the company board, when he was honored last year by the Urban Land Institute.

So Albert tells this story. In 1950s, he was in the office, putting his coat on, he was going out of the building. His father, Uncle Leonard, said, "Al, where are you going?"
"I’m going to meet the Ohio Department of Transportation."
"How come?"
"Dad, you know the land we have on Mayfield Road. They’re going to take that and put a highway right through that land."
And Uncle Leonard looked at Albert and said, "That’s going to be terrific for our land. How much do we have to pay them for that?"
Albert said, “No, Dad, you have it mixed up. We don’t pay them, they pay us."
At this point, Uncle Leonard said, “What a country.”

A difference between that exercise of eminent domain and the version that may be exercised for the Atlantic Yards project is that the former was clearly for public use rather than the "public purpose" of economic development, which is how the "public use" doctrine has evolved. Another difference: those who would have to sell their land for the Atlantic Yards project wouldn't be stakeholders in new development stimulated by the project.

The backlash

The backlash to the Supreme Court's Kelo decision, The Next American City suggests, is playing "into the hands of the anti-urban bias of conservatives." But the magazine suggests reforms:
State legislatures considering reducing eminent domain powers should be mindful of the fact that they could create another problem as serious as the one they are trying to solve: if denied the tools necessary to stimulate economic development, distressed municipalities will turn to the state for other forms of assistance. Instead, legislatures could consider requiring strict additional findings before private homes be taken but otherwise allowing eminent domain for economic development to continue.

Trash on the streets? New buildings not required to containerize garbage (but they should)

If one thing was clear from a discussion on garbage at the Atlantic Yards project, it's that trash from 7,300 new residential units shouldn't be put on the street. Carmen Cognetta, Counsel to the Sanitation and Solid Waste Management Committee of the New York City Council, last Thursday urged members of the Brooklyn Borough Board Atlantic Yards Committee to pressure city officials and the developer. "Nothing in the building code requires that buildings set aside space for trash," he said. "You need to work with the developer. It needs to be containerized in the building."

Cognetta said that the City Council committee has been urging the Buildings Department to require storage space and trash compactors in new residential facilities.

Assemblywoman Joan Millman picked up on that. Garbage bags on the streets could pose hazards: "It's going to be incumbent on us to talk to the developer" so inhouse garbage storage is part of the building.

"I think that's a reasonable 'ask' for us," Millman said. (This was another exchange in the Atlantic Yards Committee hearings which could have been clarified with input from developer Forest City Ratner or the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), which is conducting the environmental review.)

While the Sanitation Department, Cognetta said, is required to accept trash from large private buildings, many high-rise buildings pay for private trash collection, for convenience regarding the scheduling of pickups.

The final meeting of the Atlantic Yards Committee addressed issues of land use, sanitation, and hazardous materials. (Land use coverage here and here.)

Where does it go?

An arena that attracts thousands of people would inevitably create additional waste, both inside the arena and on the streets outside. How does the city deal with other sports facilities?

Arena trash is often picked up by private carters. "I'd suggest you visit Madison Square Gardens, the Meadowlands, Yankee Stadium," Cognetta said. "Some do it better than others."

Borough President Marty Markowitz pushed Cognetta to give an example. "I think Shea Stadium does it best," he responded.

Vincent DiPolo, a superintendent in the Department of Sanitation, said the city was prepared. "We'll assign additional cleaning personnel, and additional equipment."

How would recycling work? "I'm not sure how arenas set up recycling," DiPolo said, pointing out that many sports facilities are served by private carters. "If they work with us, we work with them."

Where would the residential trash go? "To our existing sites," DiPolo said. Typically the trash is taken in city trucks to waste transfer stations, where private vendors take it out of state, usually by road.

However, the city aims to revive and rebuild marine waste transfer stations that were decommissioned after the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island was closed in 2001. Brooklyn has three such transfer stations; the closest would be Hamilton Avenue station on the Gowanus Canal.

Cognetta added, "Hopefully, marine transfer stations would be built by the time this is built." He added that Council Member Michael McMahon, chair of the Sanitation Committee, said he would be happy to have a hearing on issues raised by Atlantic Yards.

New burdens?

Jerry Armer, chair of Community Board 6, observed that truck traffic would increase in an area that already is quite busy. Cognetta downplayed the issue: "A trash truck holds 12 tons. Probably one truck could handle what comes out of those buildings every other day. One, possibly two trucks."

Kate Suisman, legislative aide to Council Member Letitia James, wasn't convinced: "One truck can carry the trash for 7000 units or 18,000 people?"

Cognetta said it depends on the lifestyle patterns of residents--whether they eat at home or not--and how well they recycle.

"Seven thousand new residential units would seem to put a heck of a strain on existing equipment and manpower," added Armer. "What will it cost the city? Assuming this is built, we're going to have to live with the cost."

DiPolo said, "We'll allocate additional resources to do this." Cognetta added, "I know 7000 residential units sound like a lit, but there are 8.5 million people in the city. They really can adjust to that pretty quickly." The cost question was unanswered, though the Independent Budget Office in September tried to assess it.

Shirley McRae, chair of Community Board 2, said she was worried about existing residents, who might be vulnerable to fines because of garbage left by arena attendees. "Will Sanitation keep that in mind as it's enforcing rules?" she asked.

"We have to use our discretion," DiPolo replied. "I can't answer yes or no."

Hazardous materials

The issue of city responsibility for a state project was raised as Robert Kulikowski, director of the city Office of Environmental Coordination, discussed the remediation of hazardous waste. The presence of such materials ordinarily could trigger a remdial action plan from the city, but because this is a state project, there are other solutions. Developer Forest City Ratner, could act voluntarily, using funds from a state grant program for brownfields. Alternatively, the state environmental agency could supervise the cleanup.

What kind of materials might be found in the railyards, asked Greg Atkins, Markowitz's chief of staff.

Kulikowski said the cleanup of the High Line in Manhattan offered some hints: creosote, several heavy metals, organic compounds, and petroleum.

How difficult is it to mitigate them? "They're not," Kulikowski responded. "Pretty much anything these days is mitigatible. It depends on how much money you want to spend."

"The bottom line is to protect health and safety," he continued. "The important thing is you want to prevent further contamination," to protect groundwater.

Kulkowski acknowledged that Forest City Ratner does not have the legal responsibility to clean up the site if the company did not put the contaminants there. At the same time, he said, he thinks that FCR has applied to the brownfields cleanup program--"but don't quote me." (This was another exchange in which the presence of the developer could have clarified things.)

He clarified the issue: "While they're not legally bound, the state could say, 'We can't find the responsible party. You bought it; you've got to clean it up.'"

Another incentive for the developer, he said, might be to clean up the site because, otherwise, "your bank won't lend you the money" to build.

Armer pointed out that, even with tax credits, the cost of cleanup could be hefty. Kulikowski responded, "The developer knows the financial considerations and is willing to do this."

Armer pointed out that part of the site is covered in concrete and used as a "dead bus storage yard." Would contamination form buses, such as battery acids, also be investigated? Kulikowski said yes.

Would there be different standards for cleanup of the site that would be used for the arena, as opposed to the new railyard? Kulikowski said yes, as standards depend on the end use.

Millman raised a practical concern of constituents; what happens if the water gets turned off on nearby blocks, as had happened during the recent reconstruction of Smith Street. "It's a valid question," Kulikowski response. "You can't answer until you know more specifics." But he said the city, state, and developer would all have to work together on such issues.

"This is just a very large construction project," he said.

Millman continued, "It'll be asked again, until we get an answer."

Making a difference: Marty, Millman, Tish, and the CBs

It was the last of nine meetings of the committee. Borough President Marty Markowitz and his chief of staff, Greg Atkins, generally led off the panels with useful questions, though occasionally leading ones. Among public officials, Assemblywoman Joan Millman stood out as usual on Thursday, asking several forceful questions. She also brought an aide. Assemblyman Roger Green didn't come or send an aide; neither did State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, though she usually sends a staffer. An aide to City Council Member David Yassky attended, as is typical. State Senator Carl Andrews, whose absence was so consistent that I forgot to include him in a preview article, this time sent an aide. In my previous article, I also neglected to include Council Members Al Vann and Bill DeBlasio, who have been largely absent.

Besides Millman, however, the only elected official (or aide to an elected official) who asked questions was Kate Suisman, an aide to City Council Member Letitia James. The leading public official opposing the project, James (and her surrogate) have been generally skeptical.

The Community Board representatives consistently inquired about practical issues, during the process in general, and on Thursday. Among Community Board representatives, Jerry Armer, chair of CB6, asked several challenging questions, as is typical. Shirley McRae, chair of CB2, and Robert Matthews, chair of CB8, weighed in consistently.

There were more than a dozen people around the table, with fewer in the audience. Along among the press, News12 showed up to shoot some excerpts and later interviews. In the audience were representatives of the Municipal Art Society and the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council.

Some conversations among participants continued in the hall as Borough Hall staffers folded tables and moved chairs. The cameras moved outside. Once it was feared that the ESDC's Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS)--whose provisions this process was supposed to track--might emerge before the last committee hearing. Now that the disqualification of an ESDC lawyer has been appealed, it's unclear how long it will take. What is clear is that many questions surround this project, and answers--whether in the DEIS or in another form--are needed.

Density? FAR is elusive at hearing; Marty offers traffic soliloquy

The confirmation that the city made no effort to develop the railyards at the heart of the Atlantic Yards footprint was just one troubling aspect of the discussion last Thursday at the Brooklyn Borough Board Atlantic Yards Committee's final meeting. The city has not yet tried to measure the density of the proposed project, a city official acknowledged and Borough President Marty Markowitz, in semi-disparaging style, described opponents of the plan as people worried about adding a single minute to their daily commute.

Numerous observers have commented that an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) can't do justice to the project if it looks at impacts within the proposed primary study area of one-quarter miles and secondary study area of one-half mile. After all, that would exclude the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and other arteries certain to be impacted by an arena.

Markowitz asked if there was any precedent, for a project of this size, for the study area to be extended beyond the half-mile boundary.

Winston Von Engel, Deputy Director of the Department of City Planning's Brooklyn office, said he wasn't certain. In the EIS developed by the city for the redevelopment of Downtown Brooklyn, the study area was a half-mile, "but it does not mean you don't analyze, for traffic purposes, intersections further away... The further away you get from a project the less you notice it." (The EIS for the Atlantic Yards project is being developed by the Empire State Development Corporation, a state agency, and Draft EIS is expected first.)

Markowitz went into a soliloquy: "I'm acutely aware that, for many who oppose this project, nothing is more important than traffic. If it meant a difference of... one more minute in their travel time, they would choose not to have that additional minute. So my question is: it's not just Atlantic and Flatbush.... Events may be such that traffic comes to a halt beyond the designation of a half a mile. That's a concern of those who've raised the issue, that it should be studied from Grand Army Plaza, and all the way down to the water. There's no question it's a legitimate concern. And one of which, I must tell you, all of us working towards the most creative out-of-the-box solutions."

"Traffic is definitely going to be an issue with this project," Von Engel responded, stating the obvious. But he observed that he was there to discuss land use, and that traffic and transit are dealt with in other sections of the EIS. (Indeed, they was a previous hearing on traffic, and also on transit.)

Markowitz's "one more minute" comment contrasted with the concerns raised by others, such as Council Member David Yassky, who recently called traffic and parking issues "a first-order obstacle.” Speaking at a forum sponsored by the Park Slope Civic Council, he said, “unless there’s a serious and concrete plan” regarding traffic, “I think the project has to be resisted on that ground alone.”

Assemblywoman Joan Millman picked up on the issue. "We just heard that all sanitation trucks" would go to Hamilton Avenue. "That's way beyond one-half mile." Similarly, she noted sewage runoff to the Gowanus Canal would have an impact beyond a one-half mile.

Rezoning coming?

Millman wondered whether, should such a large project be built, there'd be a new push to rezone Atlantic and Flatbush avenues to accommodate more high-rise buildings.

Von Engel responded, "That's hard for me to say... We live in a changing world and changing city. Certainly changes are possible." He noted that the railyards have been zoned for manufacturing, but would become residential and commercial. Other developments nearby have changed from manufacturing to commercial.

For upzoning, how does the Department of City Planning determine the appropriate density, asked Shirley McRae, chair of Community Board 2.

"In general, you look at whether the infrastructure can handle the density," Von Engel said, citing such elements as mass transit, street capacity, and open space--or if a proposed project adds enough amenities such as open space of community facilities. "There is no formula, per se. We upzoned most of Downtown Brooklyn based on the fact that most of Downtown Brooklyn has fantastic mass transit access."

McRae pressed on, pointing out that Atlantic Avenue is close to major transportation. Could it be upzoned?

"Possibly, but there's no proposal to do so," Von Engel said, adding that it's not city-owned land. Private owners are free to propose rezoning. But he said there were a lot of variables to consider, including economic factors.

How dense? Don't know

Floor Area Ratio (FAR) is the way to calculate density. For Fourth Avenue, the border between Park Slope and Gowanus, the FAR is 6, Von Engel said. In Greenpoint and Williamsburg, it varies, from 2 to 8, in part because high-rise development on the waterfront includes an affordable housing bonus.

What's the FAR for the Atlantic Yards project, asked Kate Suisman, aide to Council Member Letitia James.

Von Engel replied, "I don't know what that is. It's a large project. You have to take the floor area and divide it by the lot area." (Architect Jonathan Cohn has attempted to do just that, and comes up with figures different from those used by Forest City Ratner.)

He said the figure currently being evaluated in the state environmental review (9.1 million square feet) is a limit, "so you know the outside envelope of the impacts."

City role?

Jerry Armer, chair of Community Board 2, asked, "Since this is an ESDC project, does New York City zoning come into play at all? Basically, they override it.... I'm really curious--what role does City Planning actually play?"

Von Engel replied, "ESDC has the ability to override local land use regulations. It is my understanding that ESDC does not like to do these overrides without consultation and concurrence by the local municipality. The support of the local municipality is important. The mayor has preliminarily indicated his support for the project. Our department obviously works for the mayor. If he asks us to look at this project, certainly we will. The zoning does play a role in the EIS."

"They will look at the current zoning. Clearly the zoning is different from what is proposed. The density that's being proposed, without putting a number on it, is high," he said. While the railyards are zoned for manufacturing, with a relatively low FAR, "to the north, there's a commercial district that allows an FAR of 10, and higher, with bonuses." He was referring to the Downtown Brooklyn redevelopment--which Forest City Ratner has also cited as an argument for the density of the Atlantic Yards plan.

Millman asked Von Engel how property owners can get variances to build higher on their land. "It has to be in character with the surrounding area," he said.

"You're talking about a neighborhood where we have dramatic change," Millman observed.

Von Engel said that variances are usually evaluated in the context of the street itself, not necessary the surrounding streets.

Street closings, not demapping

Does the City Planning department have a general policy on street closings, Suisman asked. (Pacific Street would be closed between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues, and between Sixth and Flatbush avenues, and Fifth Avenue would be closed between Flatbush and Atlantic avenues.)

Von Engel said a bit ruefully that he had been asked about it previously, and quoted. "We look at it on a case by case basis. As I said the last time, when we did Downtown Brooklyn, we did demap some streets and we mapped some new streets. What our chair and the mayor care about is that there's life on the street, that the sidewalks are alive, that they're exciting and interesting. It depends on the case." (He didn't address how demapping Pacific between Carlton and Vanderbilt would increase street life.)

Suisman asked if the closing of some streets in the Atlantic Yards plan would increase traffic. The closing of streets for the arena, he said, would not be too dramatic--"generally they're not very active streets."

He explained, to the surprise of some, that no streets in the Atlantic Yards plan would actually be demapped. Rather, they would be closed. Demapping requires a decision under ULURP, the city's land use review process, but this is a state process. "Chances are they'll still appear on the city map," he said.

Eminent domain debate suggests states should respond; was there a plan for Atlantic Yards?

There was a surprising amount of agreement in a debate held last week about the Supreme Court's controversial eminent domain ruling in Kelo v. New London last year. First, the lawyer for the unsuccessful plaintiff in the 5-4 case, Scott Bullock of the libertarian Institute for Justice, did not attack the concept of eminent domain but rather "eminent domain abuse." His opponent, Michael Dorf of the Columbia University School of Law, said he wouldn't defend any specific instance of eminent domain, but argued that the court's decision did what was appropriate: it prompted state legislatures and courts to more narrowly define the issue.

And for observers from Brooklyn, the discussion provided hints about a challenge to eminent domain in the Atlantic Yards project. "The real issue is the fear of abuse. I don't want to minimize it," Dorf said. The appropriate solution is the one we're seeing, in the political process." He noted that the court--or at least Justice Anthony Kennedy, in his concurrence--left open the possibility of challenging eminent domain "when it looks like an inside, sweetheart deal."

Whether the Atlantic Yards project is a "sweetheart deal" will surely be debated. But it is clear that developer Forest City Ratner devised the project, and city and state officials endorsed the sole-source deal 18 months before the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) solicited bids for its Vanderbilt Yard, which would be more than one-third of the project footprint.

The debate, titled, Kelo and its Consequences: Should homeowners fear the Supreme Court’s decision?, was held 3/14/06 at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York and sponsored by the Donald and Paula Smith Family Foundation. A podcast should be available.

Kelo summary

In the decision, the Court upheld the exercise of eminent domain by the city of New London, Connecticut, after nine petitioners, owning 15 of the 115 privately-owned properties, challenged the city.

The court summary:
In 2000, the city of New London approved a development plan that, in the words of the Supreme Court of Connecticut, was “projected to create in excess of 1,000 jobs, to increase tax and other revenues, and to revitalize an economically distressed city, including its downtown and waterfront areas.” In assembling the land needed for this project, the city’s development agent has purchased property from willing sellers and proposes to use the power of eminent domain to acquire the remainder of the property from unwilling owners in exchange for just compensation. The question presented is whether the city’s proposed disposition of this property qualifies as a “public use” within the meaning of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Universally despised?

"It is the most universally despised decision by the Supreme Court in decades," Bullock declared, noting that is drawn the ire of such strange bedfellows as George Will and Molly Ivins, and Ralph Nader and Pat Robertson. "About the only people in favor," he said, "are those who stand to benefit: city officials, planners, and developers."

Also in favor, Bullock added, are a few editorial pages, including that of the New York Times. Then again, he said, the Times would have to fall into the previous category as well, since the newspaper--he didn't say "parent company"--is building a new headquarters on land acquired via eminent domain. The audience clapped derisively; many were conservatives drawn to the event by the co-sponsor, The Federalist Society New York Lawyers Chapter.

Public use, public purpose

The Constitution contemplates the exercise of eminent domain; the Fifth Amendment states: nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The term "public use" has evolved in jurisprudence to encompass "public purpose," including economic development and the removal of blight. Bullock contended that the court's decision opens up the possibility of government taking anyone's home: "If that's the case, there are few if any limits. Every home could produce more taxes and jobs if it were a business."

Dorf disagreed. "When Justice O'Connnor said there's nothing to stop people from taking your house, it's sheer nonsense," he added. "The thing to stop them is sheer democracy."

Both Bullock and Dorf suggested that state legislatures and courts could step in. Dorf said the Supreme Court followed long-established law: "People have discovered what the law is, and they've reacted exactly the way they should."

Dorf hearkened back to the 19th century, where eminent domain was used to build public works projects like the Erie Canal. He noted that eight of nine justices accepted the notion of "public purpose" for an eminent domain project, while only the conservative Justice Clarence Thomas "wants to roll you back to 'use.'"

Opponents of the Kelo decision backed themselves into a corner, he argued: "Had New London said, 'we're going to do the development ourselves,' that would've been acceptable to opponents."

Just compensation

Dorf said that the requirement of "just compensation" for those unwilling to sell is an enormous check on the abuse of eminent domain. Because of that, local officials now try to purchase as much property as possible.

(In the Atlantic Yards case, that's what Forest City Ratner has been trying to do. According to a list from FCR, the Courier-Life chain reported that the developer now owns or controls 91 percent or 63 of the 69 condos, coops and owner occupied units in the site area; 75 percent or 12 of the 16 rental buildings; 79 percent or 81 of the 102 rental units; and 63 percent or 27 of the 43 commercial properties.)

Just compensation, Bullock responded, "is not an effective check," because it's often not what a developer would have to pay through negotiation.

Dorf said that might be a good thing, because a "holdout" can charge an extortionate price in a free market. "Just compensation is without a holdout premium."

But what if people don't want to sell, not because they want more money, but because they want to stay in their homes? Dorf acknowledged that was a tough issue, but it was contemplated by the framers of the Constitution: "If it's sufficiently important, it can be overcome."

A questioner pointed out that, in New York, there are some skyscrapers wrapped around townhouses. Bullock agreed, nothing that, "most of the time, development can happen." He cited a book mentioned in the court case, New York's Architectural Holdouts, that shows how architects and planners have managed the issue in New York.

The role of a plan

Justice John Paul Stevens' decision, Bullock acknowledged, contained a limitation, in that the New London project was pursuant to a carefully formulated plan. "He saw that as some type of check against eminent domain abuse," Bullock said.

However, he added, "At every single case in which I've litigated, there's a plan" regarding permitting and approval. "To think this provides a check is foolhardy."

The city did hold the necessary hearings, he said. "When you say taxes and jobs are public benefits, it's very hard to separate public and private," he said. (This goes to the question of the costs and benefits of the Atlantic Yards project would bring, and how many jobs.)

The court on planning

The Supreme Court opinion stated:
The disposition of this case therefore turns on the question whether the City's development plan serves a "public purpose." Without exception, our cases have defined that concept broadly, reflecting our longstanding policy of deference to legislative judgments in this field.

It cited how, in Berman v. Parker, the Court upheld a redevelopment plan targeting a blighted area of Washington, DC, and in Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff, the Court approved a Hawaii statute which broke up a land oligopoly (with just compensation) to reduce the concentration of land ownership. But Kelo wasn't about blight:
Those who govern the City were not confronted with the need to remove blight in the Fort Trumbull area, but their determination that the area was sufficiently distressed to justify a program of economic rejuvenation is entitled to our deference.

Atlantic Yards plan?

Was there a plan for the Atlantic Yards project? There was no planning process before the project was announced, but the Empire State Development Corporation is conducting an environmental review, citing the removal of blight and economic revitalization. The Draft Scope of Analysis states:
The overarching goal of the proposed project is to transform an area that is blighted and largely underutilized into a vibrant mixed-use community over a newly-renovated Rail Yards with enhanced storage, increased inspection capacity, and improved functionality. The proposed project aims to provide greatly needed affordable and market-rate housing, a state-of-the-art arena, first-class commercial retail and office space, publicly accessible open space, and a hotel. Each element will be designed by world-class building and landscape architects in a way that will enhance the Brooklyn skyline and connect the surrounding neighborhoods, which are currently separated by the open Rail Yards and a major avenue (Atlantic Avenue) with inadequate street crossings.

Impermissible favoritism

Justice Anthony Kennedy's concurrence has given encouragement to Atlantic Yards project opponents:
A court confronted with a plausible accusation of impermissible favoritism to private parties should treat the objection as a serious one and review the record to see if it has merit, though with the presumption that the government's actions were reasonable and intended to serve a public purpose. Here, the trial court conducted a careful and extensive inquiry... The trial court considered testimony from government officials and corporate officers; documentary evidence of communications between these parties; respondents' awareness of New London's depressed economic condition and evidence corroborating the validity of this concern; the substantial commitment of public funds by the State to the development project before most of the private beneficiaries were known; evidence that respondents reviewed a variety of development plans and chose a private developer from a group of applicants rather than picking out a particular transferee beforehand; and the fact that the other private beneficiaries of the project are still unknown because the office space proposed to be built has not yet been rented. (Emphases added.)

In the Atlantic Yards case, public funds were not committed before the developer was announced. And the city did not review a variety of development plans.

What the planners say

The American Planning Association filed an amicus brief in support of the city of New London. It seemed to inform the court's acknowledgement of the planning process. The APA brief states:
Another source of protection for all property owners is to assure, to the extent possible, that eminent domain is exercised only in conjunction with a process of land use planning that includes broad public participation and a careful consideration of alternatives to eminent domain....
We do not suggest that a mandate to engage in a sound planning process can be extracted from the “public use” requirement of the Fifth Amendment....We do think, however, that the presence of these features is relevant to this Court’s consideration of whether the public use determination of New London and the New London Development Corporation was a rational one. New London and its Development
Corporation engaged in an extensive planning process before determining that it was necessary to exercise the power of eminent domain; they provided multiple opportunities for public participation in the planning process; and they gave extensive consideration to alternative plans before settling on the final plan.

Another passage in the APA brief points to an absence in the Atlantic Yards process:
One other procedural requirement, of course, is important. The legislature or its delegate must make an actual determination that condemnation is for a public use before exercising the power of eminent domain. We do not believe that a restrictive judicial gloss should be imposed on the meaning of public use, or that courts should apply a heightened standard of review to public use determinations. But we do believe it is important that some politically accountable body determine that the exercise of eminent domain is for a public use, and that judicial review of such determinations remain available, even if under a deferential standard. (Emphasis in original.)

There's been considerable debate about whether the Atlantic Yards site is blighted. In New York, it's not difficult to claim blight. A tougher challenge for those exercising eminent domain for the Atlantic Yards project may be proving to the courts that planning took place.

The Times on ACORN report: some context missing regarding Atlantic Yards

[This was revised and extended from a posting 3/16/06.]

In an article 3/16/06 headlined Are Tax Breaks for Builders Still Needed in Hot Market?, the New York Times reported on an effort by ACORN to encourage more affordable housing in new developments, especially in Brooklyn. The happy exception to a wave of gentrification, ACORN reports, is the Atlantic Yards project, but the Times failed to look carefully at that issue.

The Times reported:
In a report to be released today, New York Acorn, a community group, argues that the city's most popular tax-incentive program, known as 421-a, is not only not generating much moderately priced housing in places like Downtown Brooklyn but is, in effect, subsidizing a lot of expensive housing in gentrifying neighborhoods.
The group, which claims 36,000 low- and moderate-income families as members, wants the city to change the program to require that all developers receiving these tax breaks for building apartments in much of Downtown and central Brooklyn make 30 percent of all new units affordable to people of modest means.
The group's report comes less than a month after Mayor Michael A. Bloomberg appointed a task force of developers, housing advocates and others to rethink the program, which city housing officials say has fueled the construction of more than 110,000 units since 1971 but has also cost the city hundreds of millions of dollars in lost taxes a year.

The 421-a program, which provides a 10- to-15-year exemption from real estate taxes, only requires affordable housing with projects built in the "exclusion zone," mainly Manhattan between 14th Street and 96th Street. ACORN New York's Bertha Lewis previewed the issue at a forum on 2/28/06, pointing out how Forest City Ratner's project differed from others being built in Brooklyn.

Atlantic Yards context

The Times offered one paragraph referencing the Atlantic Yards issue:
New York Acorn, which successfully pressured the Forest City Ratner Companies to include mixed-income housing in its 9.1 million-square-foot Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, looked in its new report at 87 housing development projects in various Brooklyn neighborhoods starting at the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges and extending toward Prospect Park.

Missing, however, was any explanation of what the developer would get from the deal. It would receive the 421-a tax break. More importantly, FCR got grassroots support for a project that would override city zoning and allow the developer to construct larger buildings--and thus more market-rate units--than would ordinarily would be permitted at the site.

The Times reporter was likely cribbing from the report, which devoted a page (p. 9) to Atlantic Yards:
One notable exception to these trends in Downtown Brooklyn development, the Forest City Ratner Companies’ Atlantic Yards Project, will lie on a 22-acre site, bordered for the most part by Flatbush, Atlantic and Vanderbilt Avenues and Dean Street. It will include a professional sports arena, a hotel, an office complex and residential mid-and high-rises containing 4,500 units of new rental housing.
Forest City has entered into a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) with ACORN and seven other community groups that commits the developer to making 50% of the rental units – 2,250 units – affordable....

The Times also did not mention that ACORN is contractually obligated to support the project.

The Times's response

[Update: I asked the Times about that omission, and followed up with an amplification; I pointed out, among other things, that the Atlantic Yards plan differed from a rezoning for affordable housing, because the latter would not require a community group to contractually support the project. Deputy Metro Editor Patrick LaForge responded: "It's an interesting point, but Atlantic Yards wasn't the focus of the article."

True--and I didn't request that the Times acknowledge its parent company's business relationship with Forest City Ratner. My take is that, given that ACORN highlighted Atlantic Yards as an example, any citation should've been contextualized, either with mention of ACORN's obligation, or with mention of the benefit the developer would gain. The Brooklyn Downtown Star, in an article headlined Sweetheart Transplants, offered more context. Indeed, the deck under the headline, in the hard copy version of the article, stated "Monied classes forcing others out of DoBro, warns ACORN, as justification for Yards deal."]

The city's take

The Times article did include some skepticism about ACORN's report:
City officials, who were shown the study, said it was far from comprehensive. They said the group had overlooked at least 700 to 800 low- and moderate-income units in the city's pipeline. They said that several of the neighborhoods studied included large percentages of public housing, where rents barely rose, and that in one of the community districts studied, fully 52 percent of all rental units were rent stabilized.
They and others also said the report included no proof of displacement.

Missing from the RPA's take

But the article cited the Regional Plan Association (RPA) as supporting ACORN's take that the city's tax incentives have gone too far, but missed the RPA's criticism of the Atlantic Yards project:
The Regional Plan Association, a civic group that works to improve the economy and quality of life in the New York region, also raised the issue this week, saying in an article in its newsletter that "neighborhoods like Wall Street, Harlem, Williamsburg and other communities throughout the five boroughs are hot residential markets in no need of subsidy."

The article in the RPA's 3/10/06 newsletter also contains this paragraph regarding reform of the 421-a program:
This positive step by the Bloomberg administration makes one wonder why our inferiority complex still seems to dictate negotiations with developers on big projects. In fact, almost all of the administration’s most favorite projects – the Atlantic Yards mega-development, the new Yankee Stadium, Bronx Terminal Market, and even Governors Island – allow developers tremendous leeway without demanding substantial concessions in the public interest. (Emphasis added.)

Yes, the developer made substantial concessions in negotiation with ACORN, and the city and the borough need affordable housing. Whether those substantial concessions are "in the public interest" must be evaluated in the context of the development as a whole. That would require analysis of and public deliberation about the subsidies/public costs regarding the project, as well as its scale.

The waterfront rezoning

While praising the Atlantic Yards project, ACORN's report proposes a more formalized program of guaranteeing affordable housing: rezoning. It recommends (p. 10):
1. The 421a “Exclusion Zone” should be extended to Downtown, DUMBO, Prospect Heights and other neighborhoods in Central Brooklyn, as it recently was in the rezoning of Greenpoint-Williamsburg. This would mean developers could not receive a 421a property tax exemption unless they include affordable units.
2. In exchange for 421a and J-51 tax exemptions, developers should be required to provide at least 30 percent affordable units.
3. All affordable units in all developments should be income-tiered so that the units are targeted to and affordable for all low- and moderate-income families, at 30 percent of household income.
4. Any developer who receives a tax exemption should be required to enter into a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) with relevant community organizations, covering labor participation and training, minority contracting, etc., as well as affordable housing.

In other words, the process of rezoning, which relies on elected representatives is considered preferable to a state process that overrides city zoning. As for the recommendation of a CBA, that's worth discussion (though it may raise legal questions). It also raises questions about how to identify "relevant community organizations."

Behind the "empty railyards": 40 years of ATURA, Baruch's plan, and the city's diffidence

To supporters of Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project, it's a long-awaited plan for long-overlooked land. "The Atlantic Yards area has been available for any developer in America for over 100 years,” declared Borough President Marty Markowitz at a 5/26/05 City Council hearing. Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, mused on 11/15/05 to WNYC's Brian Lehrer, “Isn’t it interesting that these railyards have sat for decades and decades and decades, and no one has done a thing about them.” Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco, in a 12/19/04 New York Times article ("In a War of Words, One Has the Power to Wound") described the railyards as "an empty scar dividing the community." (Photo from Pratt Center for Community Development.)

But why exactly has the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Vanderbilt Yard never been developed? Do public officials have some responsibility? At a hearing yesterday of the Brooklyn Borough Board Atlantic Yards Committee, Kate Suisman, aide to Council Member Letitia James, honed in on the question. The topic was land use, and Winston Von Engel, Deputy Director of the Department of City Planning's Brooklyn office, was on the hot seat in the Borough Hall courtroom. (Photo from Dope on the Slope.)

"Just to be clear, this was a project that was initiated by the developer--is that right?" asked Suisman, whose boss is the leading public official opposed to Forest City Ratner's project.

"That's our understanding," Von Engel replied. (Well, Markowitz approached developer Bruce Ratner with the idea of bringing a basketball team to Brooklyn, and the developer recognized that a standalone arena wouldn't make economic sense.)

"Had the city been looking at making use of the land?" Suisman pressed on politely.

"Not that I can recall," Von Engel said. He noted that there were once plans decades ago for a campus for Baruch College of the City University of New York, as part of the Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Area (ATURA). "This area was looked at in a very large context. What survived was the Atlantic Center mall [pictured], the Atlantic Terminal mall, the housing. So, in that sense there were plans at one point, but some of them were not realized."

He cited a recent rezoning for the Newswalk building--condos built out of an old Daily News manufacturing plant that sits on a piece of land sliced out of the Atlantic Yards footprint--and noted that other property owners in Prospect Heights had begun to convert industrial buildings to residential ones.

Suisman continued: Was there a reason the city didn't take a look at the area?

"We didn't decide to take a look at the yards," Von Engel replied. "They belong to the Long Island Rail Road. They use them heavily. They're critical to their operations. You do things in a step-by-step process. We concentrated on the Downtown Brooklyn development plan for Downtown Brooklyn. Forest City Ratner owns property across the way. And they saw the yards, and looked at those. We had not been considering the yards directly."

At the head of the table, Markowitz looked a bit pained, as a woman young enough to be his daughter educed the city's diffidence in developing the site. There were fewer than ten people in the audience, and maybe a dozen public officials, aides, and community board representatives around the table. It was another episode in the Atlantic Yards Committee's curious mix of impotence and importance.

Was there ever an RFP? Remember, Andrew Alper, president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, told City Council at a 5/4/04 hearing: So, they came to us, we did not come to them. And it is not really up to us then to go out and try to find a better deal.

The importance of context

Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards proposal must be seen in context with other nearby projects, many of which did not come into fruition until the past decade, after the area rebounded economically. The blocks around the railyards--the Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Area (ATURA)--have been in various stages of decline, clearance, and renewal. As the photo at right (updated: taken sometime after the 1988 demolition of the Flatbush Terminal and before the mid-90s construction on urban renewal land) suggests, large lots of land north of Atlantic Avenue (the northern border of the railyards) were scars themselves, decades after urban renewal began. The urban renewal land had to become scarce enough for a developer to target the railyards, which require a platform for construction. (Also, the railyard function must be moved nearby.)

The photo at right, picturing mid-2005 conditions, was taken after the openings of the Atlantic Center mall (1996) and the Atlantic Terminal mall (2004). (Photos from Forest City Ratner presentation to City Council on 5/26/05.)

The city’s clearance of substandard housing and relocation of the Fort Greene Meat Market led—eventually--to major changes. More than two decades before the malls, the major construction in the ATURA consisted of six subsidized apartment buildings, five up to 15 stories high, and one that's 31 stories high. In the mid-1990s, as the first mall was being constructed, different kinds of subsidized housing--numerous row houses--were constructed, and later a seven-story building for senior citizens was built. (The photo is taken from the Sixth Avenue bridge, over the railyards, approaching Atlantic Avenue and looking northeast.)

Over the years, though, more ambitious projects fell by the wayside, including a development with new office towers, a possible sports arena, and a new campus for Baruch College of City University of New York, to be built over the railyards. A good part of the problem was money. A city plan to move Baruch College to a parcel that included the railyards was stalled in 1973, as the city lacked $27 million (some $120 million in March 2006 dollars) to build a platform for new construction. Last year, the MTA estimated the cost of a platform and a new yard at $56-$72 million, though bidders Extell and Forest City Ratner estimated higher costs.

Nearby, new homeowners invested in row-house blocks; the Fort Greene Historic District was designated in 1978. The president of the Downtown Brooklyn Development Association as saying the brownstoners helped usher in business and government investment, according to a 6/9/77 article in the Brooklyn Phoenix quoted by geographer Winifred Curran in her analysis of ATURA (see below). Some neighborhood residents also resisted major development projects, fearing congestion and crime. Echoes of the Atlantic Yards controversy? Partly--but the scale of the new plan is far larger.

ATURA boundaries

More than half of the Atlantic Yards footprint, including the railyard, would fall within the boundaries of ATURA, a more than 40-year-old experiment in urban planning. The 104-acre site (originally 85 acres) is located mostly in Fort Greene, including the sites that became the Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center malls north of Atlantic Avenue, plus a variety of subsidized housing, including high-rises and row houses.
In the map at right, anything in red (including a grayish red, but not the gray alone) is within ATURA. The blue-and-red striped areas between Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Street are within both ATURA and the Atlantic Yards footprint. The blocks in solid blue, which continue down to Dean Street, are within the Atlantic Yards footprint but not ATURA. Note that they seem narrower than the blocks just above them because the ATURA boundaries include the streetbed of Pacific Street (but not the buildings on the south side of the street).

ATURA includes the segments of the Atlantic Yards plan between Pacific and Atlantic: the railyards and the two plots of land to the west, which Site 6-A, the triangle of land between Fifth, Atlantic, and Flatbush Avenues, and Site 5, now occupied by P.C. Richard/Modell's, and a community garden. The latter two were originally in the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning, but were excised because they overlapped with the Atlantic Yards plan. They are arguably the only segments of the Atlantic Yards plan that are in Downtown Brooklyn--unless the concept of downtown is extended. (Site 5, which is south of Flatbush Avenue, might be said to be in Park Slope, while Site 6-A might be said to be in Prospect Heights.)

Dodger hopes

Brooklyn went into decline in the 1950s, as suburbs drew people and businesses, and government agencies let banks redline neighborhoods to stymie investment. Even before ATURA, some big plans were floated. In early 1954, according to Michael Shapiro’s book “The Last Good Season,” the president of the New York Council of Wholesale Meat Dealers wrote to Brooklyn Borough President John Cashmore, asking for help in relocating the “vast and fetid Fort Greene Meat Market,” which was deteriorating rapidly. The location “sat above the Brooklyn terminus of the Long Island Rail Road,” Shapiro wrote. (Actually, it was to the east nearby.) It represented a solution for Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, whose Ebbets Field in the Flatbush neighborhood was small and antiquated, with limited access to parking and public transit. (Photo from Brooklyn Eagle via Brooklyn Public Library.)

“It was impossible to envision a better site for a new Brooklyn ballpark,” Shapiro wrote, channeling Cashmore’s observations. Robert Moses, the city’s planning czar, however, wanted a new stadium at Flushing Meadows, near a highway and accessible to suburbanites—which he eventually got. Moses, according to Shapiro, opposed Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley’s desire to use public money or governmental condemnation powers to build the stadium at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues. Roger Kahn, in his book, “The Era,” added that Moses thought there would be too much traffic at the site—an issue that recurs today. (Photo of the crossroads of Flatbush and Atlantic, looking southeast, in 1947, from the Brooklyn Public Library's Brooklyn Eagle collection. The roof of the Long Island Rail Road station is in the lower left. That is now the site of the Atlantic Terminal mall.)

ATURA emerges

In 1962, according to a 9/5/65 New York Times article, “the City Planning Commission recommended a sweeping $150 million redevelopment and rehabilitation program for the area surrounding the Long Island terminal at Atlantic Avenue.” (By the way, $150 million in 1962 dollars would be nearly $1 billion in March 2006 dollars.) “Known as the Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Area, the plan included the removal of the Fort Greene Meat Market, an antiquated wholesale market behind the terminal, the clearance of slums and the construction of low-income and middle income apartment houses and industrial buildings."

That 1965 New York Times article, headlined “Vacant Store Windows Stare At Once-Bustling Flatbush Ave.,” painted a grim picture, citing 43 empty storefronts between DeKalb Avenue and Grand Army Plaza. A city spokesman said—presciently, it turns out—“that it would be ‘literally years’ before any physical change would be made.” A local businessman—again presciently—wondered why the area was in decline. “We’ve got everything in the way of transportation here,” said Frederick Kriete, assistant vice-president of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank. “It’s a little Times Square.”

For another history of ATURA, see this animated timeline produced by the Center for Urban Pedagogy. I can't confirm all the facts/dates, but much is consonant with the information below.

Baruch mentions

By 1968, there were inklings of change, with redevelopment to be anchored by education. The Times reported, in a 4/17/68 article headlined “Sale of L.I.U. Site Opposed by Mayor,” that, according to one CUNY source, Mayor John Lindsay supported a new site for Manhattan’s Baruch College “within a triangular-shaped area bounded by Atlantic Avenue, Vanderbilt Avenue and Flatbush Avenue, in the Crown Heights section.” Though the exact location was not specified, the site, south of Atlantic Avenue, would apparently have included the railyards. (Crown Heights? Apparently not everyone was calling it Prospect Heights.)

A 6/24/68 Times article, headlined “Renewal Raises Brooklyn Hopes,” described the city’s urban renewal plan as $250 million (over $1.4 billion in March 2006 dollars). It portrayed some serious blight:
The pavement smells of rancid fat on a warm day and the meat cutting continues through the night. The plants are surrounded by residential houses.
Three blocks of open railroad tracks alongside Atlantic Avenue and an abandoned railroad loading platform, where vagrants, addicts and drunks sleep and prostitutes congregate even during the day.
Houses that in the words of Borough President Abe Stark are ‘unfit for human habitation.'

The renewal plan, according to the Times, “calls for 2,400 new low- and middle-income housing units to replace 800 dilapidated units, removal of the blighting Fort Greene Meat Market, a 14-acre site for the City University’s new Baruch College, two new parks and community facilities such as day-care centers.”

Meat market moves

The meat market lingered. On 10/24/68, the Times reported, the city had decided to move the market to an area between the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges, which has since become the upscale neighborhood known as DUMBO. Otis Pratt Pearsall of the Municipal Art Society called it “an outrageous misuse of a prime section of river frontage.” On 2/8/69, the Times reported, five Brooklyn Heights homeowners, supported by the Brooklyn Heights Association, sued to block the move, saying that the site—defunct Civil War-era warehouses-—should be developed into housing and recreation.

Some six months later, on 8/19/69, the Times reported that the city had chosen a site in Sunset Park, apparently responding to the criticism. But the move came slowly. In early 1975, the Times was predicting a move that spring; on 7/14/76, the Times reported that the market remained unfinished because the builder was in default.

Subsidized housing plans

While the subsidized housing didn't arrive until 1976, plans emerged years before that. A 9/23/70 article in the Times described plans to build a 300-unit public housing project on a 2.2-acre between Carlton Avenue and Adelphi Street and between Atlantic Avenue in Fulton Street, near the eastern end of ATURA. It was initially described as a 20-story building, but it ultimately became Atlantic Terminal Site 4B, a 31-story building and the tallest city housing project, built just north of Atlantic Avenue between Clermont and Carlton Avenues.

A 10/31/71 article, headlined “Rebuilding To Start at L.I.R. Area in Brooklyn,” cited plans to begin that building “next spring,” and plans to building 2,400 housing units “and a $97 million new home for Baruch College to straddle Atlantic Avenue.” (That’s $475 million in March 2006 dollars.) The college buildings “would be built on air rights over the Long Island’s underground train shed and underground storage yards.” Along Flatbush Avenue, the area “has become so blighted that a commuters’ bar near the station keeps its door locked at night and customers are admitted only after scrutiny by the bartender.” Meanwhile, construction had been scheduled for a replacement meat market located in Sunset Park—not the area that would become DUMBO—though it would take years to complete.

In late 1972, the City Planning Commission approved plans to construct five moderate-income buildings. "Although some elected officials are urging caution and review, I say six years of study, planning and review have already gone by and this project must be approved now," the former chairman of Community Board 2, Roy Vanasco, told the Times (Planners Approve 2 Projects in Brooklyn, 12/17/72).

A 1/27/73 article in the Times, headlined “Housing is Voted for Fort Greene,” described plans to construct those five buildings. Two of them, 12 and 15 stories high, would be “in the middle of the block bounded by Hanson Place, North Portland Avenue, Atlantic Avenue and South Elliott Place.” These (right) are the Atlantic Terminal I coops, a 15-story building on South Portland Avenue and a 12-story building on South Elliott Place. These are just north of the southeast segment of the Atlantic Center mall. (The mall lacks entrances near those towers; blame fear of local youths and others. In the background is the Bank of New York tower on top of the Atlantic Terminal mall, built in 2004.)

The second project, Atlantic Terminal II, was to consist of three buildings, 9, 13, and 15 stories high, near the Atlantic Terminal 4B building. Ultimately, the project, on Carlton Avenue and Fulton Street, included one 15-story coop and two 13-story buildings, known as Atlantic Terminal II. They are Mitchell-Lama buildings.

The site clearance required significant urban renewal. In a 6/17/73 article headlined “Brooklyn Renewal Slowly Advances,” the Times noted that the city had acquired 461 buildings, demolishing most of them, and had 200 more buildings slated for condemnation. Some 375 businesses and 750 families had been moved, with another 75 businesses and 165 families slated to move.

Arena hopes

That 1/27/73 article reported that Brooklyn Borough President Sebastian Leone “urged the rebuilding of the Long Island Rail Road terminal at Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues and the construction of a new hotel, a sports arena and other facilities in the area.”

More than a year later, in a 7/17/74 article, Leone was reported to promote his idea before the New York State Sports Authority. The article, headlined “Arena Plan Is Pressed in Brooklyn,” noted that community opponents preferred low income housing and expressed fears of traffic jams and air pollution.

Residents even sued to block a proposed $50,000 feasibility study of a 15,000 seat arena, according to a 2/23/75 article headlined "Brooklyn Arena Study Halted." But when the suit was withdrawn, lawyers representing the city and state said the study wouldn't proceed anyhow, since the state's Sport Authority was expected to be abolished. The suit was to represent homeowners from Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge, Coney Island, and the Atlantic Terminal area. Leone said he didn't think the oft-mentioned Atlantic Terminal area was in fact the best location. "And anyway," he told the newspaper, "we have plans for housing there." A representative of a Fort Greene group fighting the arena supported "additional middle-income cooperative housing."

The possibility of an arena occasionally revived. A 6/6/84 article in the Times, headlined, “Site Near Shea Favored For Domed Stadium,” cited discussions about a new arena “in the Atlantic Terminal area of Brooklyn, at the site of Aqueduct Race Track in Queens, or near Shea Stadium.”

Ultimately, as an 8/25/91 Newsday article reported, proponents of the Brooklyn Sportsplex, as the 1990s version of the project was known, decided to push for an indoor arena and outdoor stadium in Coney Island. “There were just too many people who didn’t want it there,” said Robert Zeig of the Brooklyn Sports Foundation, referring to an arena in ATURA.

A new Baruch site, and fiscal crisis

Meanwhile, Baruch’s plans were on hold, as a CUNY spokesman said in the 1/27/73 article that the Board of Higher Education decided to keep the college in Manhattan “after learning it would cost $27 million just to build a platform of the Long Island Rail Road tracks on which to construct the college.”

But there was more space in ATURA. In 12/4/73 article in the Times, headlined “Beame Is Said to Favor the ‘Concept’ Of Moving Baruch College to Brooklyn,” Borough President Leone said that, because the originally proposed site posed an engineering difficulty, Baruch would then be offered a different site, covering 10 acres.

A year later, in a 12/18/74 article headlined “Baruch College Will Be Moved To $73 Million Site in Brooklyn,” the Times reported that the college would move to a 15-acre site north of the railyards, bounded by Atlantic Avenue, Fulton Street, Carlton Avenue, South Oxford Street and South Portland Avenue. The scheduled completion date was 1980. While the exact dimensions are unclear, that is roughly the area east of (but perhaps including part of) the Atlantic Center mall—an area later slated for subsidized low-rise housing.

A 1/16/75 article, headlined “New Campus in Brooklyn Wins Support,” pointed out that the project would “probably halve the 2,400 moderate income housing units planned.” Speakers at a City Planning Commission hearing “expressed concern that additional units might be sacrificed for a proposed Brooklyn sports arena.”

Six weeks later, a 3/2/75 article about the City Planning Commission, headlined “Do-It-Yourself Plan For Garage Killed,” offered slightly different boundaries for the Baruch plan: Atlantic Avenue, Fulton Street, Carlton Avenue, Hanson Place, and Flatbush Avenue.” The project seemed to be moving ahead. A 3/7/75 article, headlined “Board of Estimate Votes Tunnel-Work Compromise,” reported that the Board of Estimate, then a crucial layer in city government, approved street closings and zoning changes for the Baruch campus, after agreeing to reserve an adjacent parcel for additional low- and moderate-income housing. A 3/19/75 Times article ("New Baruch College Site Approved") reported that the city's Site Selection Board signed off on the location, but city and state budget officials still needed to approve the plans before architects could get to work.

Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable surveyed the plans for Baruch and commercial redevelopment, and citing ongoing neighborhood renewal in a 3/30/75 article buoyantly headlined "The Blooming of Downtown Brooklyn."

Not so fast. The Baruch move became a casualty of the city’s fiscal crisis. (That famous New York Daily News headline, “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” ran on 10/30/75.) A 3/18/77 article in the Times, “Atlantic Avenue to Bloom Anew In a Brooklyn Restorer’s Plan,” pointed out that work in ATURA had stalled. “But the city’s financial plight has set back hopes for a new Baruch College campus in the City University system, financial problems have delayed the move of the Fort Greene meat market, and prospects for new housing at present are dim.”

80s ambitions

By the 1980s, plans grew more ambitious. A 6/1/84 Times article headlined, “Brooklyn Uplift: Hotel Reborn as Apartment House,” described changes around the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Fort Greene. It noted how “the main governmental interest now is the development of new office space on urban renewal tracts to create ‘back office’ white collar jobs.” This was because Jersey City had begun to attract jobs from Manhattan--which was countered, ultimately, by Forest City Ratner's MetroTech development downtown. “For example, a long block to the south of the academy, at the Brooklyn terminus of the Long Island Rail Road, is an immense undeveloped track in the Atlantic Terminal urban renewal area. There is potential for 1 million to 1.5 million square feet of office space and 700 to 1,000 housing units there.”

Meanwhile, smaller-scale development proceeded. A development of 13 3.5-story buildings, including 98 units, was planned as infill housing on Fulton Street, Gates Avenue, and Adelphi Street “along the perimeter of the still largely undeveloped Atlantic Terminal urban renewal area,” according to a 11/9/84 article in the Times headlined “Brownstone Look Returning in Fort Greene Project.” The article pointed out that the buildings required city and federal subsidies: “As with much land in the city’s inventory, values in the neighborhood are not strong enough to generate speculative construction.”

It should be noted that the Fort Greene Historic District had been established in 1978; the counterpart in adjacent Clinton Hill was established in 1981. Owners of buildings in historic districts get a tax break for fixing up their buildings and must get permission to change the look of those buildings; the designation generally serves as a rising tide for property values. Now, speculative construction is common.

1985: big plans emerge

In early 1985, according to a 1/17/85 Times article headlined “Office-Housing Plan for Downtown Brooklyn,” Mayor Ed Koch and business leaders announced a $255 million office/retail/housing complex in ATURA. (That would be $470 million in March 2006 dollars.) The article pointed out that ATURA “was declared an urban renewal zone in 1968 but has never had any major construction, has been singled out by the city as a site for back-office space for Manhattan businesses.”

The project would create 1,680 jobs and have two phases. The first phase, over 18 acres, would include 600,000 square feet of office space, 400 housing units—geared at low and middle-income people—a movie theater, and a supermarket. The second phase would include 1.2 million square feet of office space. When the developer, Rose Associates, completed the second stage, it could develop an additional 1.2 million square feet of office and retail space nearby.

The project, the Times wrote (Developers Turn Sights To City's Outer Boroughs, 5/12/85) was a consequence of the rise in Manhattan rents. Also announced was the construction of MetroTech, a joint veture between Forest City Enterprises (the parent company of what would be called Forest City Ratner Companies) and Polytechnic Institute of New York.

More details emerged six months later. According to a 7/31/85 Times article (Brooklyn Plan: Retail Center And 2 Towers), two Art Deco-influenced office towers of about 20 stories would rise across from the Williamsburg Savings Bank. There would be 260 town houses with 600 units, thanks to city and federal subsidies. Ultimately, it would include 3.1 million square feet of office and retail space. The city promised a favorable lease and tax abatements. A neighborhood leader worried that the proposed 1000 parking spaces "would flood the areas with cars and pollution," and that the proposed movie theater would show pornographic movies. (Developer Jonathan Rose said porn would be verboten.)

1986: new plans, urban design

"Give Central Brooklyn a Boost," declared the Times in a 9/24/86 editorial. (Apparently this was not always "near Downtown Brooklyn.") "Despite the gentrification of nearby neighbohroods, Brooklyn's Atlantic Terminal district has for nearly 20 years remained the home of rundown bars and fast-food joints, a hangout for prostitutes and low-lifes."

Not everyone was happy. A few days later (A Plan for Brooklyn Rises at Atlantic Terminal, 9/28/86), opponents said the tax-supported project would encroach on nearby commercial strips and that the townhouses would be out of the financial reach of most area reasidents. (They were aimed at families earning $25,000 to $48,000 a year--or about $45,000 to $87,000 in current dollars.)

The plans evolved. The Board of Estimate, the Times reported 11/16/86, had approved a $500 million project, including 1.8 million square feet of office and commercial space, a public garage, and 12 acres for residential development. (That’s over $900 million in March 2006 dollars.) Some 643 apartments would be built in “attached brownstone-like buildings” over 12 acres, eith exterior stoops, bay windows and architectural detailing. Buildings would enclose private landscape spaces. The design, said the Times in an article headlined “Creating an Urban Neighborhood,” “is an imaginative building pattern… and it is achieved without street closings that would isolate the community from its surroundings.”

The planner for this, hired by Rose Associates, was Peter Calthorpe, who had then done the master plan for the Capitol area of Sacramento, CA and had written a book called “Sustainable Communities,” published by the Sierra Club. More recently, he was hired by Forest City Enterprises, the parent company of Forest City Ratner, for the Stapleton development in Denver. He was cited by the Park Slope Civic Council last year as the type of urban planner who should hired to improve the Atlantic Yards project.

But roadblocks emerged. A Fort Greene block association and other homeowners sued over an environmental impact statement that failed to consider how rerouted traffic would affect their neighborhood, even though it is one block form the project (Brooklyn Residents Sue Rose, 7/19/87).

Then an economic downturn compounded community opposition. The Times reported (Office Growth Slows in Boroughs Outside Manhattan, 2/15/88) that the stock market collapse had deterred office construction. "A lot of people are reassessing their expansion plans," James Stuckey, president of the city's Public Development Corporation, told the Times. (Yes, the same Jim Stuckey, now VP for Forest City Ratner, who told the Times last November that "Projects change, markets change.")

Despite the Board of Estimate’s eventual approval, lawsuits stalled the project. A Times article (Transforming Downtown Brooklyn, 1/22/89) reported that MeteroTech was proceeding but Atlantic Center was blocked in court. The issues: traffic, air quality, and displacement. Even if the suits were resolved, the developer acknowledged, construction would not begin until an anchor tenant emerged.

1990s: malls emerge

A few years later, Forest City Enterprises, the Times reported ('Other Boroughs' Strategy Bucks Difficult Times, 3/10/91), had joined Rose Associates as partner in the project. Eventually, Atlantic Center morphed from an office complex to a mall, and Forest City Ratner became the sole developer. Brooklyn, it turns out, may not have been the place for new office development, but it certainly lacked retail, as FCR figured out. (Even today, as the changes to Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards plan suggest, housing is a better bet than office space.) A 6/27/93 Times article, “Retailing Opens a New Front in Brooklyn,” pointed to plans by Forest City Ratner to build a store for Bradlees in ATURA, part of the Atlantic Center project. It pointed to a “drastically diminished” development compared to the plan from the 1980s, with no more office towers.

A 6/10/94 article in the Times cited 53 three-family homes being building “on a slice of an empty 24-acre site in Fort Greene.” No longer were duplex condos planned; the new houses “are more marketable and more compatible with the existing neighborhoods,” said a housing official. Ultimately, the Village at Atlantic Center, also known as Atlantic Commons, involved 139 three-family homes totaling 417 units, with brick fronts and cornices meant to invoke the row house neighborhood nearby.

Now, however, plans are more ambitious. The Atlantic Yards plan would place high-rise towers across the street. And, as noted in the “secret” Memorandum of Understanding unveiled last August by Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, Forest City Ratner retains the option to build high-rise office and residential towers on the site of the Atlantic Center mall, which is widely considered an example of poor urban planning. The mall opened in 1996, thanks to considerable subsidies.(Photo from Brooklyn Views.)

[Correction: Forest City Ratner has always had the option to build towers on the Atlantic Center site; the memorandum of understanding allows the transfer of a portion of those development right to Site 5.]

One recent building that aimed to harmonize with the neighborhood is Cumberland Gardens, a seven-story building for low-income senior citizens that opened in 2001, sponsored by the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens. As the architect commented,
"The building’s facade recalls traditional New York City apartment buildings and complements the surrounding row houses."

Final changes

This January, according to a 1/21/06 article in the Brooklyn Papers headlined 35 years later, Fort Greene to be ‘renewed’, Community Board 2 approved the last project in ATURA. The Fifth Avenue Committee will build 80 condos on Atlantic Avenue between South Portland and South Oxford streets, just east of the Atlantic Center mall. The article stated:
"Half of the condos will be reserved for buyers who earn up to 80 percent of the city’s median income – $62,400 for a family of four. Twenty of the remaining condos will sell at market rate, while another 20 will be reserved for local buyers who earn just over the city’s median income."

I asked Michelle de la Uz of the Fifth Avenue Committee why the building is ten stories rather than taller. "As a long-time community development corporation with strong ties to the communities we serve, we strive to build buildings that are in keeping with the character of the surrounding neighborhood," she wrote, adding, "Ten stories is sufficient for us to meet our affordability goals for the site and is in keeping with height of other surrounding buildings. We did have to seek a zoning waiver to go to the ten-story height."

Note that the row houses nearby are three stories, and the 1970s subsidized coops are up to 15 stories. The senior housing a few blocks away is seven stories, while the Atlantic Center mall next door has three levels. Keep in mind, however, that the mall may be torn down for a high-rise development, and the Atlantic Yards plan would include much taller buildings.

A geographer comments

Was it all worth it? “[T]he designation of the Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Area may have done more to accelerate the decline of Fort Greene than to arrest and reverse it. The site was cleared and then left abandoned for close to 30 years, while attempts by the city to develop it failed to come to fruition,” writes Winifred Curran of the DePaul University Department of Geography, in an article published in 1998 (City Policy and Urban Renewal: A Case Study of Fort Greene Brooklyn; Middle States Geographer).

But the past decade marked changes. “This trend was finally reversed in the 1990s….” comments Curran, formerly of Hunter College in New York. “While what was built represents a compromise of sorts, the poor design and ill-considered nature of the developments pose a threat to the unique character of this brownstone neighborhood.” While Curran doesn't break down all the costs and benefits, she observes, “The city has spent an extraordinary amount of money to attract development that might have occurred anyway.” For example, by 1992, the city had spent $166 million in capital improvements to facilitate development.

So the story behind the failure to develop the railyard raises questions about whether an emphasis on process over projects might have been more fruitful.

Development ups and downs

Markowitz said that the “Atlantic Yards area has been available for any developer”? Well, maybe the Vanderbilt Yard, but not the area, especially if you consider the ups and downs of parcels nearby. The Daily News built a printing plant on Dean Street in 1927. In 1983, as the Times reported in an 11/27/83 article headlined “The Intricacies of Initiating Development Projects,” city officials helped the newspaper add parking space and a new 15,000-square-foot warehouse, despite complaints from neighbors.

The plant closed, however, at the end of 1996, as the newspaper moved its printing operations to a more modern facility in New Jersey. The building was a haven for squatters for several years, and a friend tells me he inquired and was told it could be purchased for $1.3 million. (That's not a typo.) Then developer Shaya Boymelgreen bought the building and converted it into the luxury Newswalk condominium complex, which opened in 2002. The block it occupies was sliced out of the Atlantic Yards site plan. As the Village Voice noted in a 4/5/04 article, “But if Ratner could design around Newswalk, he could have spared other properties as well.” In other words, development is always in flux.

A valuable plot nearby

A block east of the Atlantic Center mall, on South Oxford Street just past the Atlantic Commons development, a 4,000 square foot mansion and associated properties has been sold for $13 million. According to the New York Daily News, the owner will keep the mansion but demolish two carriage houses and a two-family home to build a 40,000 square foot luxury high-rise building on the property. How big would that be? In the ballpark of The Greene House a few blocks away, at least.

Preservationists are concerned about keeping the mansion, which falls outside the boundaries of the current Fort Greene Historic District, though there are efforts to expand that district. The bucolic mansion likely will be joined by a mid-sized tower, maybe ten to 12 stories. If the Atlantic Yards project proceeds at current projections, towers some 40 stories tall would be built nearby, just down the block and across Atlantic Avenue.

ATURA almost forgotten

The term “Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Area” has fallen out of favor. Though it has been cited recently in the Brooklyn press, such as this Brooklyn Papers article, a Lexis-Nexis search shows that it was last used in the city’s daily newspapers nearly eight years ago, in a 3/27/98 New York Times article headlined “Plan Ratified for Mall at L.I.R.R. Terminal.” The term “Atlantic Terminal area” is more common, such as in a 2/19/06 Times article headlined “Coming Soon, 9 Million Stories in the Crowded City,” which cited “proposed development, including… the Atlantic Terminal area in Brooklyn.” The Empire State Development Corporation's Draft Scope of Analysis for an Environmental Impact Statement locates the Atlantic Yards project "in the Atlantic Terminal area of Brooklyn."

Two weeks ago, Bertha Lewis, executive director of New York ACORN, at a panel on affordable housing, pronounced, "For 30 years, the yards sat.” She's right, but the story behind it can't be summed up in a soundbite.

ESDC, Ratner & job numbers: collaborative or not?

Exactly how collaborative are the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) and developer Forest City Ratner (FCR)? A disputed claim about jobs at the Atlantic Yards project raises a lingering question about whether the state agency is more an advocate for the project or a steward of the public interest.

The legal battle in which opponents of FCR's Atlantic Yards plan and critics of the environmental review process have challenged the ESDC and the developer has raised some significant questions. Is it simply "collaborative" for the agency to use a lawyer who has just represented a developer on the same project, or does that not meet an "arm's length" standard? Justice Carol Edmead disqualified attorney David Paget, and an appeal of her decision will be heard 3/23/06.

Project sponsor, environmental steward

As the proposed amicus curiae brief filed 3/14/06 by the New York Public Interest Group (NYPIRG) states:
There is an inherent tension between ESDC's statutory role under the UDCA [Urban Development Corporation Act], which one might reasonably argue is to use its authority as a governmental agency to shepherd a project initially recognized as having public merit past the "political and bureaucratic inertia" toward successful completion, and ESDC's role under SEQRA [State Environmental Quality Review Act], which is to determine whether, for the sake of the "ecological systems, natural, human and community resources important to the people of the state," the same project should go forward at all.
...ESDC's role as an advocate of officially favored development must not be allowed to overwhelm and subsume its role as "steward" of the public's interest in preserving and enhancing the natural and community environments.

Space per job: do ESDC & FCR agree?

The tension between advocate and steward may arise in another small aspect of the controversy. I took another look at the 11/6/05 New York Times article about changes in the Atlantic Yards project, headlined Routine Changes, or 'Bait and Switch'?. The article mentioned how Forest City Ratner initially projected 10,000 jobs for about 2 million square feet of office space in the Atlantic Yards project, but now "nearly three-quarters of the office jobs originally projected are gone."

Besides a reduction in office space, another reason was this:
The earlier estimates were also based on a ratio of one job per 200 square feet of space, but the Empire State Development Corporation, which released the September planning documents, uses a less generous ratio of one job per 250 square feet of space, amplifying the reduction.

Howver, the ESDC's Draft Scope of Analysis for the project says nothing about such ratios. Rather, I pointed out, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and FCR consultant Andrew Zimbalist use the 250 square feet figure, which is not just a "less generous ratio," but also the industry standard.

Asking for clarification

More than a week ago, I asked the ESDC if the agency uses 250 square feet per office job, and whether it was in any document. I haven't received an answer. (If I do, I'll add it here.)

[7/21/06 update: the ESDC does use that ratio.)

There are two possibilities here:

1) The Times was mistaken and the ESDC, as the Draft Scope suggests, doesn't calculate a different figure regarding jobs. If so, then the Times portrayed the agency and the developer as more at odds than they actually are--and this small but not insignificant error should be corrected.

2) The Times was correct and the ESDC does in fact count 250 feet of space per office worker. If so, the agency has been inconsistent in its public posture. If the ESDC does use the standard industry ratio of 250 square feet per job, then it should've looked askance at FCR's initial promises (December 2003) that it would fill about 2 million square feet of office space with 10,000 jobs.

ESDC collaboration

However, the agency's pattern has been to support the developer's claims. On 3/4/05, in a press release headlined "Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg Announce Memorandum of Understanding for Atlantic Yards Project in Brooklyn," the ESDC stated, "The project is expected to create 15,000 construction jobs and over 10,000 permanent jobs."

Had the ESDC used the industry standard rather than accepted the jobs figures used by the governor's and mayor's offices in their press releases, it would've calculated 8000 jobs for the same amount of space, assuming all the offices were full. If, like the NYCEDC, the state agency had calculated a 7% vacancy rate, it would have projected an even smaller number of jobs. And the discussion about the number of jobs promised at this project would've started a lot earlier.

Marty's Atlantic Yards Committee: not quite oversight, but not unimportant, either

Coming up Thursday is the ninth and last in a series of meetings--not really hearings--of the Brooklyn Borough Board Atlantic Yards Committee. Among the topics is land use, which should stimulate discussion about how this project overrides city zoning.

These meetings, set up by Borough President Marty Markowitz, are the closest thing to a public process regarding the massive Atlantic Yards plan as it awaits environmental review by the Empire State Development Corporation, or ESDC. (The ESDC is expected to issue a Draft Environmental Impact Statement, or DEIS, within weeks or months, after which there will be a comment period and public hearing.) The sessions at Borough Hall aim to be a "vehicle for research, information and advocacy" regarding the project.

And though these meetings can be dreary and hardly constitute democratic oversight--the public can't ask questions--it's remarkable how concerns about the project have emerged:
--the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, the western border of the proposed project, was already declared "impossible" and a consultant suggested the project be put on hold to avoid a "disaster."
--local officials declared the boundaries in the scope of analysis to be completely inadequate to address transit and traffic impacts.
--despite Forest City Ratner's promises of landscaped open space, the amount of open space planned for the population influx is deeply inadequate.
--the design process was dismissed as backwards.
--a rep from the City Planning Department acknowledged that the city has no policy about demapping streets, though, as architect Jonathan Cohn argues, it should keep large blocks like Pacific Street open.
--terrorism was dismissed as an issue.

Who's missing

Developer Forest City Ratner has never participated, which means basic questions about the location of affordable housing or the company's plans for storm water runoff remain a mystery. The ESDC appeared only once.

Panelists--usually a mix of bureaucrats, academics, and other experts--typically observe that a question will have to wait to for clarification in the ESDC's DEIS--thus adding an air of impotency to the proceedings. And, given that it's an unofficial process, both the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the New York City Transit Authority decided against sending representatives to answer questions.

Criticism and cheerleading

Some tough critics have appeared on panels. Psychiatrist Mindy Fullilove warned how "intense verticality" would transform Prospect Heights. Transportation engineer Brian Ketcham warned of looming chaos and harshly criticized the ESDC's methodology.

Markowitz often acknowledges that he supports the project but wants to see it examined thoroughly so Brooklynites are satisfied. He's occasionally offered some not-so-subtle cheerleading for the project, notably when questioning an Independent Budget Office official as to whether the fiscal benefit would be even greater than the agency estimated.

Unanswered questions

There are many unanswered questions, many of which will be addressed, if not fully answered, in the EIS. Remember, the process requires environmental impacts to be "mitigated," but if they are deemed unmitigatible, the ESDC can still decide to approve the project.

But some issues may remain mysteries. Take this exchange at the 10/24/05 session, when ESDC officials attended, as captured in the terse meeting notes:
Why was there a separate, secret MOU?
At the time, there were two investment groups. ESDC is now treating them as one project.

That second MOU refers to development rights to Site 5, which now contains P.C. Richard/Modell's, and to the Atlantic Center mall. It was signed at the same time the MOU regarding the Atlantic Yards project was signed. The latter was released via a press conference; the former was not made public until obtained by project opponents Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn.

Why was it secret, I asked ESDC via email. And why would the presence of a second investment group mean that one MOU would be treated differently? The response I got, in toto, from ESDC spokeswoman Jessica Copen: "There was never a secret MOU. There were always two MOUs and they were both made available to the public. However, there is only one project encomposing both MOU's that ESDC expects to adopt which will be used as the basis for the EIS and the GPP [General Project Plan]."

Preparing for Thursday

In case you're interested in attending the 4 pm meeting Thursday at Borough Hall, here's what you might expect. First, don't worry about being prompt--the meetings usually start late, after 15 or 20 minutes. Is that because the witnesses are late, or because Markowitz runs late? The latter, I think. Then Marty rumbles in, greets everybody, and recites the committe's goals. He then leads off with a few questions; they're obviously prepared by his staff, but compared to many politicians, he at least seems to understand the issues. Marty's chief of staff, Greg Atkins, sits by his side, and chimes in with questions; other aides are behind him.

Around the table are places for representatives of the three affected Community Boards (usually the chairperson, with the district manager in the second row). Assemblywoman Joan Millman usually attends, with an aide; Assemblyman Roger Green comes less frequently. Council Member Letitia James is often there; otherwise she'll have a legislative aide in her place. Council Member David Yassky usually sends an aide, as does Senator Velmanette Montgomery. The elected officials and CB officials then can ask questions; some questions from concerned community members are fed through them.

In the audience, News12 Brooklyn often has a camera. Reporters from the Brooklyn newspapers--the Brooklyn Papers, Brooklyn Eagle, Courier-Life, and Brooklyn Downtown Star--appear sporadically, though sometimes they'll cover the hearing after the fact via a phone interview. Reporters from the city dailies hardly ever attend, though the New York Post wrote one story.

In the audience are a smattering of community members, sometimes representatives of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, which opposes the project. And quietly taking notes, there's usually someone from AKRF, the consultancy that's preparing the DEIS.

The windows are usually open, offering air flow in the cavernous room. Loud traffic rumbles by, and when panelists don't speak into the mikes, they can be inaudible. Sometimes Marty leaves early, a gesture that suggests his attendance at yet another ceremony trumps this unofficial process. The written summaries of the meetings are somewhat skimpy. The importance of close attention to this project remains.

Modern blueprint? In CBA discussion, Atlantic Yards is the elephant in the room

You’d think a Bar Association of New York panel on community benefits agreements (CBAs) would address the first such agreement in the city, the one signed on 6/27/05, after months of negotiation, by eight community groups and Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner. The Brooklyn CBA did come up, glancingly but not glowingly, during the discussion last night, billed as Community Benefit Agreements? Who is the Community and What is the Benefit?” And when other CBA negotiations, in upper Manhattan and the Bronx, were mentioned, it seemed clear that the Brooklyn agreement was not admired, given the broader community outreach efforts elsewhere.

[Indeed, as the New York Observer reported, there was much concern about the legality of any such CBAs, given that developers get public money but make private deals with community groups rather than government.]

So no one in the room last night echoed Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who hailed the Atlantic Yards agreement last June; Markowitz called it “so comprehensive and far-reaching that it puts Brooklyn in a class by itself, at the forefront of the corporate responsibility movement.” No one suggested, as the New York Times wrote in October, that “[developer Bruce] Ratner is creating a new and finely detailed modern blueprint for how to nourish - and then harvest - public and community backing.” No one echoed the recent assertion by a Forest City Ratner executive that the CBA “may set the standard for all future major development projects in the City.”

True, no representative of FCR or the CBA signatories were on the panel. But in recent months, troubling information about the CBA has surfaced. Only two of the eight groups were incorporated at the time of the signing, the New York Observer reported. Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn uncovered documents showing that BUILD, one of the most prominent signatories, expected $5 million in support from the developer; while BUILD said that was just an estimate, it was forced to admit it had lied about not receiving Ratner funds.

Anyone waiting on line for a Metropolitan Transportation Agency hearing last July would’ve seen Forest City Ratner p.r. staffers distribute hats, buttons, and breakfast to BUILD members ready to provide “community” support. And anyone checking with an expert could have found that Bettina Damiani, of Good Jobs New York, critically contrasted the Atlantic Yards CBA with the broader-reaching agreements negotiated in California.

A cautious city rep

Last night, a mayoral representative, Joshua Sirefman, Chief of Staff for Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, was a panelist. While Atlantic Yards is not his focus, Sirefman's careful comments outlined procedures quite different from what’s happened in Brooklyn, where the project was unveiled by the developer and public officials as a fait accompli, outside the city's land use process. (In today's Daily News, columnist Juan Gonzalez says the number of "sole-source mega-deals under Bloomberg is astounding.") “We don’t have an absolute policy,” he said. “We know local dialogue is good.” He described a task force that gathered information for two years regarding the development of Flushing, culminating in a request for proposals (RFP). “We know the integrity of the land use process has to remain intact.”

Sirefman suggested that the topics for the panel were all uncertain: the role of the city, the breadth of issues in the CBA, and the enforcement mechanism. “How do we define community?” he asked rhetorically. “These are all hard questions that frankly we’re wrestling with.”

Council procedures

City Council Member Melinda Katz, chair of the Land Use Committee, naturally focused on city processes. The issues negotiated in CBAs often come up in ULURP, the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. Affordable housing has been driven by inclusionary zoning, she said, citing the council discussions over the Hudson Yards project and Williamsburg-Greenpoint rezoning. Absent was mention of Atlantic Yards, which is managed by the state and bypasses city zoning--and where the affordable housing negotiation took place between the developer and the community group ACORN, which is obligated to publicly support the project.

Katz offered an anecdote reflective of the present moment. Why are all the projects you’re bringing in difficult, she recalled asking a developer. The response: all the easy ones have been done.

Brad Lander, Director, Pratt Center for Community Development, made a glancing reference to the Atlantic Yards debate, when he cited tensions between equity supporters, who seek more development, and those concerned with livability, who might want less. No one took up the issue.

Making it work

Pat Jones, Chairperson, 197-A Plan Committee, Community Board 9, told of the effort to organize a broad-ranging CBA in Manhattanville, where Columbia University plans an expansion. (Remember, the chair of CB9 told the New York Observer, “We are avoiding the Brooklyn model.”) CB9 uses a mailing list, holds monthly meetings, and plans a “town hall” event, all “to ensure we have not overlooked anyone.”

Lander suggested that it’s good for community boards to serve as a broker for a wide range of groups. “It’ll be easier for developers than Atlantic Yards, when it becomes an enormous fight between community groups,” he said.

Carl Weisbrod, former Executive Director, New York City Department of City Planning, did not specifically endorse the role of community boards, but did note that CBAs are often negotiated with smaller groups, which can be suspect. “I think where these agreements get negotiated is going to be as important as what’s in them,” he said. [Weisbrod was the panelist who questioned the legality of such deals.]

Lander made a distinction between the groups that sign an agreement and those that implement them. Afterward, asked to amplify his comments, he distinguished between ACORN, which has a track record in developing affordable housing, and some of the other Atlantic Yards CBA signatories, who have no such experience in the areas (environment, job training) they are slated to monitor.

Jones said it was “totally unrealistic” to expect a community board or coalition to “come to the table as a full participant” without sufficient financial or technical resources. There’s no evidence most of the CBA signatories in Brooklyn had such resources. Now the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods seeks funds to hire a technical expert to respond to the expected Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the Atlantic Yards plan.

The elephant in the room

During the Q&A, Ethel Sheffer, president of the American Planning Association's New York Metro Chapter, pointed out the elephant in the room. For Atlantic Yards, she observed, “there appears to be no public process,” but the developer is using the CBA “as a selling point.” She said there should be a better way to assure community participation.

At other points during the discussion, panelists endorsed a better process. Weisbrod observed, “They have to be transparent, when they are agreed upon and executed.” He added that such agreements can also distort planning, since in such “private, nongovernmental deals, it’s not the government establishing priorities.” Sirefman acknowledged that guidelines should be established: “Right now we don’t have a way to monitor and ensure transparency.”

Some history

CBAs represent a new phase in an old phenomenon: the wish of the community to extract some value from developers. Two decades ago, they were called “amenities” or “extractions” and, in 1987, the Bar Association provided a report to the city on how that process had gotten out of hand. The Bar Association report recommended that the amenities must be project related and that “capital planning should not build on gratuitous deal-making,” observed Bill Valletta, former General Counsel, New York City Department of City Planning and Board of Standards and Appeals.

Enforcement of such deals, he said, was viewed as part of the city’s regulatory authority. Now that community groups negotiate directly with developers, the agreements are enforced by contract, outside the city’s authority. Weisbrod noted that the amenities provided in the 1970s were largely for capital projects, while CBAs today often involve services, such as job training guarantees.

Some 20 years ago, because of the development patterns, “the benefit and amenity packages were largely provided to empowered neighborhoods,” Weisbrod observed. Now, he said, the CBAs are more fairly distributed, not so much because of "a broader sense of equity" but because of changing development patterns. And, as that developer told Katz, there are no more easy ones.

Atlantic Yards site = open railyard? The Times plays dumb (again)

Last Friday I detailed the New York Times's resistance to correcting its description of the state overide of city zoning as "rezoning." Today I examine two variations of another error that the Times has refused to correct: describing the Atlantic Yards site as an "open railyard" (even though little more than a third of the site would be a railyard) and stating that the project would be built "on the... railyards" (rather than on and around the railyards).

The Times's resistance is particularly disturbing because, after I sent the initial correction requests, the Times published another variation of the error in December. It then printed a correction, but refused to correct the earlier errors.
The errors redound to the benefit of project supporters and developer Forest City Ratner (FCR), which, in an October 2004 flier sent to thousands of Brooklynites, described the project as "Built over the 19th Century train yard at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues." It's in their interest to minimize the fact that the 22-acre site is a mix of housing, businesses, industrial buildings, vacant lots, and city streets, all of which must be acquired by or conveyed to the developer before the project can commence.

After all, if the site were really an "open railyard," there would be no lawsuit over the developer's plans to demolish five properties within the site footprint, and the Times wouldn't have run a 3/9/06 article headlined The First Sign of a Brooklyn Development Is a Demolition, and the photo above.

Similarly, the Times's rezoning description redounds to the benefit of project supporters. [Not much, comments a reader. Well, these aren't the biggest issues in the Atlantic Yards controversy, but corrections in the Times can shape public perception and keep other media outlets from making similar errors.] I have no belief that the Times's resistance is connected to its parent company's partnership with FCR in building the Times Tower. The explanation is more likely intransigence in the face of a persistent critic or the professional tendency to resist admitting error. However, as I've stated before, given the business relationship, the Times has an obligation to be exacting in its coverage--and it has not done so.

The explanations and responses I've received from Times editors, as well as the independently-appointed Public Editor Byron Calame, have been evasive, defensive, and even inaccurate.

An "open railyard"?

In my report, I pointed out that then-architecture critic Herbert Muschamp, in his 12/11/03 assessment upon the announcement of the Atlantic Yards plan ("Courtside Seats to an Urban Garden"), wrote:
The six-block site is adjacent to Atlantic Terminal, where the Long Island Rail Road and nine subway lines converge. It is now an open railyard.

The site is not an open railyard--the railyard at issue, located between Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Street, would be only 8.3 acres of a 22-acre site (21 acres when Muschamp was writing). What if the critic had actually walked around the site? At minimum, he wouldn't have called it an open railyard, and he might have started musing on how the project might--or might not--fit into the existing urban fabric. And shouldn't Muschamp have been extra careful in writing about a Forest City Ratner project, given that he joined FCR executives on a committee that chose the architect for the Times Tower project? (See Chapter 14 of my report.) He didn't disclose that relationship, nor did he include the now-standard disclosure that the Times Company and FCR are business parters. (Such disclosure was included in current architecture critic Nikolai Ouroussoff's 7/5/05 essay on a revision of the project.) Footprint map is from Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn; there now would be 16 towers, not 17.

"On the... railyards"

The mistake was repeated, in different form, in an 11/13/05 City Weekly section op-ed by guest contributor John Manbeck (“The Project that Ate Brooklyn”), who described Forest City Ratner Companies' plan "to build a sports arena surrounded by 17 imposing high-rise buildings on the Atlantic Avenue railyards."

This mischaracterization of the site obscures the need to acquire private homes and businesses (as in the photo at right), convey city streets, and exercise eminent domain to assemble the site.

Political supporters of the project have also made the error. For example, a 6/27/05 mayoral press release described "the proposed Atlantic Yards project over the Long Island Rail Yards at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues in Brooklyn."

Asking for corrections

Shortly after Manbeck's piece was published, I sent a correction request regarding both the Muschamp and Manbeck pieces to the general Times email address assigned to corrections. I heard nothing. I wrote Public Editor Calame and, as I describe below, he opined that no corrections were necessary.

A month later, I decided to try again. I wrote Assistant Managing Editor Allan Siegal, and received an auto-reply that he was out of the office. Then I wrote to Senior Editor Bill Borders, the newspaper’s corrections czar in Siegal’s absence. (I had met Borders briefly in the past two years because of mutual service to our college newspaper alumni organization.)

He responded cordially on 12/16/05, writing in part:
On Atlantic Yards, my colleagues and I respect your knowledge of the project, and we welcome your scrutiny of our coverage.
The article by John Manbeck was an opinion piece, designed to have a point of view. Moreover, as an Op-Ed article it is specifically outside the purview of the news department. It comes under the jurisdiction of Andy Rosenthal, the deputy editorial page editor, and David Shipley, who edits the Op-Ed Page. I will share your concerns about it with them.
As for descriptions of the project that are in the news columns, we have corrected them when they were factually wrong. And although I welcome your judgments on matters of nuance and interpretation that go beyond simple fact, we won't always agree on them.

The error recurs, and is corrected

However, two days later, the Times printed another variant of the error, in a 12/18/05 Real Estate section article, Living In: Prospect Heights, headlined "A Neighborhood Comes Into Its Own." The article described the plans of the developer Bruce Ratner to build a sizable complex of shopping, offices, housing and a Frank Gehry-designed arena for his New York Nets over the railyards on Atlantic Avenue. (Map from New York Times.)

I pointed out the error in an email to Borders that day:
I understand that there may be differing judgments "on matters of nuance and interpretation that go beyond simple fact." But the facts are clear. Either the project is coterminous with the railyard or it isn't.
Stating (whether it be in a news story, review, or column) that it is "on the railyard" because *part of it* is on the railyard is misleading and should be corrected. It is neither an interpretation nor a point of view to say that the project would be built "on the railyard;" rather, it is a sloppy and misleading shorthand. (As noted, a concise solution would be to say "on and around the railyard.") It is somewhat like saying that someone 6'6" is "five feet tall" because those five feet are contained within his total height.
And, as explained in my earlier message, because the 22-acre project would occupy much more land than the 8.3-acre railyard, it requires the purchase of private property, the conveyance of city streets, and, quite likely, a significant eminent domain battle. I should add that the competing bid by the Extell Development Co. for the railyard, announced in July, was in fact for a project that would be coterminous with the railyard. With Atlantic Yards, the arena itself would be built only partly on the railyard and partly on what is now an adjacent street.

A week later, in the 12/25/05 Real Estate section, the Times corrected the error: The "Living In ..." article last Sunday, about Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, referred imprecisely to a proposal by Bruce C. Ratner to build a nearby complex of shops, offices, housing and a basketball arena. It would indeed be built over the Atlantic Avenue railyards, but also on adjacent land now occupied by residences and businesses.

Another appeal

So I wrote back to Borders on 12/27/05, contending that, to be consistent, corrections should be printed for the essentially similar errors that appeared in Manbeck's op-ed and Muschamp's essay.

Borders, in one email, responded that you have made a lot of good points and led us to valid corrections, like the one we published in the Real Estate section the day before yesterday.

In another, however, he reminded me that the responsibility for Manbeck’s op-ed was outside his scope. He continued:
As for your suggestion that we retrospectively correct the Muschamp piece of two years ago, it seems to me, as I explained to you the last time you asked me about it, that it is kind of dancing off the head of a pin for us to correct an interpretation in a two-year-old esthetic essay about an ever-changing target like this one.

Fact or interpretation?

I responded on 1/18/06:
When it comes to the correction at hand, it regards neither an interpretation nor an “ever-changing target.” Yes, the proposal has evolved, but the essential nature of the footprint--once 21 acres (including an 8.3-acre railyard) and now 22 acres—remains the same. It was never “an open railyard,” as Muschamp wrote. It remains a plot of land that would extend significantly beyond the railyard, including city streets, homes, and businesses. This is a question of fact, not interpretation. It deserves correction, not matter how delayed, just as if Muschamp had, in his esthetic essay, located the site in Queens rather than in Brooklyn.

Borders replied the same day:
I don't know quite what to say. We simply disagree. You are not saying anything here that you have not said before. Neither am I. I don't mean to seem peremptory or arrogant about the Muschamp piece, but there we are.

But there shouldn't be a disagreement about facts. Either the footprint (which includes the building above, at 585-601 Dean Street) is an open railyard, or it's not. As Public Editor Calame wrote in his 9/25/05 column, about a mischaracterization of Geraldo Rivera:
Based on the videotape and outtakes I saw, [Times TV critic] Ms. [Alessandra] Stanley certainly would have been entitled to opine that Mr. Rivera's actions were showboating or pushy. But a "nudge" is a fact, not an opinion. And even critics need to keep facts distinct from opinions.

And the Times has published delayed corrections. On 2/1/06, the following correction appeared:
A front-page article on Aug. 24, 2002, about the importance of the New York Democratic primary for lieutenant governor to the party's candidates for governor that year referred incorrectly to the political career of Charlie King, a candidate for lieutenant governor....

Dealing with the editorial desk

In his initial 12/16/05 note to me, Borders indicated that he had passed along my concerns about Manbeck’s op-ed. I wrote to Op-Ed page editor David Shipley on 1/1/06 to follow up, pointing out that, a week previously, the Times had run a similar correction in the Real Estate section. (Site plan from Empire State Development Corporation Draft Scope of Analysis. Note that the railyard extends only one block below Atlantic Avenue, but the project, in about two-thirds of the footprint, would extend two blocks. The the segment of the footprint west of Flatbush Avenue is known as Site 5 and currently contains two retail outlets, not a railyard.)

Shipley responded on 1/3/06:
We ran a correction about the square footage and the number of buildings on 11/20/05. I'm afraid I disagree with you regarding the railyards -- for Mr. Manbeck to say that the project was on the railyards does not exclude the possibility that it could overflow them.

I replied the next day:
I'm not sure how to square your reasoning--"that the project was on the railyards does not exclude the possibility that it could overflow them"--with the 12/25/05 correction the Times printed in the Real Estate section. That correction acknowledged that a similar description--that the project would be "over the railyards"--was insufficient. If you can explain the distinction, please let me know.

Balkanization of corrections

He wrote back on 1/10/06:
Real estate and Op-Ed are different departments. They do their corrections and we do ours. The phrase in question, as I explained earlier, seems to me to be a question of interpretation: for Mr. Manbeck to state that the project was on the railyards does not exclude the possibility that it could overflow them.

I responded the next day:
I disagree, but without an arbiter of some sort further debate seems fruitless.
I'll just suggest that, if you ever find yourself in the area of the proposed project, take a walk around. You'll see firsthand the rather irregular nature of the "overflow," which would cross the rather wide Flatbush Avenue, among other boundaries. Footprint map is here. (Photo shows Site 5, current home of P.C. Richard and Modells, across Flatbush Avenue, in the background.)

He responded: Thank you for your note. I will indeed.

So there you have it. I could imagine an editor defending the concept of "overflow" if the project were to go a few feet, or even a few dozen feet, past the railyard. But across Flatbush Avenue? And after that correction in the Real Estate section that acknowledged the same error?

Consulting the Public Editor

Who’s supposed to be the arbiter of such disputes? The Public Editor, Byron Calame. But I didn’t bother, because he had already dismissed my concerns, using reasoning as strained as Shipley’s. (Photo from NYTimes.com.)

In third week of November, I sent him a copy of my 11/21/05 post requesting a correction in Manbeck's op-ed. As I wrote:
Commentator John Manbeck described Forest City Ratner Companies' plan "to build a sports arena surrounded by 17 imposing high-rise buildings on the Atlantic Avenue railyards."
The railyard constitutes only a little more than a third of the proposed 22-acre project site. Also, Manbeck's description could lead to the conclusion that the developer's purchase of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority land precludes any need for further negotiation with other property owners and the use of eminent domain.
A more precise yet still concise description could have been "on and around the Atlantic Avenue railyards."

Calame's response, in a 11/22/05 email, misread my request, because I never said the sports arena was "on the railyard site." He wrote:
I think your request for a correction about only the sports arena being on the railyard site is a fairly close call. But I don't think a correction is warranted.
The opinion component of op-ed articles entitles them to some leeway to which news articles aren't entitled. Also, I think the sentence can be read as communicating that the sports arena is being built on the railyards, with 17 high-rise apartment buildings surrounding it.

Leeway in opinion?

First, consider his contention that "[t]he opinion component of op-ed articles entitles them to some leeway to which news articles aren't entitled." In his 9/2/05 Web Journal criticizing New York Times columnists for not being forthright about corrections, Calame wrote:
Opinions expressed on the editorial and Op-Ed pages of The New York Times aren’t part of the public editor’s mandate. But the facts are. And so are corrections of any misstatements.

Calame seems to have contradicted himself. Manbeck wasn’t expressing an opinion; he was describing the site factually. And, as noted above, in his 9/25/05 column Calame wrote: And even critics need to keep facts distinct from opinions.

Instead I wrote back and asked Calame about the other correction requested in my initial post, regarding Muschamp's error.

Calame, in an 11/28/05 response, first asked to see copies of my previous correction requests and the responses I received (none). He observed that matters from 2003 get a lower priority than current issues, noting that both he and predecessor Daniel Okrent decided to focus on issues that arose during their tenure. (Calame began in mid-2005. Note that his column yesterday reviewed two years of coverage of the conservative movement.) I replied that his basic policy was reasonable, but that any review of the Times's Atlantic Yards coverage would have to go back to 2003, given the controversy over the Times's performance.

The Public Editor punts

I sent him copies of my correction requests. Calame responded in an 11/29/05 email:
Thank you for sending copies of your two earlier requests for a correction of the Dec. 11, 2003, Muschamp article. I don't think they make a case for a correction.

So the Public Editor apparently believes that it's OK to describe a decidedly mixed neighborhood--the nearly six-block site proposed for Atlantic Yards--as "an open railyard"? Or does he torture syntax and conclude that Atlantic Terminal is an open railyard? (It's not. It's a mall over a Long Island Railroad terminal and subway station, as well as the name for a larger urban renewal area. The railyard is called Vanderbilt Yard by the MTA.)

I don't know. In an 11/29/05 email, I requested that he supply his reasoning for denying the correction, noting that he had previously explained why he didn't think the Manbeck op-ed deserved a correction.

He didn’t respond.

Misdescribing the arena site

Finally, I took another look at the Public Editor's initial 11/22/05 email to me, noting that he had written:
Also, I think the sentence can be read as communicating that the sports arena is being built on the railyards, with 17 high-rise apartment buildings surrounding it.

I wrote to Calame on on 12/8/05:
In fact, the arena would be built only partly on the railyard. The railyard is located between Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Street, while the arena would spill over onto the area between Pacific and Dean streets. That's part of why the developer cannot confine the plan to property it has already purchased and quite likely will require the state to exercise eminent domain.

I asked if a correction was not in fact merited. I didn't hear back.

Corrections policy

In his first column, on 6/5/2005, The New Public Editor: Toward Greater Transparency, Calame reminded readers of his role: an outsider dedicated to representing readers and serving as a watchdog over the paper's journalistic integrity.

The Times's policy, according to its 2004 Ethical Journalism handbook, states:
The Times treats its readers as fairly and openly as possible. In print and online, we tell our readers the complete, unvarnished truth as best we can learn it. It is our policy to correct our errors, large and small, as soon as we become aware of them.

Do "open railyard" and "on the... railyards" constitute "the complete, unvarnished truth"? I think Times editors, including Calame, should take this policy more seriously.

Another version of "rowback"

I noted Friday that the Times no longer describes the project as being located in Downtown Brooklyn, but has not published any correction regarding the multiple references to Downtown Brooklyn in past coverage. This is a variant of "rowback," which former Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent described in his 3/14/04 column as "a way that a newspaper can cover its butt without admitting it was ever exposed."

The same goes for the railyards issue. Besides the examples mentioned above, I also found a 7/19/05 article (Sharpton Backs Developer's Plan For Brooklyn Arena and Towers), which erroneously stated: The Rev. Al Sharpton said yesterday that he was backing a plan by Bruce C. Ratner, the developer, to build a canyon of skyscrapers and an arena for the Nets over railyards near Downtown Brooklyn. (Emphasis added.)

Three articles limited the arena to the railyards, though it would spill beyond them, as noted in the graphic near the top of this article. A 7/15/05 article (Arena Project For Brooklyn Wins Approval From M.T.A.) stated: Mr. Ratner's project includes plans to build the arena at the railyard.... A 3/4/05 article (Deal Is Signed for Nets Arena in Brooklyn) stated: Mr. Ratner... would build a $435 million, glass-enclosed arena designed by Frank Gehry on the railyards... A 5/5/04 article (Arena Developer Rethinking Condemnation of Houses) began: Building a glittering new Nets arena over the Atlantic Avenue railyards in Brooklyn...

Such descriptions no longer appear. On 2/15/06, Times Brooklyn beat reporter Nicholas Confessore carefully wrote that the project "would rise over a railyard and adjacent land off Flatbush Avenue near Downtown Brooklyn." (Emphases added.) Such precision is welcome, but the record should be corrected as well.

"Rezoning" for the Atlantic Yards project? The Times plays dumb

When does a state override of city zoning constitute a "rezoning"? In New York Times coverage of the Atlantic Yards project, apparently.

On 1/2/06, a Metro section news analysis headlined "A Mayor With Lofty Goals, and Better Than Average Odds of Reaching Them," contained this passage regarding Mayor Bloomberg: ...the fruits of his huge rezoning initiatives along the Brooklyn waterfront and at the Atlantic Yards will not all be realized within four years.

But there’s a big difference between the waterfront rezoning, a process that involves the City Council and extensive hearings, and the state process governing the Atlantic Yards project, under which the unelected Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) would override city zoning and allow towers at a scale discontinuous with most nearby blocks.

The issue of zoning--or lack thereof--is vital to understanding the appropriate scale of the largest development in Brooklyn's history. Even architect Frank Gehry believes the project, as currently described, is too big. He said on 1/7/06: "It’s coming way back, in a lot of areas, and I guess something will go public in the next few months." Zoning would impose publicly-debated limits on the height and density of the buildings; with "rezoning,"in the Times's parlance, it's up to the developer and the ESDC. (Graphic from OnNYTurf.)

In correspondence, as detailed below, I tried fruitlessly to get this erroneous shorthand corrected. A Times editor evasively said that the details of the "bureaucratic processes" were not needed, and the Times Public Editor, apparently unwilling to recognize a distinction between city and state oversight, endorsed the error as published.

Some corrections, some resistance

So what happened to the journalism of verification?

I've been highly critical of the Times's coverage of this project, in both my report and blog, but I should note that newspaper's performance has improved somewhat in recent months. The Times has paid more attention to the Atlantic Yards issue, though not always, as I have argued, with sufficient skepticism.

It has published an unavoidable correction or two. It has changed its policies without publishing corrections, such as no longer describing the project as located in Downtown Brooklyn. (Also see coverage here and here.) Yesterday the phrase was "near Downtown Brooklyn." This is a variant of "rowback," which former Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent described in his 3/14/04 column as "a way that a newspaper can cover its butt without admitting it was ever exposed." (The project is outlined just east of Flatbush Avenue and below Atlantic Avenue. Map via NoLandGrab.)

Shorthand errors still occur, but they have come mainly from those--columnists, guest contributors, and political reporters (like the writer of "rezoning")--who dip into the issue rather than the Brooklyn reporter on the beat, Nicholas Confessore.

But on the "rezoning" issue, and some others I will detail in the future, the responses I've received from Times editors, as well as Public Editor Byron Calame, have been defensive, even evasive.

Why? Perhaps Times editors, including the independently-appointed Public Editor, instinctively resist persistent critics like myself, denying a certain percentage of correction requests. Or perhaps Times editors want to limit the number of corrections regarding a single topic. Maybe it's simply a professional proclivity; to quote Slate press critic Jack Shafer: "Individual journalists are a lot like doctors, lawyers, and pilots in that they hate to admit they were wrong no matter what the facts are."

Requesting a correction

The day the error appeared, on 1/2/06, I wrote to Times Senior Editor Bill Borders:
The article described "the fruits of [Mayor Bloomberg's] huge rezoning initiatives... at the Atlantic Yards." However, the Atlantic Yards project is proceeding under a state review that overrides city zoning.
Also, the phrasing "at the Atlantic Yards" suggests that it is the name of the railyard that is the single largest piece of Forest City Ratner's planned development--or perhaps the name of some already-existing development parcel. While the proposed development is called "Atlantic Yards," it would encompass both the MTA's 8.3-acre Vanderbilt Yard as well as nearly 14 additional acres that now contain residences, commercial buildings, empty buildings, and city streets. No existing entity is called "the Atlantic Yards." This is a shorthand that the Times and other newspapers have used before, but it erroneously obscures the process for assembling the development site. More details here.

A lengthy response

Borders passed my request to Deputy Metropolitan Editor Patrick LaForge, who responded 1/18/06:
You objected to the shorthand term "Atlantic Yards" for the Ratner proposal, but we use similar shorthand when referring to any development proposal; by now, readers recognize what the phrase means.
I understand that a shorthand phrase may not have the level of detail that you personally would like to see in each and every story. Deciding what to include in each story is a judgment call, and reasonable people will disagree; we do appreciate hearing from you and other readers about these matters, and we do our best to balance the competing interests.
In this case, the Ratner proposal was one detail in a bigger story about the Bloomberg record. And it's worth noting that the writer was speculating about a future in which Atlantic Yards had moved closer to reality. Here is the sentence:
"Yet whether Mr. Bloomberg can emerge in 2010 with the 'great' designation is unclear, as many of his goals may not be realized for a decade or more: today's first graders will still be years away from their high school graduations when he is finished; the fruits of his huge rezoning initiatives along the Brooklyn waterfront and at the Atlantic Yards will not all be realized within four years, nor would the impact of all his fiscal policies."

You also suggest that this sentence should have made a detailed distinction between the city rezoning of the waterfront and the state process (strongly supported by the mayor) that will supersede the zoning at the Atlantic Yards site. We disagree. We have reported the specifics of the bureaucratic processes before, in articles specifically about the Atlantic Yards project, and we will do so again, but they were not needed here.
We are committed to reporting on this controversy fairly and accurately, and we do appreciate your continued vigilance in holding us to that promise. Thank you for writing. (Bloomberg photo from NYC.gov.)

Responding to the Times's misreading

I wrote back to LaForge on 1/19/06:
Thanks for your response; I understand that reasonable people may differ.
I recognize that further dialogue on this may be unproductive, but I think that I may not have been as clear as possible and also that you may have misread my criticisms. Thus, I'm following up.
1) Rezoning.
I did not "suggest that this sentence should have made a detailed distinction between the city rezoning of the waterfront and the state process (strongly supported by the mayor) that will supersede the zoning at the Atlantic Yards site."
While my blog post analyzed the differences at length, I did not there or in my email request a *detailed* distinction. Nor did I offer an alternative formulation. Spurred to do so, here goes:
"the fruits of his huge rezoning initiatives along the Brooklyn waterfront and at the Atlantic Yards"
could have more accurately (yet concisely) been revised to:
"the fruits of his major land use initiatives..."
or
"the fruits of major land use changes he advocated..."
It's not rezoning. The ESDC process at Atlantic Yards bypasses city review; in fact, the lawsuit filed yesterday against the ESDC argues: "ESDC's authority constitutes a disenfranchisement of Brooklyn residents who otherwise could rely upon the City zoning regulations and the public review process embodied in ULURP."

2. At the Atlantic Yards.
As I previously wrote, the phrasing "at the Atlantic Yards" suggests that it is the name of the railyard or some already-existing development parcel. The key is the use of the word "the," not the use of the project name.
I think that the use of the word "for" would have more clearly conveyed that the name involves a project, not an already-established location. The Brooklyn waterfront is a place; the Atlantic Yards is a project. Thus, I think it would have been more precise to write:
"fruits of his... initiatives along the Brooklyn waterfront and for the Atlantic Yards"
I do think it would be more accurate to say "for the Atlantic Yards project" than "for the Atlantic Yards," but either formulation avoids the suggestion, as in "at the Atlantic Yards," that it is a place.
These may seem like small distinctions, but do recognize that I was not arguing for greater detail, just the avoidance of details that could mislead.

Mollifying the critic?

LaForge responded later that day:
We don't think the article was misleading, but thank you for your further suggestions. I will distribute them to the writers and editors who handle these stories, for their consideration when they prepare future articles. You should know that we have prepared a style sheet covering some of the factual pitfalls in covering this controversy, and your efforts have been most helpful in that regard. So, again, thank you, and do not hesitate to write again if you have concerns.

That was cordial (and likely refers to the "Downtown Brooklyn" issue, among others), but it doesn’t obscure the misrepresentation involved in calling something a rezoning when it’s not.

Appealing to the Public Editor

I decided to appeal to Public Editor Calame (photo from NYTimes.com), though, given his lack of attention to the newspaper's coverage of the Atlantic Yards issue, or to the Times Tower issue, I wasn't optimistic. I chose to focus on rezoning, a less ambiguous issue than "at the Atlantic Yards." I wrote:
I hesitate to burden you with arbitrating factual disputes, since I know you have more complex issues on your plate, but this issue seems quite clear-cut to me. So I'm asking you to evaluate whether Times editors have adequately dealt with my correction request.
A 1/2/06 Metro section news analysis headlined "A Mayor With Lofty Goals, and Better Than Average Odds of Reaching Them," contained this passage regarding Mayor Bloomberg:
"the fruits of his huge rezoning initiatives along the Brooklyn waterfront and at the Atlantic Yards will not all be realized within four years."
I wrote a blog post citing two errors in that sentence, but in this case I'd like to focus on the more clear-cut one. There has been *no* rezoning for the Atlantic Yards project.

In fact, because the project is under the auspices of the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), it would override city zoning and avoid more stringent city oversight standards.
As you can see, deputy Metro Editor Patrick LaForge contends that "rezoning initiative" is an acceptable shorthand for Mayor Bloomberg's support for the state process that will supersede the zoning.
I disagree. Overriding zoning is not the same as rezoning; the latter requires a level of participation by local elected officials and citizens that is absent from the state process. It is an issue of substance, not shorthand.
For example, the rezoning along the Brooklyn waterfront proposes "a range of residential zoning districts to match the distinct context and scale of each well-established neighborhood and to require that scale in adjoining underbuilt areas where new development is possible."
...By contrast, for the Atlantic Yards development, the decision is made by the developer, with the only input potential mitigation recommended after the fact by the Environmental Impact Statement issued by the ESDC.
I was not asking for this all to be explained, just pointing out how the use of the term "rezoning" was inappropriate.

The Public Editor: nope

Calame responded on 1/20/06:
I have reviewed your exchanges with editors in the newsroom.
I don't think the reference to "huge rezoning initiatives" requires a correction.
He didn't give a reason. Does he consider "rezoning" to be a vague term as opposed to one with a specific meaning?

The Times's policy, according to its 2004 Ethical Journalism handbook, states:
The Times treats its readers as fairly and openly as possible. In print and online, we tell our readers the complete, unvarnished truth as best we can learn it. It is our policy to correct our errors, large and small, as soon as we become aware of them.

Does "rezoning" constitute "the complete, unvarnished truth"? I think Times editors, including Calame, should take this policy more seriously.

RFPs & RFEIs--but not for the Atlantic Yards project

There are several developments in the news lately, and when government property is involved, it seems like the process involves bids from multiple parties. The tactics: RFPs (requests for proposals) and RFEIs (requests for expressions of interest).

The New York Times reported, in a 3/7/06 article headlined Landmark Ferry Building May Become Food Market:
The little-used Battery Maritime Building, a freshly renovated and richly riveted Beaux-Arts landmark in Lower Manhattan that still serves as the gateway to Governors Island, would become a culinary temple in a redevelopment plan offered yesterday by the Bloomberg administration.
...The corporation's request for proposals, issued yesterday, may be its first such document to use words like "artisanal cheese," "hand-crafted wines," "humanely raised grass-fed meats" and "foodies." (Emphasis added.)

The New York Sun reported, in a 3/3/06 article headlined Finalists Picked To Bid for Willets Point Makeover:
The city has selected eight firms as finalists to bid for the $2 billion to $3 billion project to remake a 75-acre site at Willets Point, Queens, with a mixeduse development including about 1 million square feet of retail space, a hotel, and a convention center.
...Willets Point is a long neglected part of Queens, now zoned for heavy industrial use, with an inadequate sewer system and no paved roads. The proposed project is likely to require condemnation of private property through the exercise of eminent domain, as well as extensive environmental remediation and traffic work. (Emphasis added.)

Now these are city projects, and the Atlantic Yards project would be a state one, managed by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), because a plurality of the footprint would be Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) land and because the city didn't object.

But how does the ESDC usually work? Chairman Charles Gargano, on 11/15/05, appeared on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC radio and said:
If you understand development and how it does work, we have a process in government, state government and I’m sure other government bodies have the same, whereby we put out first of all, on any area we’re trying to develop, we put out what we call an RF-- I, request for-- EI, expressions of interest. The reason why we do that is we want to pick the brains of the private sector, and see what kind of ideas they have, and after all, they’re the ones with the resources who are going to build these projects, so we want their ideas. We put out this RFEI, that’s the initial—that’s the first part of the process, and it has worked very well for many, many decades.

By contrast, the MTA did not issue an RFP for the Vanderbilt Yard--the main public property contained in the proposed Atlantic Yards footprint--until 5/24/05, nearly 18 months after the Atlantic Yards plan was announced on 12/10/03. The ESDC never issued an RFEI. That means that developer Forest City Ratner had been in discussions with city and state agencies for an even longer period of time. That process hardly parallels the ones mentioned above.

Process vs. projects, the 'race card,' and 'reluctant preservationists'

At a conference Saturday, Roberta Brandes Gratz, an urbanist and author of The Living City, wasn't directly addressing the Atlantic Yards project. But there was an echo of sorts when she said the term “economic development” was wrongly used today to refer to big real estate projects. “Economic development is a process," she declared, "that builds on the inherent strengths and talents of a workforce.”

Speaking on a panel at the Historic Districts Council conference on "Place, Race, Money & Art: The Economics and Demographics of Historic Preservation," Gratz advised, “The public schools should be on your radar screen as part of your preservation values,” contrasting it with project-driven development such as a stadium, aquarium, or mall. “If you invest in public schools and mass transit, the city will take care of itself.”

(That does beg the question of housing, and the Atlantic Yards project, it should be noted, is part of an emerging trend, a mix of a sports facility plus other development, in this case housing. The latter would supply far greater economic return than the arena--though the projections also can be questioned.)

Gratz described herself: “I am a preservationist. More importantly, I’m an urbanist. It’s about economic development, transportation, public spaces, public health… looking at a place holistically.” She observed, “There are a lot of developers makings tons of money on the buildings you guys saved.”

Planning decisions can have far-reaching effects. When there was a plan to build a Lower Manhattan Expressway, Gratz said, “SoHo was considered an anachronism.” Because it was designated for demolition, “that killed manufacturing.” She called that “a classic example of ‘planners blight.’”

Zoning and its discontents

Gratz and Carol Clark of the city’s Department of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) got into a dispute about zoning and its effect on development. Clark cited “contextual zoning,” in which the city regulates development in buildings adjacent to historic districts.

Gratz offered some criticism: “We have contextual zoning, the Planning Commission is zoning, in neighborhoods like Greenpoint and Williamsburg, 44-story towers. There’s a lot of contradictions."

Clark pointed out that the waterfront rezoning included incentives for “a significant amount of affordable housing” affordable to a family of four earning up to $50,000 per year. “These are competing policy goals.” (Note that the Atlantic Yards plan would involve a broader range of incomes and that, unlike the waterfront plan, it was not part of a City Council-negotiated rezoning process.)

Clark offered some more perspective. The city became the owner of more than 100,000 units of housing in buildings abandoned for nonpayment of taxes. Nearly all have been rehabilitated for affordable housing. “Going forward, there is a preponderance of new construction," she said. "Hence the rezoning in Williamsburg/Greenpoint.”

Property values and development

Has historic preservation helped property values? The answer is complex, Clark said, but there’s some evidence that it has helped those with residential properties. (There’s much less data on commercial properties.) She noted that the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) , the voice of the real estate industry, has often countered preservationists, because landmarking (of both buildings and neighborhoods) limits the development potential of land. Still, some owners of individually landmarked skyscrapers, who were not about to replace their buildings, have said the designation adds prestige.

Does preservation deter economic development? REBNY fought the designation of TriBeCa as a historic district. Now there’s been a tremendous amount of economic activity, both the renovation of existing buildings and new construction on vacant lots.

Does historic preservation lead to gentrification and displacement? The evidence is mixed, Clark said. As the city’s population has grown—New York has added 840,000 residents since 1990--there is increased demand in an already expensive and tight market. (That’s the equivalent of a city like Denver.) Since 1987, Clark said, the city has spent $6.3 billion to supply over 250,000 units of affordable housing. Now the city wants to provide housing for a half-million New Yorkers by 2013.

Clark acknowledged that some residents are under pressure from rising rents, especially those not protected by rent regulations, but cited a report on gentrification and displacement from Citizens Housing and Planning Council that suggested that people are willing to pay more to stay in neighborhoods where the quality of life is good. (I couldn’t find the report, but similar findings are discussed here.)

Lessons from Red Hook?

Gratz described developer Greg O’Connell, who has bought up many dormant industrial buildings in Red Hook, as “my greatest urban hero. He is about economic development and preservation… There’s a value he adheres to that a lot of developers and property owners don’t."

The neighborhood, O’Connell said, was desolate when he went there in the early 1980s, “but I saw these beautiful historic buildings on the waterfront,” neglected because of the city’s fiscal crisis. One building, the 1854 Clay Retort and Fire Brick Works on Van Dyke Street, was even slated for demolition, with a permit issued for demolition. O’Connell bought the building and restored it. (Photo from Forgotten NY.)

(Hmm. Does that some of the buildings in the Atlantic Yards footprint slated for demolition, like 461-463 Dean Street--scroll down on this post--could be saved? An engineer suggested it seemed likely, at least from his limited outside view.)

O’Connell has emphasized space for businesses rather than more lucrative residential use. “Sometimes we ought to think about the highest and best use not always being the bottom line,” he said. “I could make triple the amount, if I did residential. But you have to keep the balance."

His buildings now house over 100 businesses, with more than 1200 employees—plus 200 more at the emerging Fairway store. He has worked outside the city’s historic preservation framework. Gratz called it “genuine economic development made possible by historic preservation. But the city does not learn from his example.”

Race and preservation

At a later panel, Michael Henry Adams, a preservationist and author from Harlem, observed that it was “poignant” that many preservation efforts in minority neighborhoods have been ignored. He observed that it has been difficult to get many historic buildings in Harlem landmarked, but, as whites continue to move into the neighborhood, they eventually will demand such landmarking, and be successful.

“Some say that African-Americans have never shown any great interest in preserving the environment,” Adams said. “It chagrined me to hear [then-Mayor David] Dinkins call landmarking an impediment to development in Harlem.” Dinkins resisted calls to landmark the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm X was killed.) However, Adams said of Community Board 10 in Harlem, “Over and over, they’ve done the right thing.” In fact, the resistance to Robert Moses in Greenwich Village was paralleled by a similar, though far more obscure, effort in Harlem.

Former City Council Member Bill Perkins, who represented Central Harlem, was on the panel, and Adams observed that he was disappointed how little support preservationists offered to Perkins’ efforts to reform the Landmarks Preservation Commission—apparently because they were afraid to antagonize the commission. It would allowed the City Council, by majority vote, to require the LPC to hold hearings on eligible properties. Currently the LPC has sole discretion to hold such hearings.

Perkins read an excerpt from an article which described African-Americans’ suspicion of historic preservation efforts in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC, where black residents were squeezed out when preservationists and developers boosted the value of the land. He looked toward the mostly-white audience: “I look out and realize: There is a problem.” He added, “Folks are not anti-preservation. They just think it’s a hidden agenda sometimes for displacement or gentrification.”

Why the “race card” gets played

Tom Angotti, a Hunter College professor of urban planning, observed that the late Joan Maynard, founding executive director of the Weeksville Society in Brooklyn, taught him that preservation involved not just buildings, but also spiritual, emotional, cultural, and political elements. Angotti congratulated HDC “for putting race on the agenda.” He observed that race has become an important factor in development, and that “the race card” was being used when it comes to developer-driven development.

Without specifically mentioning the Atlantic Yards project—about which Angotti has commented forcefully--he outlined the situation: a developer finds people “who have been systematically ignored in the past, so they respond quite positively when someone with money and power says ‘let’s make a deal’”—just as white groups have done in the past. Preservationists and environmentalists may protest, but, Angotti said in admonishment, “Did you talk about joining together? The problem is: There’s no dialogue across racial lines until someone comes in and takes over the conversation.”

He blamed government for the situation. Regarding the City Planning Department, he said, "The name ‘Planning’ should be taken out of their name. They should be the Zoning Department.” He noted that 70 community-based plans had been created around the city, but only seven have been approved. As for HPD, “change that name to the ‘Department of Development.’ They’ve been imitating the real estate market; they go out and assemble land for development.”

Artists and developers

A panel on the role of artists in reviving neighborhoods offered an intriguing example of the interplay between a developer and the community. Artist Doreen Gallo, a longtime DUMBO resident, observed, “It was really developers who organized the artists.” David Walentas, the principal developer of DUMBO, gave three not-for-profit gallery spaces free rent, and artists found a place to display their works.

But when activists in the neighborhood asked their friends and neighbors to sign petitions protesting Walentas’s plans for the waterfront, Gallo recounted, "No one would sign the petitions. They were represented by galleries that got free rent.”

Nicholas Evans-Cato, who lives in Vinegar Hill, observed that “Artists are not generally interested in preservation or their neighborhoods.” When he has canvassed neighbors to join his efforts, he said, “Mostly what I heard was: ‘I’m really busy now—great you’re doing that.’”

He noted that a small number of prominent artists—such as Joel Sternfeld, photographer of the High Line in Manhattan—had become preservationists. The challenge in getting artists to think beyond their own art and survival, he said, raised some resonant questions. “What do we expect of citizens? What do we expect of government?” he asked. “Aren’t many of us reluctant preservationists, doing what we want government to do?”

Brooklyn density, high-rise and low-rise

Urbanist Roberta Brandes Gratz had some interesting comments on density the other day, and there are some more in her 1998 book Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown:
High-rise or even low-rise density is not, by definition, bad and, in fact it is the only thing that makes feasible a cost-effective and efficient urban infrastructure. In fact, downtowns are at their most productive when density is high. The form of the density can vary. The high density of low-rise neighborhoods, former street car suburbs, contributes significantly to their appeal.
One need only look to the New York borough of Brooklyn, filled with spectacular, functional neighborhoods of varying price, race, and class structure, all with high densities (unless recently rebuilt with low-density, suburbanized housing). If Brooklyn were its own city, it would be the nation’s fourth largest, yet the dominant building type does not exceed four- or five-story row houses. Of course, all of Brooklyn’s neighborhoods evolved along expansive streetcar and subway lines.

Of course, she wrote that before a growing population and rising property values began to put additional pressure on neighborhoods, especially for affordable housing.

Historic preservation, the legacy of Robert Moses, and the enduring lessons of urbanism

The Historic Districts Council held a fascinating conference last Saturday on "Place, Race, Money & Art: The Economics and Demographics of Historic Preservation." I'll report tomorrow on other panels, but for now I'll focus on the lessons of urbanism in the keynote address, by urban planner Robert Fishman, who teaches at the University of Michigan.

Fishman's address had a dual title: Historians of Hope: Preservation and the End of the Urban Crisis and Has Preservation Helped Us Rediscover the City? His answer, unsurprisingly, was yes, as he insightfully sketched a 40-year history little-known to many New Yorkers, one in which the values of city life--not so just historic architecture but more a sense of scale and walkability and public transit--were nearly sacrificed to the automobile.

The preservation movement, he said, “has been shadowed—you might say haunted—by the urban crisis itself.” He flashed a slide of a New York Times headline, from 4/11/65, that announced the establishment of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission. (The Brooklyn Heights Association successfully lobbied for the city's first historic district.)

“Only eight months before, Harlem had been torn apart by a terrible riot,” Fishman observed. Meanwhile, New York was hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs that could support working-class families; in the early 1960s, the city had over a million such jobs, while about a quarter were lost in the decade after 1965, and the total is merely 200,000 today.

He showed a slide made by photographer Camilo Jose Vergara of the devastated South Bronx. “This right [to save our architectural heritage] didn’t spread to the South Bronx…. This is the other face of New York during the early era of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.”

Some considered gentrification “islands of prosperity” in the midst of decay. “Given the strength of the destructive forces, historic preservation was at best, an admirable irrelevancy,” he said. “At worst, it could be considered an attempt to separate oneself from the city.”

A more optimistic perspective

“Today, I want to suggest a different meaning. The city was caught up in this riptide of destruction that seemed to have no end,” he said. This “rolling wave of abandonment and sprawl” in the “terrible period of the 70s and 80s” challenged some to wonder if cities were viable. “So, to me, the great value and real meaning of historic preservation was: you were not preserving neighborhoods; you were preserving urbanism itself.”

Such neighborhoods, like the Upper West Side and Greenwich Village that he cited (and, of course, Brooklyn neighborhoods near the Atlantic Yards project like Park Slope and Fort Greene) inspired architects, urban designers, and planners to “learn the basic lessons of urbanism,” including the importance of density, walkability, mixed-use and mixed-income blocks, the role of the street and sidewalk, neighborhood parks, urban scale “and especially the transit links that weave together the city.”

Not only did the design profession learn the lesson of urbanism, so did the public at large. Fishman quoted Vincent Scully, the great Yale architectural historian, who observed that the preservation movement was the only popular design movement of the 20th century. “Where have you seen people demonstrating for post-modernism?”

Preservation and revival

Now New York has revived, for several reasons, including its key role in the global economy and the influx of immigrants. But one of the principal reasons, Fishman said, is “the capacity of New York to deliver an urban experience, of living in a walkable neighborhood.”

He showed a slide of a recent New York Times article that predicted a population boom in all five boroughs, and contrasted it with then-NYC housing commissioner Roger Starr’s infamous 1976 call for planned shrinkage, in which the city would withdraw services from neighborhoods that didn’t deserve to survive. Similarly, the great architectural critic Lewis Mumford was pessimistic, declaring, “Make the patient as comfortable as possible. His case is hopeless.”

But Jane Jacobs understood. “What we’re approaching is what she predicted 40 years ago, what she called "unslumming," Fishman said. “She meant not what happened when richer people move in, but when people living there get greater resource and they choose to stay.” These days, gentrification is only part of the story, he said. “Much is coming from people in place.”

(That was to be debated in a later panel--and it depends on what neighborhood you're talking about. Just Sunday the New York Times Magazine reported on how the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick is gentrifying, but some longer-term residents are vulnerable, not just the immigrants but even the artists who first "discovered" the neighborhood.)

The failures of Moses

The preservation movement, and the revival of urbanism, was a reaction to limitations and errors in planning and urban design. Fishman showed a famous Arnold Newman picture of Robert Moses, the city's great unelected planning czar, perched on a beam. “To give him credit, he understood there was an urban crisis,” Fishman said, “but he was completely the prisoner of visionary ideas of others, primarily Le Corbusier.”

Le Corbusier believed that the city should be opened up to autos, that “the city that achieves speed achieves success,” Fishman said. LeCorbusier believed in a technological determinism, "that to be modern meant you were part of an elite with a “ruthless attitude toward the past.” He showed a picture of a row house neighborhood: “This was the horse and buggy era that had to be swept away.”

The housing complex of Stuyvesant Town was one example, and Fishman noted that federal subsidies for housing and highways helped launch the change. Also proposed—incredible today—were expressways through Lower Manhattan and Mid-Manhattan.

Why didn’t Moses win completely? Fishman cited both the weakness of his perspective and “the underlying strength of the preservation movement.” The prime example: the battle to save Washington Square Park, as later recounted by Jane Jacobs. Moses wanted to run Fifth Avenue through the park. A resident named Shirley Hayes gathered thousands of signatures and created a movement, “an intellectual force that provided an alternative to his vision that cities are created by traffic.” She refused to compromise, even though some agreed to a smaller road through the park. She insisted that the park should be closed to traffic, and she was right. A picture of her showed her wielding an umbrella, upon which it was written, “A Park, Not a Parkway.” (Photo from NYC Department of Parks and Recreation)

The unique Village?

It couldn't have happened just anywhere. “Greenwich Village almost uniquely in the 1950s had the intellectual wherewithal to work out a theory as to why Moses was wrong,” Fishman observed, noting that the counterculture weekly Village Voice had just emerged. Urban planner Charles Abrams gave a famous speech, “Revolt of the Urbs,” which constituted “the intellectual charter of the preservation movement,” celebrating the community against projects and pedestrians against automobiles. As for Greenwich Village, Fishman recounted, “its values must be rediscovered and built upon, not destroyed.”

There were also some fortunate political dynamics. The last boss of Tammany Hall, Carmine DeSapio, lived in Greenwich Village, and in order to survive politically, he threw his influence behind Hayes.

While Jacobs was not a major figure in the Washington Square battle, she learned from it, and made it a signal piece of her book Death and Life of Great American Cities. (There she distinguishes between “car people” and “foot people.”)

Fishman also cited a cartoon from then-fledgling cartoonist Jules Feiffer, who portrayed an architectural history lesson given on the planet Mars, which a progression from decontextualized towers to the row house. “Isn’t it incredible the progress made?” read a caption.

Looking back and forth

LeCorbusier and Moses only looked forward. “To be a historian of hope is to say history moves in two directions,” Fishman declared. “What is past is part of our resources for the future.”

He was asked about sprawl. “New York is perhaps the only metropolitan area where there as many building permits at the center than at the edge,” he said. “Possibly the 21st century city will be a city of balance."

The 21st century city is also a place of contention, and subsequent panels addressed some knotty questions about economics and race. I'll discuss them tomorrow.

Equity vs. livability: the false choice

At the panel on affordable housing discussion last Tuesday, moderator Brad Lander, director of the Pratt Center for Community Development, divided the opponents into “equity advocates,” as represented by ACORN, and “livability advocates,” as represented by Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB).

The distinctions, as Lander acknowledged, aren’t rigid; ACORN in the past has expressed much concern about “livability” issues like parks--though ACORN’s Bertha Lewis resisted any “livability” questions regarding the Atlantic Yards plan. Also, whatever DDDB’s concerns about scale and traffic, the group also sponsored the UNITY plan for both development and affordable housing over the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's (MTA) Vanderbilt Yard, though at a scale that would provide less housing than the Ratner project, which would also encompass adjacent blocks.

Too narrow a debate

Lander’s terms were defensible as shorthand, but they define the debate too narrowly—otherwise, anyone questioning or opposing the Atlantic Yards plan could be painted as a foe of equity. To project supporters, equity means a significant supply of affordable housing (a goal of 50%, though it's not yet been met), and promises of some number of jobs. Equity advocates, presumably, would endorse ever taller towers as long as they contained more affordable housing.

But development has its costs. An equity advocate looking at the big picture might wonder about the costs of mitigating the project’s impact on traffic and transit, for example. As noted, when density becomes congestion, the quality of life declines--and mitigating that can be costly.

Moreover, given the public subsidies and public costs of the Atlantic Yards plan, the project may not be equitable use of public resources. We still don’t know the fiscal impact of the project, but we do know the developer’s projections are very questionable. Is this a good and cost-efficient way to provide affordable housing and jobs? That's a debate we haven't had.

An equity advocate looking at the big picture might worry about the inequity of the process, as well. Did the MTA act fairly in sending out an RFP in May 2005, 18 months after the Atlantic Yards project was announced? Did the MTA do the right thing in accepting the lower cash bid for the railyards, which was less than half of the value set by its own appraiser?

(A reader points out that ACORN, while advocating for equity, also likely will have a stake in managing and marketing the affordable housing. So there's some self-interested involved, as well.)

New visuals of AY density; when does it become congestion?

Last month, when I wrote about the very high density of the Atlantic Yards plan, with several of the 16 towers over 400 feet (and one 620 feet), I included Jon Keegan's Google Earth rendering of the proposed building heights in neighborhood context. Now OnNYTurf ("Political and Community Coverage of NYC's 5 Boroughs") has devised a Google map with new portrayals of the footprint. (This is a view from Bergen Street and Carlton Avenue in Prospect Heights.)

The Gehry plan in the Times

This example, along with Keegan's, marks an important citizen effort to provide context that the press has so far failed to provide. Remember, we've had the latest set of plans from Frank Gehry since 7/5/05, but the renderings, as published in the New York Times that day, are just a decontextualized splash of skyscrapers.

Note that the Brooklyn Papers on 2/18/06 did follow up on Keegan's map and Jonathan Cohn's analysis of the project's scale. Also note criticism of Keegan's post that inclusion of other planned buildings would add some increased scale nearby on Fourth Avenue and in Downtown Brooklyn. (Pictured: the Williamsburg bank tower, and the Bank of New York, both north of Atlantic Avenue near the western border of the Atlantic Yards footprint.)

Density downtown?

Forest City Ratner VP Jim Stuckey, in a panel discussion 11/22/05 for the American Institute of Architects NY Chapter, defended the density: "Many have tried to talk about the scale and the density of this project, the density of this project is really not all that different than what recently went through the public approval process." As I pointed out, Forest City Ratner likes to conflate the Prospect Heights site of the Atlantic Yards footprint with the rezoning in Downtown Brooklyn, but the neighborhoods are not the same.

As noted by the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development in its March 2005 preliminary planning analysis of Atlantic Yards, Slam Dunk or Airball, "When the EIS [Environmental Impact Statement] for the Downtown Brooklyn Plan was completed, it was expected that the new construction for that area would be substantially taller and more modern than what exists. The same is true – and in a substantially greater discontinuity with the majority of surrounding buildings – for the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards area."

Stuckey made a reasonable point, that density should be near a transit hub: "In fact, I think that the scale of this project needs to be what it needs to be... The city has an incredible housing shortage, a tremendous housing shortage, by all estimates, 65-70,000 housing units, at all income levels...If you can’t put density in at major mass transportation, where would you put it?"

Density vs. congestion

But how dense is too dense? There must be a limit. Urbanist Roberta Brandes Gratz, in her book The Living City, writes (p. 25): "Planners, for example, once declared density bad and the thinning out of cities good. Now density is in and thinness out, although a distinction between density and congestion is seldom made. Density comes when many people are in the same place doing things that gain strength from their interaction; congestion results when there are so many of them that interaction becomes difficult, access in and out unpleasant, and frustration high."

(This is a view looking south from Fulton and South Oxford Streets in Fort Greene.)

A crazy quilt of density

Along with the current zoning that has been bypassed--and would dictate much less density--there are some cues for appropriate density for the Atlantic Yards site. Across Atlantic Avenue, for example, the density is a crazy quilt: a 31-story public housing tower, five subsidized co-ops that are 12 to 15 stories, a seven-story building for seniors, and numerous subsidized rowhouses in the Atlantic Commons development. The latter were built in the 1990s; the taller buildings were built in the 1970s. The last building planned for empty land across Atlantic Avenue, to be built by the Fifth Avenue Committee, will be ten stories. The community-developed UNITY plan for the railyards proposed buildings eight to 12 stories. The proposed Extell plan was for buildings four to 28 stories.

The density of the Atlantic Yards plan is driven, at least in part, by the developer's need to build enough market-rate housing to ensure desired profits as well as affordable housing to maintain political and community support. Gratz, speaking at a conference Saturday sponsored by the Historic Districts Council, observed. “I’m a little tired of hearing the preservation movement blamed for gentrification. We’ve seen a lot of housing development at suburban density.”

[Addendum: Gratz, in her book Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown, criticizes the Nehemiah project in East New York for "destroy[ing] the remnants of an authentic urban neighborhood where resources remain to build on... In place of his traditional urban neighborhood, 650 units of only single-family homes with carports were built, a horizontal housing project for homeowners. A low-density suburban housing project on a high-density urban infrastructure, a short walk froim a subway. No traditional neighborhood shopping streets were left within walking distance."]

Now, she said generally of the city's current predicament, “we are paying a severe price” for having built on vacant land at low density. Does that mean that Atlantic Commons was an inefficient way to provide affordable housing? There are likely much less dense developments in the city [see Nehemiah, above], but her point does resonate. (Note that City Council Member Letitia James, among others, has proposed an expansion of Atlantic Commons on the Atlantic Yards site.) The UNITY plan proposed taller buildings, and the Fifth Avenue Committee's building (right) will be similarly mid-sized. But a decade ago, when Atlantic Commons opened, it "replaced rat-infested lots," as New York Magazine explained. The fact of development apparently trumped any density debate.

Another worry: how often would Atlantic Yards sewage overflow the system?

Would the sewage produced by 7,300 residential units and a new basketball arena overwhelm the city's sewage system? Yes, periodically, though that's because the Atlantic Yards development would only be adding to an already overburdened system. But the details of developer Forest City Ratner's plans to address the impacts won't be revealed until the issuance of a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS).

Such was the dry (er, wet?) but important testimony at the meeting Thursday of the Brooklyn Borough Board Atlantic Yards Committee. (The meetings are informational only, and neither the developer nor the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) appears.)

The acronym to learn is CSO: Combined Sewer Overflow. CSOs, says Riverkeeper, occur "[a]bout half the time it rains in New York City, once a week on average, raw sewage and polluted runoff combine in sewer pipes and overflow – without treatment – into the City’s surface waters." Hundreds of such CSOs are triggered simultaneously in the city during steady rainfall, leading to the discharge of about 27 billion gallons of this untreated wastewater annually into bodies of water like the still-foul Gowanus Canal.

Why is that? Reports Riverkeeper, "In order to keep sewage from backing up in the system – where it could spurt through manhole covers or backflood into homes and businesses, as it did several times in 1999 – the City’s combined sewer system is designed to overflow during rains and discharge excess wastewater directly to the Harbor and other waterbodies. About 460 CSO discharge pipes, called outfalls, line the shores of the five boroughs."

This isn't typical. Only 772 of more than 20,000 U.S. municipalities have such combined sewage system designed, in the 19th century, to collect both wastewater and storm runoff in the same pipes. These days, engineers design separate systems.

Looking at the impact

The Draft Scope that will lead to the DEIS for the Atlantic Yards project has been criticized for taking too narrow a view of the potential impacts on transit and pedestrian access. The primary study area is a quarter-mile radius and the secondary study area a half-mile radius. "Those type of study areas don't correspond to anything signficant in terms of CSOs," commented Franco Montalto, of eDesign Dynamics. The appropriate scale he said, should include the Red Hook waste treatement plant.

"The sewage is not going to stop where the study stops," added Assemblywoman Joan Millman. In response, Darryl Cabbagestalk of DEP said that recent EIS documents regarding other projects had in fact looked at broader areas.

Jerry Armer, chairman of Community Board 6, said that CB6 had recently met with the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) about flooding at the Red Hook plant. "We're looking at wastewater from 7000 additional residential units and from an arena. We already have a problem."

Once the Atlantic Yards project is up and running, he said, "we may be exceeding the requirements of the consent decree" regarding DEP performance. The DEP's Cabbagestalk said, "I'm assuming that would be dealt with in the EIS."

Armer continued, "Whatever the excess capacity there already is, we're taking it away."

Capturing all stormwater?

One confusion at the meeting was the idea, expressed by Borough Hall staff, that Forest City Ratner had already decided on a plan to retain all the storm runoff on the site in a basin of some sort; this would lessen the burden on the city's sewer system. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has committed to doing so on the World Trade Center site, and so has the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation. (Of course, a park has greater flexibility in using water.) Several exchanges proceeded on that assumption; Columbia Law Professor Reed Super (who also has worked for Riverkeeper) said, "I was very pleased to hear Forest City Ratner was planning to capture all the stormwater."

After some discussion, Greg Atkins, Borough President Marty Markowitz's chief of staff, acknowledged that FCR had not yet announced its plans, and that they would be in the DEIS. He later told me, "What we've asked and hope Forest City Ratner is able to do is prevent stormwater from overloading the system."

The DEIS could arrive within weeks. In early February, the Empire State Development Corporation said that document could be issued in early March, but the whole project has been delayed by the agency's appeal of a judge's ruling removing their lawyer because of a perceived conflict of interest.

Montalto also praised the concept of retaining storm water, but said the increase in wastewater would still be significant. Atkins suggested that conservation techniques--like low-flow toilets--could mitigate the impact of wastewater from the residential development.

Armer suggested another tactic: "It's nice that the developer will be retaining wet weather flow, but we ought to be looking at pre-treatment of wastewater."

There seem to be already-existing problems. City Council Member Letitia James pointed to the low-rise housing across Atlantic Avenue from the Atlantic Yards site. "Are you familiar with Atlantic Commons?" she asked Cabbagestalk. "Are you aware some residents have sewer problems?" He said no.

What to do with water

Paul Mankiewicz of the ecologically-oriented Gaia Institute observed that "the opportunities are enormous" should a development retain stormwater. The entire edge of the development could be filled with vegetation, and the buildings could feature "green roofs," with agricultural systems. There's been no indication so far that those implementations are in Forest City Ratner's plans.

Noise and air quality

Another panel addressed the impact of a decade-long construction project on a well-populated area. Are there any city requirements that contractors and equipment have to use low-emissions technology, Armer asked.

New standards are being implemented in the next few years, said Geraldine Kelpin of the DEP, and construction equipment and trucks can be retrofitted to meet those standards.

Kelpin acknowledged that projects overseen by state agencies (like the ESDC) do not have to comply with local laws regarding noise and emissions, but "we've seen a lot of commitment to do so."

James said, "It's troubling that because this is a state project contractors will not have to adhere to local laws." She cited high asthma rates among children in Fort Greene, such as at the Atlantic Terminal 4B housing project across Atlantic Avenue from the Atlantic Yards project footprint; she also pointed to bronchial problems among seniors at the Cumberland Gardens building nearby.

"What state laws would address or mitigate some of those concerns?" James asked. Kelpin said, "I don't know enough about how this is going to be put together. The issues are going to have to be resolved."

Millman commented that the state legislature should be able to write a bill that requires state projects to adhere to city regulations.

The energy picture

There was some mildly optimistic news from two representatives of the utility Con Edison. First, said Con Edison's Joe Murphy, representatives of the developer have been in touch with NYSERDA (New York State Energy Research and Development Authority) regarding the potential use of highly-efficient motors and low-energy lighting equipment in the project.

Also, said Con Ed's Larry Laskowski, "The geographic location is pretty unique." Four separate "network load areas" converage on the project site, so "we have choices about how to supply that." Maybe that's why part of the Atlantic Yards footprint has been zoned for manufacturing.

Yo, Bloomberg: It's time to solve the Brooklyn transit problem

Brooklyn may be booming, but what good is it if the streets in the borough’s core are clogged, pedestrians are stymied, and the landscape unwelcoming? And why are we so far behind European cities, and even New Jersey? It's time, said participants at a forum last night on “Traffic and Transportation in Brownstone Brooklyn,” to pressure public officials and city agencies to think more broadly.

"Today we look at traffic like it’s the weather—a force of nature,” observed Aaron Naparstek, the moderator and organizer of the forum. “But that’s not so. It’s a human-made problem.” Several creative examples from other cities were cited during the evening: London minimizes car traffic with congestion pricing. Paris turns an expressway into a waterfront urban beach. Copenhagen prizes bicycles. Bogota, Colombia builds lanes for bus rapid transit (BRT). Even downtrodden Detroit has built a park around a downtown crossroads. A current exhibit at the Municipal Art Society emphasizes Livable Streets.

The Atlantic Yards angle

The forum, sponsored by the Park Slope Civic Council drew more than 200 people on a chilly night to the Old First Reformed Church. The topic was far broader than the Atlantic Yards project, though both developer Forest City Ratner and the city Department of Transportation (DOT) declined to participate, saying that “the discussion was maybe premature,” PSCC President Lydia Denworth told the crowd. (Later, she told me that both entities had said they were waiting for the Empire State Development Corporation to release a Draft Environmental Impact Statement regarding the project.)

City Council Member David Yassky, who at the ESDC scoping hearing in October testified cautiously about Atlantic Yards, got to speak before the panel began and declared, “This is far from premature. This is exactly what we need to be doing right now. I think the traffic and parking issues… are a first-order obstacle.” Even if the scale of the project can be reduced and the community benefits can be locked in, he said, “unless there’s a serious and concrete plan” regarding traffic, “I think the project has to be resisted on that ground alone.”

The DEIS will address some of the issues, Yassky said, “but I don’t want to count on it…. We have to demand from the city some fairly big responses.” Also present were several other public officials or their representatives, and representatives from borough and city agencies.

Public spaces, not auto spaces

Flatbush Avenue and Downtown Brooklyn came in for much criticism—even as the nearby brownstone neighborhoods remain lures. “This is one of the greatest challenges I’ve seen in a major city, trying to restore a core area that’s been dominated by traffic,” declared Fred Kent, president of the Project for Public Spaces (PPS). “I can’t think of any intersection in the core of Brooklyn that’s comfortable to walk through.”

Still, he offered a sign of progress. “There are no great public spaces in Downtown Brooklyn,” he said, but a director of an unnamed Brooklyn Local Development Corporation had invited PPS in for a meeting to begin to address that.

Like other panelists, Kent suggested that other states—not merely European cities—were far ahead of New York. “We’ve trained 600 traffic engineers in New Jersey,” he said. “No project in New Jersey can be scoped out without placemaking.” He said that traffic engineers in New York typically take a “project approach,” which looks at issues narrowly. A “place-driven approach,” by contrast, invites community input and a broader perspective.

Blame Bloomberg

"The DOT is not into this idea,” Kent said. “They can be brought in, with enough pressure.” Jon Orcutt, Executive Director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign criticized the city’s transportation policy as “muddle through, hope nothing really bad happens, and give developers what they want.”

Orcutt pointed out that the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Study was still on the shelf, and that the rezoning of Downtown Brooklyn and the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront “took place with virtually no thought of transportation.” Only subsequent pressure from influential entities in Downtown Brooklyn led to a follow-up traffic study.

“We just came through a political campaign where traffic and transportation did not register one blip on the screen,” Orcutt said, contrasting New York with the political maturity of London, where candidates competed to promise they’d get cars of the street. One of the problems, Orcutt said, is that authority is spread across a multitude of city and state agencies

But the solution, he said, “is appreciating how bare-knuckled New York City politics and blame the mayor.” It can work. Activists from car-choked Staten Island got Mayor Bloomberg to put traffic there near the top of his agenda, and in his State of the City address delivered at SI’s Snug Harbor on January 26, the mayor announced that he had given city agencies 60 days to produce new traffic initiatives for a growth management task force.

Development impacts

Some kind of Brooklyn transportation coalition will have to create an agenda for Brooklyn, he said, and indeed, the meeting last night was just a start; panelists will be making presentations before other civic groups. One of the first thing such a coalition must do, Orcutt said, is to “get a real picture of the impacts of development.” He said the city pattern, for the West Side Stadium and other such projects, is to “give the developer what they want” and then adjust the impacts on the EIS.

And Orcutt had some cautiously optimistic words regarding Atlantic Yards. “I have a bit of a better feeling from the Ratner EIS, which is not a city project.” Why, he was asked later. Because the developer seems to have a greater grasp on some of the challenges: “From talking to them, they understand the issue of transit access to the site.” Yes, but the numbers deserve some more explanation.

Earlier, Kent took a swipe at Frank Gehry, architect for the Atlantic Yards plan, quoting Gehry as having said, “I don’t do context.” Gehry’s creations “may be placeholder icons,” Kent said, but “they’re placeless buildings.”

Practical steps, bold steps

Karla Quintero, project coordinator of Transportation Alternatives, provided a preview of a new study, titled “Traffic’s Human Toll: How Cars and Trucks Affect New Yorkers’ Quality of Life.” The results not unsurprisingly show that people living on lightly-trafficked streets find their environments more pleasant than those living on heavily-trafficked streets.

A Brooklyn transportation coalition would have a lot to talk about. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Naparstek pointed out, is studying the possibility of Bus Rapid Transit on Flatbush Avenue: “This is the kind of thing we can get behind.”

A residential parking program is also a possibility, especially since the Atlantic Yards project could generate intense demands for parking spaces.. Orcutt said citizens must pressure their elected officials, “but you don’t want a study… You need to say: ‘we want a test.’”

One questioner lamented that Grand Army Plaza is inaccessible to pedestrians because of high-speed traffic. "It would be a great question for DOT," Naparstek observed, but Kent had a more audacious suggestion: close streets around it as a test, and see what happens. After all, Paris creates a beach every summer.

Where do the cars actually go, when a city closes streets? "The traffic disappears," Kent responded. "They realize they can get there other ways." Orcutt followed up, saying, "The infrastructure tells you what to do." Easier said than done in Brooklyn, but expect the conversations to continue.

Stuckey's shocker: Ratner VP says Brooklyn Arena would use more mass transit than MSG

Would 65 percent of visitors to the planned Brooklyn Arena at the Atlantic Yards development use mass transportation? That's what Forest City Ratner VP Jim Stuckey told an audience on 11/22/05, even though two weeks later public officials expressed skepticism that the Brooklyn Arena could draw even half of its visitors via mass transit.

Stuckey, speaking at American Institute of Architects presentation along with Atlantic Yards architect Frank Gehry and landscape designer Laurie Olin, stated (according to a tape I recently listened to), "Most everyone believes and I think the EIS [Environmental Impact Statement] ultimately will say that about 65% of the people who come to the arena... will be using mass transportation already." The EIS is expected in the next weeks or months. (Photo from Forest City Ratner web site.)

However, at a 12/5/05 Borough Board hearing on transit issues, transportation consultant "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz suggested that Madison Square Garden was the best model for Atlantic Yards arena traffic, with about 50% of visitors using public transit, 40% using cars, and 10% walking. But that drew contentious responses, as Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz said that such an estimate was overoptimistic.

As the New York Post reported:
"I don't think you can compare Madison Square Garden to Brooklyn. There's a huge part of Brooklyn that does not have public transportation," he said — adding that parts of Staten Island and Queens, too, are out of the reach of public transportation leading to the arena's designated site at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues.

Note that Schwartz is now working as a consultant for Forest City Ratner, though he was not doing so at the time.

Stuckey on the mark?

I asked Stuckey to amplify his remarks, but he didn't respond to my email. I asked Stuckey's questioner, Brad Lander, director of the Pratt Center for Community Development, if Stuckey's observation was legitimate. "Sixty-five percent does indeed seem to be an extremely inflated estimate, given that Madison Square Garden is at 50 percent," Lander responded. "It does not seem credible to me to suggest that more people would come to Atlantic Yards by train than to MSG--more likely the opposite (since I would guess that more New Jersey & Long Island residents would drive)."

Lander did note that the developer is considering the possibility of incorporating the price of transit into ticket prices to arena events, which could reduce traffic, but "much more would be needed in any case to make parking limited/expensive."

Remote parking?

During the November 22 Q&A session, Lander followed up Stuckey's "65 percent" comment by asking what arena had the next highest percentage of attendees via public transit. Stuckey responded by focusing on Madison Square Garden: "The interesting thing about the modeling is that they have Madison Square Garden, where there’s been an awful lot of modeling done... It obviously has to be adjusted."

Stuckey said any model must understand the number of people that are coming and the time of their trips. "I think you have to put in place programs, which we’re working with the government on, that will hopefully part of the EIS process, where you can encourage even further mass transportation. There are a lot of ways of doing that. One example, and this is a way of tying other parts of Brooklyn into the project, you could have people park remotely, you could have people come to games, you could have them then go to dinner in other places, enjoy other Brooklyn neighborhoods, and keep cars off the streets."

It remains to be seen whether Stuckey's "65 percent" estimate includes those who use mass transportation at the last leg of their trip, such as after parking in other parts of Brooklyn.

But so far, it's hardly clear that "most everyone believes" in that 65 percent figure. Schwartz didn't believe it in December. Now that he's working for the developer, will he be finding ways to make that work?

Atlantic Yards vs. Schaefer Landing: some twists on the definition of "affordable"

The New York Observer's follow-up on the "affordable housing" panel Tuesday reveals that Forest City Ratner has taken a step further and announced that it has in fact agreed to build 600 to 1000 for-sale condos. (The Housing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) more cautiously stated that the partners would "work on a program to develop" such units.)

The post on the Observer's blog The Real Estate points out that the sheer number of affordable units would the largest since Starrett City, and that if the affordable units approach 40 percent the percentage would be comparable to "what Schaefer Landing is doing on the Williamsburg waterfront (40 percent low-income rentals, 60 percent luxury condos)."

Affordable for whom?

There are some interesting contrasts between the Atlantic Yards project and Schaefer Landing. The affordable housing in the latter project is designated only for households "earning up to 60% of the area median income ($37,680 for a family of four)," according to the city housing department. According to p. 4 of the MOU for the Atlantic Yards project, less than half of the affordable units (40%) would go to households earning up to 60% of area median income. The rest would go to people earning more.

The income cap for affordable housing at Atlantic Yards would be as much as 160% of area median income, not 60% of AMI. That's because the "affordable housing" planned at Atlantic Yards would not be geared solely to low-income families, but involve a mix of low-, moderate-, and middle-income tenants. Obviously, there are major differences between the plans, in the way they were conceived, their scale, and the subsidies involved. But it's important to recognize that there are many variations under the rubric of "affordable."

Onsite or off?

Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco told the Observer: “We have also agreed to build on or off site 600 to 1000 first-time homeowner condos and will continue to work with ACORN on this and related issues.”

It's unlikely that most (if any) of the affordable condos would be built onsite, since the project as currently conceived, with 4500 rentals and 2800 market-rate condos, has already raised concerns about its density . The now-closed St. Mary's Hospital in Crown Heights, the Daily News reported last November, has been eyed by Forest City Ratner and would accommodate up to 800 offsite affordable condos.

ACORN's Lewis gets fiery as "affordable housing" debate heats up

Bertha Lewis, executive director of New York ACORN, doesn’t give an inch. When pressed on the details of “affordable housing” plan for the Atlantic Yards project, her message is: Believe me, not some vague words on the page. And if reporters quiz her about discrepancies, they’re “disrespecting” her. (Photo from PBS NewsHour.)

But the page is the Housing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) Lewis signed last May, which guaranteed that half the 4500 rental units in the project would be affordable, and also said that developer Forest City Ratner (FCR) would aim to build up to 1000 affordable for-sale units. However, FCR has since added 2800 market-rate condos, so even if all 1000 for-sale units were built, the 8300-unit project would include only about 40 percent affordable units.

Nope, says Lewis. “If this project passes [state review], it’s 50/50 baby,” she told a group of reporters pressing her after a panel last night. “The MOU says 50/50 period.”

Actually, the MOU leaves some breathing room: If the projected number of residential units should increase for any reason that the Developer determines to be economically necessary, both the Developer and ACORN will work towards developing a program that follows the same guidelines and principles set forth in this document.
(Indeed, the number increased, just a week after the MOU for the rentals was celebrated last May 19.)

Charged discussion

It was a charged end to a tense night in a clubby banquet room at The Captain’s Ketch, a restaurant in the Wall Street area. A few dozen members of Women in Housing and Finance paid $30 last night for appetizers, wine, and a chance to hear a panel discussion titled Affordable Housing and the Atlantic Yards Development.

They got their money’s worth. Moderator Brad Lander, director of the Pratt Center for Community Development announced at the start that he wanted “to set a space for respectful dialogue,” but that didn’t last long. Lewis was initially eloquent, but as the event continued, her fuse got shorter, and she interrupted Lander and co-panelist Candace Carponter of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) with regular protests and counter-arguments. (Lander photo from POV on PBS.)

It left an uneasy feeling that the Atlantic Yards debate will get uglier, and that the clash will persist between ACORN and fellow “equity advocates” (in Lander’s words) with DDDB and fellow “livability advocates.” It left Michelle de la Uz, who runs a nonprofit housing group that has criticized the project, to say that neither value should be sacrificed. And it left panelist Vicky Been, a New York University law professor who spoke in careful generalities about Atlantic Yards, to lament that “the system is broken” because “we don’t have a comprehensive approach to planning.” Been also pointed out, almost as an aside, that we still don’t know how much the project would cost the public.

AY in ACORN's context

After Lander described the contours and changes in the affordable housing element of the Atlantic Yards project, Lewis offered the big picture. ACORN in 1997 did a study called “Shrinking the Pie,” which showed how the Giuliani administration shifted affordable housing funds to higher-income people. A 2003 study, Neighborhoods for Sale, showed “how city policies were selling off whole neighborhoods.” The acceptable affordable housing program for developers, she said, was the city's 80/20 program, which she said was inadequate.

“There’s almost 49 developments in Downtown Brooklyn and surrounding areas,” Lewis said, and most are luxury condos in a skyrocketing market. “There’s a total of 5219 housing units,” she said. “Ninety-one percent are market rate. Nine percent are ‘affordable,’ that a working family can’t afford, a teacher, a bus driver.” (This week's New York Observer has an article about how tax breaks have stimulated developments that would succeed on their own, and how the Bloomberg administration is finally reshaping the program.)

So ACORN, she said, negotiated with Bruce Ratner and said, “We want half. We developed this 50/50 program. They don’t know anything about affordable housing.... We stretched the program that HPD does.... It doesn't make sense, so we changed it.” Yes, ACORN successfully stretched the program to lower the income cap and increase the income categories (or tiers) of people eligible. But HPD calls it a 50/30/20 program, with 20 percent of the units for low-income families and 30 percent for middle- and moderate-income people.

Lewis continued, “The apartment sizes--there’s no affordable housing program, except for ours, that actually does two- and three-bedrooms.” Not so, said de la Uz of the Fifth Avenue Committee afterwards, and a quick check of the HPD web site confirms that.

“The for-sale housing, you will see, will have the same tiers,” Lewis said. “The tiers will start a bit higher.” How high is unclear. The MOU states: Developer and ACORN will work on a program to develop affordable for-sale units,which are intended to be in the range of 600 to 1000 units, over the course of ten (10) years and can be on or off site.It is currently contemplated that a majority of the affordable for-sale units will be sold to families in the upper affordable income tiers.

DDDB's response

After Lewis’s passionate performance, Carponter was on the defensive somewhat, since she had to argue larger issues of fairness. "I don’t know as much about affordable housing," she acknowledged, "but I do know about the plan.... We want development in this space, but we want sensible, responsible development that meets community needs." However, she added, "The baby got thrown out with the bathwater. In order to get the affordable housing, we've lost our sense of community and ability to have input into the public process."

She cited some statistics that quickly had Lewis fuming--it would cost at least three times as much to build this as other organizations could do it, it would use eminent domain, and $1.5 to $2 billion to build the project. (Forest City Ratner's Jim Stuckey acknowledges $1.1 billion.)

“This is a low-rise neighborhood,” Carponter said, adding, “Most of the buildings are five or six stories. It’s Brownstone Brooklyn at its organic best.” Well, much of surrounding Prospect Heights has developed organically, but only one block in the footprint is defined by row houses and another contains two classy condo renovations. Other blocks are either empty (the railyards) or have more buildings or lots awaiting redevelopment.

“Of the number of residential units, only 30% are going to be affordable housing,” Carponter said. Well, 30% of the onsite units. If Forest City Ratner follows through and builds all 1,000 for-sale affordable units, that would bring the project to 40%--the number Lewis was loathe to acknowledge. Carponter added, "The promise of affordable purchase units has not been met."

“The affordable housing, the promise of jobs are being used as a Trojan horse for a massive land grab,” she said. “It is not necessary to build an arena to build affordable housing.” She said that the Fifth Avenue Committee and Pratt Area Community Council could build affordable housing at a third of the costs the Atlantic Yards project would require. “It’s taking money from the pockets of other organizations that want to build affordable housing. The bottom line is, we don't need to give away the store to get affordable housing."

Myopia over land use

Law professor Been offered some general comments about the conundrum faced in such projects. It’s difficult to define the community affected that should be at the table, to decide who speaks for that community, and how to fit negotiations over community benefits into broader land use processes.

"I'm going to put to one side the obvious questions that this raises, which is: 'Why isn't the government speaking for the community?' What's wrong with our processes?"

Lewis chuckled derisively.

Been continued, "One justification for the land use process, as it's set up, is so that you have a broader perspective, so you don't necessarily have the local community defining issues about housing that may affect the city as a whole."

She acknowledged that community input can bring value; she cited ACORN's focus on the need for senior housing at Atlantic Yards that, as Lewis pointed out, would accommodate not just singles but seniors raising grandchildren. "On the other hand," she said, "we also have to be concerned: Are we thinking about it from a wide enough lens? And how can we shape our land use processes so we're getting more of that?"

Pushing the contradictions

Lander said that it was painful for him, as an advocate of mixing affordable housing and good jobs with livable neighborhoods, that Atlantic Yards and other market-led development challenges both sets of interests. It leads “equity advocates” to accept more market-rate housing if it brings benefits, while “livability advocates” want less development because it inflicts less environmental harm. "It sets up a painful and challenging conflict," he mused. “Maybe other land use procedures--ones that put planning earlier and up front wouldn’t lead to this dynamic, but we wind up in it an awful lot of the time." (Photo of Lander and Lewis at inclusionary zoning press conference, from Pratt Center.)

"My sense is that Bertha and Candace really care about both issues," he continued , and posed the first question to Lewis. "You've long worked for livable neighborhoods," he said, citing past ACORN efforts fighting government overreach. “Are you concerned, in sort of reaching for these benefits [for the Atlantic Yards plan], that neighborhood residents on the livability issue are going to suffer?”

Lewis offered a rhetorical shrug. “We’ve been suffering, before anybody even thought about livability," she said. "My members have not had livability.” She returned to the point that the Atlantic Yards plan would provide far more affordable housing than other new developments.

Lander tried to turn the conversation back to scale. (Sketches by Frank Gehry are adapted from the 7/5/05 New York Times; the project is expected to change.)

"My members suffer from asthma," Lewis said. "For us, traffic, density, how this stuff is done, we've been the victims of it. ACORN had to make a decision. And it's hard. What do you know about? What do you deal with? We know about housing. We’re concerned about traffic, hell yeah. We’re concerned about density, hell yeah. But here’s what we know. Not trying to overreach, not trying to deal with stuff that we don't have the resources or the expertise in, and we hope that those who have the resources and the expertise will sit down with us and work with us about solving this." (Wasn't that what Lander was trying to do?)

"We had to make a decision," Lewis continued. "We're human beings. This affects us. But we decided if we could make one nudge, one impact, what we could do, what we could kick ass on, it would be housing. I can't kick ass on environment, just can't. Can't do it on density, just can't. It’s reality. Of all the things that are happening in central, downtown Brooklyn, throughout Brooklyn--this is like a goddamn tsunami. It’s for real, this shit is coming. So, if I could stop one iota of gentrification, I’ll do it. I can't do environment. I can’t do traffic. But we're not just singleminded and coldhearted. My members experience this. But as an organization we need to be able to impact what we need to impact.”

Lander asked Carponter if protecting the sense of community would make it less inclusive. “We’re not against affordable housing,” she said. “We support doing it responsibly.” She cited the community-developed UNITY Plan which proposed buildings of no more than 12 stories built on the railyards themselves. “The difference is, we did it with the community. We didn't let the developer decide what was good for us."

Lewis tried to interject, Lander tried to stop her. Lewis spoke over Lander: “No, no, no. That's not correct. That's not right. She can’t get away with it. For 30 years, the yards sat.” (Well, so did much of the already cleared and prepared urban renewal area north of the railyards, such as the sites for the Atlantic Center and Atlantic Terminal malls, until the 1990s property boom.)

Lander observed that, if Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn succeeds in stopping FCR, there’s a reasonable possibility nothing will happen, with a lot less affordable housing in a gentrifying neighborhood.

“That’s for real,” Lewis chimed in.

Carponter said no, that the rival Extell plan, which is limited to the railyards, could be implemented. “I don’t believe there will be no development. If there is not development, that would be the MTA's fault, because they didn't do it in the proper way.” (Left unspecified was that a 50/50 plan in a smaller project would provide less total housing and thus less affordable housing.)

The dispute intensifies

Lewis tried to interject. Lander, with the microphone, wanted to let the audience speak. The first questioner yielded the floor to Lewis.

“Number one,” she said. “I want to see the first lawsuit on the Downtown Brooklyn plan.... Eminent domain is all right when you’re displacing black and brown folks in poor neighborhoods.” (The Downtown Brooklyn rezoning, unlike the Atlantic Yards plan, went through the city’s land use process and was approved by City Council.)

“The neighborhood is not low-rise,” she added. "The neighborhood is high-rise." Actually, it's more mixed. Below the railyards, the immediate neighborhood is mostly low-rise; one of the tallest nearby buildings is the nine-story Newswalk building that has been sliced out of the project. If you cross broad Atlantic Avenue (pictured), there are five buildings of subsidized housing that are up to 15 stories and one public housing building that is 31 stories; in between them are row houses. Also across Atlantic, near the western border of the project, is the Williamsburg Savings Bank, which has several setbacks but reaches 512 feet. Nearby is the Bank of New York tower over the Atlantic Terminal mall, over 300 feet. There would be 16 towers in the FCR plan with several over 300 feet and one 620 feet.

As for tall towers, Lewis said, “I don’t like em, but we're still in flux here."

“I cannot you who have never built affordable housing to sit there and say that we’re taking away three times as much affordable housing dollars... you’re just telling a lie.” (I asked the Fifth Avenue Committee's de la Uz afterward about that; she said that the costs were unclear, given that FCR had not yet released financial statements.)

And Lewis turned back to the larger issue. “The government has excluded the community.... When you want to talk about community, please, Candace, put in class, because that was the one thing that you left out." (Carponter noted afterward that she did point out the plan concerned ethnic, racial, and economic diversity.) "The deal is this: Do we look at what is happening at the 48 other developments.... If you have the resources to take that class action suit to the other 48, if you do it, Candace, I'm down with you. If you only single out this one, which may be symptomatic or not, I’m not down.” (Well, this project is the largest in the history of Brooklyn and is proceeding without any city input. And there's no class-action suit.)

Turning on the moderator

Lander even got hit with a confrontational question, as Stephen Witt of the Courier-Life chain asked him if he had a chance to be part of the Community Benefits Agreement and, if so, why not. He also accused the Pratt Center of doing “a survey [of Prospect Heights] that was 98 or 90some percent white... How partisan are you?”

Witt was apparently referring to an October 2004 poll conducted for the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council, which was criticized by BUILD for only sampling two percent of the residents, with 61 percent of the respondents white. Lander responded, “It was substantially more diverse than what you reference,” noting that the survey was aimed at residents in the immediate vicinity of the project footprint. He added that he was not asked to participate in the CBA discussions: “We’re policy wonks.”

A different solution

Lander, former executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, called on its current director, de la Uz, for a question, and she prefaced it with a stakes-defining declaration of her own. A ten-story, 80-unit project FAC is constructing, on a plot of urban renewal land (below) just across from the Atlantic Yards footprint--next to the Atlantic Center mall and three-story row houses, and near a 15-story subsidized building--would actually provide better affordability than the Atlantic Yards project: only 25 percent market-rate, 25% affordable to moderate- and middle-income people, and 50 percent affordable to those earning 80% of Area Median Income (about $50,000) and below. (Then again, the attempt at a reasonable scale produces 60 units of affordable housing; 16 such buildings would produce 960 units.)

“We’ve also organized rent-stabilized tenants in the project footprint," de la Uz continued. "I think Brad posed an important question about livability versus equity. I appreciate that Bertha said that ACORN made choices. I know those are things that the Fifth Avenue Committee is faced with every day, about where we're going to focus our efforts.... I wonder if, at the end of the day, we don't undermine who we are and what our vision is, and what our values are, if we choose one over the other.”

Lewis responded that the issue was "about black and brown people in Central Brooklyn."

"I appreciate that," de la Uz continued. "Our mission is very much the same. I think it's an issue of helping familes so folks have schools, and that folks can cross the street when they're getting to and from work. And that they have a chance to live with dignity." Her question to Lewis, was when a "real pro forma” has been released regarding the developer’s projected costs per dwelling unit.

Lewis shot back, “How many pro formas have you seen for all 49 projects in Brooklyn? How many? Give me a number."

De la Uz replied, "Probably eight of the nine" that include affordable housing.

Closing clash

Lewis returned to her mantra. “If we can stop gentrification one iota, we will do it. If we can make sure that low-income, moderate-income black and brown people can actually have a piece of this whole renaissance of downtown Brooklyn, we will do it,” she said. “What saddens me is the polarization of folks in downtown Brooklyn versus the rest of the Brooklyn. We really need some assistance to hold developers accountable.”

Carponter, a real estate lawyer rather than an affordable housing expert, had been playing defense against Lewis, but in her close, she unsheathed some rhetorical weapons. “If this is such a terrific process,” she asked, "the MOU shouldn't legally bind her to speak only in support of the project, and that's what it does."

Lewis sprang up contentiously.

"I'll show you the language," Carponter said, with a touch of weariness, and began reading the text, which requires ACORN to “to take reasonable steps to publicly support the Project.” Carponter added, "She is required by her agreement, to publicly support the project, she can't speak out against it."

Lewis interjected, “If the project sucks, I’ll speak out.”

Carponter continued, “If the project is so great, the agreement they have with tenants who are being displaced--the temporary relocation agreement--would not contain a gag order" that requires them to publicly support the project.

And, she added, "If the project is so terrific, if it's using government money in the amounts that it is, using the extreme power of eminent domain, then minimally we are entitled to a public process with government oversight and legislative review."

Lewis responded by changing the subject, blaming Carponter herself for eminent domain in the Downtown Brooklyn plan approved by City Council: "Talk about those 130 folks you displaced, Candace."

Broken system

Been, the academic, got the last word, lamenting the lack of planning. “We're dealing with 49 developments. We're dealing with one rezoning at a time. We don't have a comprehensive look at what's going on where and where we're going to put the affordable housing, where we're going to put the density and allow that affordable housing."

"The other issue is, it's too little, too late. Late in the game, after an environmental impact statement, is not when you want to be having everybody air what their problems, either the livability issues, the affordability concerns. One question that ought to be on the table is, at what cost is all this? Many people want affordable housing, but obviously affordable housing costs something. And the question is--"

"They don't want to pay for it," Lewis interjected.

Been continued, "In terms of public subsidies, is this the best thing for our public dollars? But we have too little information, and too little participation. One of the take home messages is we need to use this opportunity to figure out how to fix the system more broadly so we're not having these kinds of fights later in the year or decades."

Afterward, Lewis, a middle-aged black woman questioned by four younger, white reporters, held her ground combatively. “We don’t know what the state is going to allow Bruce Ratner to do,” she said. “Whatever the state allows him to do, the deal is 50/50.” The questions, measured but insistent, continued. “You guys are so fucking disrespectful,” she declared. "You would not ask Extell this. Don't talk to me, talk to the state." One of her associates approached and urged Lewis to leave with them, and the conversation ended.

Introducing the Atlantic Yards Report

From today onward, my reportage, analysis, and commentary on the Atlantic Yards project will appear here at the Atlantic Yards Report.

This blog, originally dubbed TimesRatnerReport, was conceived to accompany the 9/1/05 publication of my report The New York Times & Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards: High Rises & Low Standards. I thought a blog could help track and comment on the response to my report.

The report has not yet spurred the Public Editor of the New York Times to assess the newspaper's coverage of the Atlantic Yards project. However, I do think my criticisms have contributed to a somewhat better performance by the media, including the Times.

Moreover, the report and the research behind it have served as a base for an evolving blog. While I initially emphasized media analysis and commentary, I now include much more original reporting.

Given the broader focus, the name TimesRatnerReport doesn't fit as well. The blog under that URL will remain intact, and I will link back from the Atlantic Yards Report to old blog entries when necessary. (Why not simply change the name/URL of the old blog? Many original links would be lost.)

I will continue my analysis of the New York Times's coverage, and of media coverage in general. But I also will continue to take a broader view of the biggest development project in the history of Brooklyn.

[Update: For a good introduction to the project, see Chris Smith's New York magazine article. Also see the About Me page.]