Security study for Atlantic Yards? Sure, but it's Ratner's

A panel discussion last night sponsored by the Municipal Art Society, Security at What Cost? Balancing Security and Public Space, seemed like a good place to ask the Atlantic Yards security question.

A panel of design and engineering experts from the public and private sector had just discussed a variety of issues relating to security perimeters, security barriers, and the importance of maintaining a public streetscape. Post-9/11 New York was a giant "laboratory for security, said Bob Ducibella, principal at security consultants Ducibella Venter & Santore, but the city's been doing well.

Indeed, posited Ray Gastil, director of the Manhattan Office, New York City Department of City Planning, "I've never seen the city stronger, in terms of street life."

Then again, as Ducibella put it, "glass and explosives go well together." His firm has worked on numerous major projects, including the World Trade Center transportation hub and the Bank of America tower at Bryant Park.

A glass skyscraper and an arena

So, in the Q&A, I mentioned that the Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement had just come out, with nothing about security and terrorism. People are were concerned about a glass skyscraper and an arena in Forest City Ratner's project, but the Empire State Development Corporation says such a review isn't required under the law, though the city police department has examined the project.

What should people expect from the government in doing a security review and sharing some of that with the public?

There was a pause. Moderator Andrew Manshel looked over at Ducibella and asked if he'd been involved in any EIS reviews.

"I have an unfortunate conflict of interest," Ducibella responded. "Our firm is involved and has been for about a year and a half trying to work with the developer to create an environment" that, among other things, is responsive to police department concerns, he said. "I understand your position and would love to comment, but I'm sorry."

Manshel asked him about such reviews in general. "Most of the projects that are of substances--and that project is of substance--when the original security considerations are developed, they are no longer part of just looking at what kind of electronic security components might be built in, or how many security officers there might be," Ducibella replied.

"There are issues of perimeter boundaries--you've witnessed street closures--issues about lighting levels at night that create local pollution, in some cases screening trucks on streets, which has a real significant effect on local traffic, so it's difficult for a project of significance now to not have security studies done and recommendations developed in advance that don't somehow inform the EIS process."

City Planning demurs

Manshel turned to the city's Gastil. Does City Planning have a position on the issue? "Atlantic Yards is a state project," Gastil pointed out, saying that he wasn't prepared to provide a policy statement on the issue of security reviews. (Atlantic Yards would be the Brooklyn office's bailiwick, anyway.) Still, he said it was a "a good question" and he was willing to take it back to his colleagues.

Bottom line

But the bottom line, so far, is this: because the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) was passed in 1978, and revised in 1987 and 1996, it doesn't reflect a post-9/11 consciousness about security issues, and thus those concerns need not be disclosed in the EIS process.

And if environmental reviews these days are informed by security studies, as Ducibella's general comment suggested, it's hardly clear in the Atlantic Yards review.

City agencies tasked with security and developers who buy insurance surely take security into account. So it's clear that some people have been studying security issues regarding the Atlantic Yards proposal. Given the significant community concerns, it seems that, at the very least, SEQRA needs an update.

High crime in footprint? FEIS ignores the criticism

The Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) in the Response to Comments section of the Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), aims to offer "a summary of these relevant comments and a response to each." (Emphasis added)

Many responses might be seen as incomplete, but at least they're responses. When it comes to dubious charges of high crime in the Atlantic Yards footprint, charges raised in the ESDC's Blight Study but severely criticized (by me, at first), the ESDC has ignored the issue.

Criticisms sent to ESDC

Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn in this file (p. 7) from its Blight Response, quoted my criticism and added to it. Community Board 2 told the ESDC:
The crime statistics in the DEIS are misrepresented and cannot be used honestly as evidence of blight.

Indeed, as I pointed out, in two of the three sectors studied that each included parts of the footprint, the crime rate was lower last year than in the larger police precincts to which they belong. That's hardly a sign of high crime.

But there's no response to these criticisms in either Part 1 or Part 2 of the Response to Comments chapter.

Generalities on blight

The agency did respond to criticisms that the area wasn't blighted by citing its Blight Study.

[The numbers designate those who commented.]

Comment 20-8: The DEIS makes an absurd claim that without Atlantic Yards, without eminent domain, no development could benefit New York State and that phony blight conditions would remain. (58, 107)

Response 20-8: The blight study accurately identifies blight on the project site, and eminent domain is an appropriate tool to address this blight.

Comment G-31: The designation of Prospect Heights, an up-and-coming neighborhood with new co-ops and condos, as blighted is bogus. (58, 69, 107, 119, 122, 160, 172, 197, 235, 239, 241, 256, 265, 274, 281, 325, 337, 338, 339)

How is the surrounding neighborhood blighted when residences are selling for upward of $1 million? (10, 31, 421, 160, 411, 445)

With housing values going up every day and out of reach of the common person, how is the area blighted? (144, 172, 204, 228, 229, 268, 385)

The area is already developing in an independent way through small businesses and individuals. This area is far from blighted. (144, 214)

The community has already transformed a blighted area into a vibrant mixed use community. (31, 107, 191, 235, 397, 438)

Response G-31: The DEIS states that the proposed project site is characterized by blighted conditions, including dilapidated and structurally unsound buildings, debris-filled vacant lots, and underutilized properties. The DEIS does not state that the neighborhoods or blocks surrounding the project site are blighted. In addition, ESDC has prepared a Blight Study, which is appended to the General Project Plan.

But there's no defense of the crime rate analysis within the Blight Study.

Michael Ratner offers contributions (Lopez, etc.), office for meeting

As I reported in September, Greenwich Village resident Michael Ratner, eminent constitutional lawyer and brother of Forest City Ratner (FCR) CEO Bruce Ratner, has given campaign contributions to several candidates from Brooklyn and beyond apparently favored by the developer. So has his wife, Karen Ranucci.

But I missed a few. After my article appeared, Ratner gave further contributions to Brooklyn candidates who might have an impact on the Atlantic Yards plan.

Maximum gifts to Lopez

On 9/8/06, Ratner and Ranucci each gave $3100 (the contribution limit) to the campaign of Brooklyn Democratic Chair Vito Lopez, who has a lock on his Assembly seat. Lopez had no primary and token opposition in the general election.

But Lopez can have influence with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and Forest City Ratner certainly wants Silver to greenlight Atlantic Yards when it reaches the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB), where Silver has one of three votes. (Ratner and Ranucci had previously contributed the maximum to Silver, as well.)

Lopez, interestingly, was not on the list of public officials supporting AY announced at the 8/23/06 press event. Still, he has ties to several project supporters.

Gifts to Parker and Camara

Ranucci, on 8/29/06, gave $3500 to the campaign of State Senator Kevin Parker, an Atlantic Yards supporter.

Ratner gave $1000 on 9/11/06 to Karim Camara, another supporter, who beat Jesse Hamilton to retain his Assembly seat. (Ratner's wife Karen Ranucci gave $2500.)

A contribution to Adams

On 10/9/06, Ratner gave $1500 to the State Senate campaign of Eric Adams, who had already crushed Anthony Alexis in the primary and faced token opposition in the general election.

Adams in May declared himself opposed to the Atlantic Yards project, according to a 5/13/06 report on NoLandGrab from Democracy for NYC's Brooklyn Candidate Forum:
I cannot support that project as it stands. [reasons: terrorism, asthma, sewer, traffic, evacuation] I would never be supportive of any project that deals with eminent domain. Until we answer all of those questions, it's difficult to move ahead with any project of that magnitude.

At one point, he apparently stepped back from that. According to an 8/14/06 article on the Gotham Gazette web site:
Eric Adams, the co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, has not taken a position on the Atlantic Yards plan. He says he wants to look at the issues of environment, affordable housing and labor before reaching a decision.

Still, in a 9/1/06 message to NoLandGrab, Adams reiterated his previous opposition, though he left open the option to modify his views:
I am opposed to the project as it is currently proposed. Some of my concerns regarding the Atlantic Yards include the size of the project, infrastructure needs (schools, sewage, etc.), terrorist threats, and traffic plans. I will base my actions as a Senator on sound information from the recently released Environmental Impact Statement, public hearings, and canvassing the neighborhoods within the 20th Senatorial District.

Michael Ratner's office

As I’d been told, Michael Ratner does indeed have an office at FCR’s headquarters in Downtown Brooklyn.

He’s obviously not there very often, since he’s got another job. So city and FCR officials can hold meetings in his office, as shown by a 4/18/06 memo (right) I acquired a Freedom of Information Law request from the Department of City Planning.
(Click to enlarge)

A Ratner-related contribution to Roger Green

Assemblyman Roger Green's underfunded and unsuccessful run for the 10th Congressional District nomination, as noted, seemed at the end aimed more at fellow challenger Charles Barron, an Atlantic Yards opponent, than incumbent Edolphus Town, a fellow Atlantic Yards supporter.

Green was deeply involved in the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement and has spoken enthusiastically for the project. So maybe it's not surprising that campaign disclosure forms show additional ties to developer Forest City Ratner. Green got $2000 on 7/27/06 from FCR executive Gary Lieberman, who also owns a piece of the Nets.

Reduce the project? ESDC says density works for Times Square

How big should Atlantic Yards be? Numerous individuals, organizations, and elected officials told the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), in response to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), that the project should be reduced drastically.

And three Assemblymembers just asked Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to delay and modify the project, in part because of "extreme density."

In the Final EIS, however, the ESDC gave very little quarter--and suggested that, because areas like Times Square and Penn Station support high density development, so should the area around Atlantic Terminal.

The difference, however, is that most of the high-density development touted is commercial, not residential, and neither of those areas are as close to rowhouse residential districts like the Atlantic Yards site.
(Photo + simulation of Dean Street view by Jonathan Barkey)

Note that it's not unlikely that developer Forest City Ratner is ready for another reduction in the plan. After all, the project went from about 8 million square feet to 9.132 million square feet, then, after two much-ballyhooed cuts, back to... 8 million square feet.

The criticism

[Note that the numbers are associated with the individuals or organizations that commented, according to Chapter 24 of the Final EIS. Also note that FAR means "Floor Area Ratio."]

Comment 1-3: ESDC should reduce the project by at least three million square feet or 34 percent, while at the same time preserving the affordable housing aspect of the project. (1, 24)

The project should be scaled back by 50 percent. (116, 227, 550, 578)

The project should be scaled back by 40 percent. (303, 393)

The arena should not be built and the rest should be reduced by 40 percent. (238, 258, 385)

The project should be reduced radically. The design looks terrible and where is the open space? Cut this project in half. Better to have no development than to subsidize this horrible project. (69, 108, 169, 177, 230, 237, 259, 387, 438, 519)

The project should be scaled down and open space increased. (222, 230)

The master plan at its current scale proposes a “social experiment” in density of housing that potentially could blight the area of Prospect Heights. No one has ever mushroomed a population in the space and time proposed by the Atlantic Yards development in the United States. How irresponsible to play with people’s communities and lives so cavalierly? (216)

Even with the 8 percent reduction in project size announced in September, the residential density would be without precedent in NYC and its impact within the project’s confines, as well as on the surrounding neighborhood must be examined. (232)

The proposed number of apartments and building heights should be cut by 50 percent. (242)

The scale of the project needs to be reduced. (31, 68, 82, 108, 139, 141, 150, 157, 186, 189, 209, 216, 234, 257, 284, 285, 290, 299, 300, 308, 313, 334, 375, 382, 391, 398, 410, 417, 436, 438, 439, 464, 465, 471, 477, 490, 497, 510, 516, 564, 574)

The project should be scaled back to perhaps 10-20 percent of the proposed units. (146)

The density of the residential area should be no greater than Battery Park City at full build out which is 152 apartments per acre - this plan is 311. (37)
The scale of the development should be decreased, relate to, and not overwhelm, its neighbors. (48, 57, 260, 344, 355, 369, 427, 460, 499, 504, 507, 521, 530, 561, 563, 575, 576)

The Project Plan should be scaled down to the reality of the infrastructure services available. (535)

What is the appropriate size for a development here? An FAR of 6 was the intent of the ambitious, progressive, optimistic, and relatively public process of upzoning Brooklyn. Building under 5 million square feet would be doing the right thing for Brooklyn. (489)

ESDC response

Response 1-3: Since issuance of the DEIS, the project has been modified in response to recommendations by the City Planning Commission (CPC). The proposed project has been reduced by approximately 427,000 gross square feet (gsf) (430 units) in the residential mixed-use variation and by approximately 458,000 gsf (465 units) in the commercial mixed-use variation. The number of affordable units has not been reduced. In addition, the amount of commercial office space has been reduced by approximately 270,000 gsf in the residential mixed-use variation and approximately 223,000 gsf in the commercial mixed-use variation.

[The modification merely would return the project back to square one in terms of size, and most of the reductions were on the table in January, offered as an option by developer Forest City Ratner and architect Frank Gehry.]

The amount of publicly accessible open space has been increased to 8 acres. The FEIS has been revised to include these modifications to the proposed project. The arena is the vital civic component of the land use improvement and civic project as defined by the UDC Act and would offer the opportunity to bring a much-desired major-league sports team back to Brooklyn.

The proposed project would follow urban design goals and principles as outlined in the Design Guidelines, developed in consultation with the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP).

[The Design Guidelines came out of Gehry's office.]

The Design Guidelines provide an overall framework for creating a cohesive development with a variety of scales, programmatic uses, and architectural elements. The location of the project site, with a new connection to Brooklyn’s largest transit hub, makes it suitable for high-density development. This transit-oriented development is a distinctly beneficial aspect of the proposed project. As discussed in Chapter 3, “Land Use, Zoning, and Public Policy,” the density and FAR of the proposed project would be consistent with, but generally less than, the densities and FARs employed throughout the city for areas surrounding concentrations of mass transit, including the 10-12 FAR district directly north of the project site on Atlantic Avenue.

Parallel examples?

According to Chapter 3:

The New York City Zoning Resolution reflects the City’s policy of encouraging high density development in areas with significant mass transit access. In Manhattan, the zoning around Grand Central Terminal, which is served by five subway lines and substantial commuter rail service, allows for base FARs of between 12 and 15, up to 18 FAR through improvements to the mass transit network, and up to 21.6 through other mechanisms. The Times Square area, which is served by 12 subway lines and the Port Authority Bus Terminal, permit FARs of between 10 and 15, with transit-related bonuses allowing for densities of up to 18. One of the general goals of the Special Hudson Yards District is “to facilitate and guide the development of an environmentally beneficial, transit-oriented business and residence district by coordinating high density development with expanded mass transit facilities, extended and improved subway lines, improved pedestrian access to mass transit facilities, improved pedestrian circulation and avoidance of conflicts with vehicular traffic.” The areas adjacent to Penn Station, which is served by six subway lines and LIRR and New Jersey Transit commuter rail services and located within the Special Hudson Yards District, permit densities up to 19.5 FAR. Maximum FARs range from 10 to 21.6 (with bonus) in lower Manhattan areas adjacent to the Fulton Street Transit Center (10 subway lines and PATH trains).

This policy of transit-oriented zoning density is not limited to Manhattan. The goals of the Long Island City Mixed Use District include the development of moderate- to high-density commercial uses within a compact transit-oriented area and promoting the opportunity for people to work in the vicinity of their residences. This special district permits maximum FARs between 10 and 15. Even in southeast Queens, the City’s current rezoning proposal in Downtown Jamaica proposes FARs of up to 10 for the areas adjacent to the Jamaica Station (three subway lines, all but one of the LIRR commuter rail lines pass through this point).

Most of those examples, however, concern commercial rather than residential projects, and Atlantic Yards would not be part of a city rezoning; rather, the ESDC would override city zoning.

MSG employee warns of rowdy fans, noise; ESDC says crowd noise "not... major"

An interesting, if anonymous, nugget of commentary emerged from the multitudinous comments filed in response to the Atlantic Yards Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and included in the Final EIS. A ten-year employee of Madison Square Garden warned urgently about noise, rowdy patrons, garbage, and gridlock. (Click to enlarge)

The writer, who said he could not give his name, because, "like contracts that are signed with Bruce Ratner, there are speech restrictions included in the contracts with MSG." (The latter is unconfirmed, but there is a record of Ratner gag orders.)

He warned that, after events with younger crowds, drunk patrons crowd the street and carelessly strew garbage. They also treat the streats like they own them, he said, and are quite loud:
In the end, on any number of occasions, it's just one big party in the streets...
The proposed Nets Arena is surrounded by dense residential neighborhoods. What can the residents expect before and after events? There needs to be a study that addresses and answers that question.

Final EIS sanguine

The Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) from the Empire State Development Corporation is sanguine about the issue, responding:
The sidewalks adjacent to the arena block would be wide enough to accommodate the anticipated large volumes of patrons expected for arena events; and publicly accessible amenities, such as the Urban Room with its below-grade connection to the subway, and public plazas along Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, would be situated around the outside of the arena creating a friendly and interactive pedestrian experience. Thus, although the character of the streets and sidewalks would change through sizable intensification of pedestrian activity, pedestrian congestion would not occur. Pedestrian volume on Dean Street would increase notably, especially prior to and immediately following arena events, as a large portion of the arena parking would be located along Dean Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt Avenues. There would be no planned activities or sidewalk vending associated with the arena use on Dean Street. In general, any crowd noise surrounding the arena would be expected to be masked by noise from vehicles on adjacent streets and would not be a major noise source.
(Emphasis added)

To the NY Times Public Editor: examine the 8% AY cutback

[Update: I got a late-morning response from Public Editor Byron Calame that reminded me that he deals with complaints only after readers are dissatisfied with responses from the editors who handled the story. I responded that I had already informed the editors of the overlooked information.]

Dear Mr. Calame:

The Times has failed to report on new information that essentially demolishes the premise of the lead story published September 5.


On that day, the lead story—the most important piece of news in the world for a day—was headlined “Developer Is Said To Plan Cutback In Yards Project.” The deck said: “A Response To Criticism.”

The article, which suggested that developer Forest City Ratner would cut the proposed Atlantic Yards project by six to eight percent, was irresponsible in its execution and thus in its placement.

The article omitted a salient piece of information: the reduction contemplated would bring the project’s size, in square footage, back to the amount announced in December 2003. In other words, the developer increased the size of the project only to reduce it and to appear to be making concessions.

Had that context been included, editors and reporters might have thought twice about the news value of the article. And they might have been reluctant to suggest that the move was a “response to criticism.” An appropriately analytical deck might have read: “Response or Tactic?” [Update: I originally suggested "Criticism or Tactic?"]

Day-after context

Indeed, coverage in other media the next day demolished the premise, offering context for the cutback. The Times reported that the cutback might be considered a tactic, quoting planner Ron Shiffman, who said, “With practically every large development project, people ask for far more than they need.”

Other publications, such as Metro, pointed out that the cutback would only bring the project back to square one.

City Planning's "recommendations"

The story continued. On September 25, the City Planning Commission “recommended” that rumored eight percent scaleback; the next day, the dailies, including the Times, failed to explain that the reduction would restore the project to square one. The Times headlined its story "City Planners Recommend 8% Reduction in Atlantic Yards."

Only in coverage September 28, after the developer “accepted” the recommendation did the Times offer the crucial context: “Moreover, the new reduction only brings the project back to the original size proposed in 2003.”

"Precooked"

The Times's September 26 coverage of the City Planning Commission suggested some of the tactics:
As one executive who works with Forest City put it, “A lot of this was precooked.” Critics and supporters had long anticipated that Forest City would make cuts in the project in order to make it more politically palatable.

But were those actual cuts? The fact that they would restore the project only to its original size was one red flag.

Damning evidence

Now there's another. A document I obtained via a Freedom of Information Law request from the Department of City Planning shows that most of the proposed cuts had been on the table since January, in an option (20B) presented by the developer and architect Frank Gehry.

Now that we know the developer had already prepared for such cuts, the front-page story on September 5 could not have been describing a “response to criticism.” Nor did city planners, as the September 26 headline suggests, actually "recommend" much that the developer was not prepared to accept.

This new information deserves follow-up coverage. (The New York Observer and two Brooklyn weeklies have cited it.) The Times has failed, however, to offer it. As former Public Editor Daniel Okrent wrote (All the News That's Fit to Print? Or Just Our News? 2/1/04):
If the goal of newspapering is to inform the readers and create a historical record, shouldn't the editors be telling us about everything they think is important, no matter where they find it?

Enshrining myth

In the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) issued November 15 and reissued November 27, the Empire State Development Corporation told (p. 42) citizens who complained that the project was too big that “the project has been modified in response to recommendations by the City Planning Commission."

It’s the job of the press, including the Times, to tell the public that those recommendations were in large part preordained by Forest City Ratner rather than developed by the City Planning Commission in response to criticism.

And if the Times doesn’t do its job, you should do yours.

I don’t attribute the Times’s miscues to the parent company’s business relationship with Forest City Ratner. However, as I’ve argued, the Times has a special obligation to be exacting in its coverage of its business partner. It has not done so.

HPD foils FOIL (after four months), won't reveal affordable housing subsidies

How much would the city offer in subsidies for the affordable housing in the Atlantic Yards plan?

It's a reasonable question, because the project would not simply "provide 2,250 low-, moderate-, and middle-income rental apartments," as stated in a Crain's poll that's been trumpeted as depicting support for Atlantic Yards, but taxpayers would pay for that housing.

By knowing the city subsidies, we might be able to compare the affordable housing planned for Atlantic Yards with affordable housing elsewhere. After all, that's what Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff did when he said the Queens West project was a better deal than trying to maintain Stuyvesant Town.

Also, the city subsidies are part of a package of subsidies and public costs, yet unknown, that three Assemblymembers cited as necessary to evaluate the project.

FOIL filed

After trying unsuccessfully to get answers via the press office of the city's Department of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD), on July 26, I filed a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request, seeking documents regarding the Atlantic Yards project, particularly those regarding the funding and provision of affordable housing.

State law requires that agencies respond within five business days, either offering the records requested or stating "the approximate date, which shall be reasonable under the circumstances of the request, when such request will be granted or denied."

HPD responded within three weeks, saying that I should receive a determination regarding my request within 30 business days. It took much longer, and perhaps HPD wouldn't have responded until I followed up earlier this month. I was told I should expect a final response later this month.

Denied

I got the response in the mail Monday: denied. The reasons: "interference with contracts" and "inter- or intra-agency material." (State law explains the former as information "if disclosed would impair present or imminent contract awards...")

The law provides for an appeal process, and I will file an appeal. Surely the agency must provide at least some information that details the extent of city subsidies for affordable housing.

But consider: had HPD followed the letter of the law in the first place, the denial would have arrived by late August. I would've filed an appeal, and it likely would've been resolved by now.

Why can't government agencies follow the law?

Brennan, Millman, Robinson ask Silver to delay, modify AY project

Three Assemblymembers representing districts near the proposed Atlantic Yards project have asked Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver for “substantial modifications to the Project and a delay in approval until those modifications are achieved." Silver is one of three controlling votes on the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB), which should get the project later this month, after approval by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC).

Assemblyman Jim Brennan and Assemblymembers Joan Millman and Annette Robinson sent the three-page letter on November 22 to Silver, a fellow Democrat. The speaker, who has expressed support for Atlantic Yards, has said he would consider the opinions of representatives in Brooklyn.

He also has begun a public feud with ESDC Charles Gargano, who just yesterday moved Atlantic Yards toward a December 8 approval. He also may want to let incoming Gov. Eliot Spitzer, also a Democrat who supports the project, reevaluate the plan, when Spitzer replaces Gov. George Pataki as one of the "three men in a room" on the PACB.

The Assemblymembers' concerns include the project’s “extreme density,” the override of land use laws, the opacity of project finances, and the lack of an effective transportation plan. Also, echoing criticism raised by some housing groups and the BrooklynSpeaks coalition, they call for broadening the affordable housing to those earning less than $21,000 a year. They suggested a revival of an Assembly bill that would trade additional subsidy for a project downsizing.

What leverage do the trio have? Beyond Silver's pledge to at least listen, it's unclear. They did not raise the issue of the pending eminent domain case, which could stall or entangle the project. Then again, they call for compromise rather than a rejection of the project, which suggests they’re keeping some distance from Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB), which organized the lawsuit and has directly aimed at the legitimacy of the process.

Jeffries on board?

Hakeem Jeffries, the incoming Assemblyman representing the project location in Prospect Heights, did not sign the letter, though he has expressed some of the same general policy ideas and said he’d been working with Millman and Brennan.

Jeffries has also said he opposes eminent domain for an arena and said the project should not be approved until the eminent domain lawsuit is resolved. He could not be reached yesterday evening for comment.

Extreme density

“The current plan is on a scale that would double the legally-zoned density of this area and create an island of population at this Brooklyn hub eight times as dense as that of Manhattan,” the trio wrote. “The EIS acknowledges an additional 20,000 vehicle trips a day and the inadequacy of current subway or bus facilities to absorb additional riders.”

They criticized the role of the Empire State Development Corporation in overriding city zoning and bypassing the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, “which gives the local community an important voice in major land use decisions.”

Without a significant downsizing, the project “will have intolerable adverse impacts on infrastructure, entailing long-term public costs that we believe have not been adequately examined,” they wrote, saying that a “genuine auto use and mass transit mitigation plan” was needed.

Financial disclosure

The scale, they observed, seems driven by a need for a reasonable return on investment. However, they charged, “there has been, to date, no public disclosure of the project’s finances, including detailed cost analysis, anticipated public subsidies, and expected financial return.” (Brennan has so far been stymied in attempts to get disclosure.)

After such a disclosure, “an evaluation of the relationship between the developer’s return on investment and compliance” with zoning should be conducted.

Affordable housing

The trio criticized plans to include 550 affordable units (of 2250) in the first phase of the project, saying that the amount should be doubled.

They also criticized relocation contracts offered to tenants who haven’t yet left the footprint as offering only three years of rental assistance—the amount beyond their current rent—saying they would expire before those tenants could move into the project.

Actually, according to the ESDC (see p. 8), Forest City Ratner has agreed to offer such assistance indefinitely, but it would end if the project is abandoned—a risk the rent-stabilized tenants may not be advised to take.

State assistance redux

The trio referenced an Assembly bill they sponsored in the past session, which aimed to reduce the project by 34%, or 3 million square feet. Given subsequent cuts by the developer, they said the bill “would now compel a reduction by 27%.

They said that a revival of the bill, which would add state aid for affordable housing in the project, “serves as the path” for a downsizing solution. (The bill has been criticized by DDDB for giving too much to Forest City Ratner.)

PACB delay

They asked Silver to ensure that the proposal be returned to the ESDC for modifications. “This will also allow the Spitzer Administration to address the gross defects in the Environmental Impact Statement or conduct other reviews,” they wrote. “A delay of several months while concerns are incorporate into the Project will cause no harm to Atlantic Yards and major long-term benefit to the community.”

FEIS reissued for December showdown; Gargano says speed not atypical

Twelve days after they determined the Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) complete—and just one week after numerous comments were found missing—the board of the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) met and certified a revised FEIS, setting up a December 8 approval.

What went wrong? ESDC Chairman Charles Gargano said the omission of 148 comments—with about 1600 already accounted for—was inadvertent. His explanation was hardly exhaustive, blaming some “very large” comments and others “sent to the wrong person,” but he emphasized the agency’s responsiveness to the news.

Indeed, staffers worked weekends to finish the job, something Gargano asserted is not an extraordinary measure. “We have done that many times, worked weekends, over the 12 years that I’ve been here, on many projects,” he said.

Did the FEIS change? “Not substantially,” said Gargano, deeming them “mostly questions that had been asked previously.”

(To find the list of most comments left out, go to p. 20 of this PDF, where 121 people or organizations are listed as “additional commentors.” To find their original submissions, most are under the “Interested Public” link. To track the response to their comments, search on the number associated with the comment. The additional 148 submissions include comments from people who had already submitted comments, so their names do not appear multiple times.)

Approval in ten days

The swift pace, which Gargano asserted was part of the agency’s practice of moving projects along, leaves open the possibility that Atlantic Yards could be approved before the end of the year and the end of Gov. George Pataki’s term. The ESDC board will meet at 10 a.m. on December 8, after a mandatory ten days, to approve the project, sending it to the office of Comptroller Alan Hevesi and the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB).

Does he expect it to move forward before the end of the year? “We have ten days from this point for additional comments and following that, it can come before the PACB,” Gargano replied. “I’d rather put in a way—why should there be unnecessary delay?”

[Clarification: The PACB can vote as early as a week later, though it's possible a review by Hevesi could slow the vote. ] But the big question will be whether the PACB, whose voting members include Pataki, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, will put the project on hold. Silver, the only Democrat currently on the PACB, has expressed support for the project, but he has severely criticized Gargano recently.

Will Silver hold up the project so it can be considered under the administration of Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer, a fellow Democrat who’s expressed support for the project? If so, he hasn’t told Gargano. The ESDC chairman said he’d had no contact with either Silver or Spitzer.

More comments possible

Gargano told reporters that the ESDC will continue to accept comments during the ten-day period. "If we get any substantive comments, we will take them into account," said general counsel Anita Laremont. Does the agency have to respond to them in writing? No.

Such an opportunity for additional comments is not specified in the FEIS. “It's not something we typically advertise, it’s something that the SEQRA regulations allow,” spokeswoman Jessica Copen said afterward, pointing me to Section 617.11(a) of the State Environmental Quality Review Act.

It states:
Prior to the lead agency's decision on an action that has been the subject of a final EIS, it shall afford agencies and the public a reasonable time period (not less than 10 calendar days) in which to consider the final EIS before issuing its written findings statement. If a project modification or change of circumstance related to the project requires a lead or involved agency to substantively modify its decision, findings may be amended and filed in accordance with subdivision 617.12(b) of this Part.

Example: one comment

Here's an example of one comment that appeared in the revised FEIS. Architect and Brooklyn Views blogger Jonathan Cohn suggested that event venues have a detrimental effect on residential areas and on vibrant mixed-use communities.

The response was that such facilities “thrive in combination with a strong mix of commercial and residential land uses,” with Verizon Center in Washington, DC as one example.

Cohn, interestingly enough, a day earlier addressed Verizon Center in his blog, writing that “the arena’s major accomplishments - in the eyes of the city’s business community - was to encourage suburbanites to 'sample' the city, and encourage others in the business community to invest in commercial activity downtown, neither of which are particularly the challenge for us in Brownstone Brooklyn.”

Security issues

The Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods last week asked the PACB to urge the ESDC “to perform a thorough public analysis of any potential terrorism issues in regard to Atlantic Yards.”

Gargano was asked about the security issue. “First of all, that’s not part of the EIS,” he responded. “And number two, we’re confident the sponsors will deal with the New York Police Department and take the necessary steps, as we do on all projects.”

Atlantic Center overbuild

I asked him about the “Atlantic Center overbuild,” 1.2 million square feet next door, which was dismissed in the FEIS.

Gargano was clearly unfamiliar with the term, at first asking staff, “Anyone know about it?” He then returned to his general mantra about development: “This is New York City. There’s building going on all the time.… I don’t think it should all be concentrated in Manhattan, so the people in the boroughs have the benefit as well. …The city of New York, they are very much in favor of this project…. City Planning has approved all of this, you know that.”

Eminent domain

Gargano was asked if the ESDC should wait until the Atlantic Yards eminent domain case is resolved.

“There’s not a project that I can remember that hasn’t had some kind of a lawsuit,” he said. “I think what we’re trying to do is get projects built where the majority of the people want projects, and this is the case here, I’m sure. And we will address those lawsuits.”

Majority opinion?

On what he based his conclusion that most people supported this project? “Well, I think—I don’t know how many millions of people live in Brooklyn, and we do have some who are concerned who live in the immediate area. It’s our responsibility to address those concerns," he responded. "But I think, by and large, people in general in the city like to see improvements, new development, job creation, better facilities….”

The question was asked again. “It’s development in general," he responded. "We’re talking about a park being built around the Brooklyn waterfront. We’re talking about MetroTech. We’re talking about Atlantic Yards laying idle for 50-60 years, so I think, what I hear from a lot of people about the project—and people who live in Brooklyn—that this is a project that will help the economy, it will help in job creation, better housing…”

Only in America

During the press conference in Gargano's office, his cellphone rang, and we learned his ringtone of choice is an operatic chorus from “America the Beautiful.”

Gehry's working on “Atlantic Center overbuild” (for 2000+ residents); ESDC punts

Though city officials haven't said so publicly, newly released documents show they’ve examined plans by Forest City Ratner for three new towers over the developer’s much-derided Atlantic Center mall--and Atlantic Yards architect Frank Gehry has it as part of his assignment.

(A photo of last year's model (right), published by the Courier-Life chain, showed three towers.)

Apparently the developer, Gehry, and the city see the "Atlantic Center overbuild" as intertwined with the neighboring Atlantic Yards project. However, the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), in its Atlantic Yards review, has shrugged off questions about Atlantic Center, which could add 2000+ new residents across the street.

A hint of the plan came in a public statement 1/7/06 from Gehry, who said "there are some 20 buildings to be built, and the client insisted that I do them all. When he came to me, he said, 'I know you're going to try and bring all your friends in to do all the buildings, 'cause that's a cop-out.'... And he didn't want me to do that, he wanted me to really solve the problem, and put me on the hot seat."

Given that Atlantic Yards would involve an arena and 16 towers, Gehry's statement raised a question: was he being vague, or was he referring to the Atlantic Center mall? The developer retains more than 1.2 million square feet of development rights, enough for three towers at least 300 feet tall. (That would represent a 15% increase on top of the AY project, which would be about 8 million square feet.)

The plot thickened in May, when Atlantic Center towers appeared in at least one model of the plan shown at a press conference featuring Gehry.
(Photo of this year's model from the New York Times shows two towers north of Atlantic Avenue behind the flagship "Miss Brooklyn.")

While the two projects would be technically separate, and FCR already has development rights for the Atlantic Center site, the incorporation of the Atlantic Center plans into the Atlantic Yards model suggests that it deserves more scrutiny.

City Planning, AC & AY

A document I acquired from the Department of City Planning (DCP) via a Freedom of Information Law request shows that the parties involved have considered the Atlantic Center project in tandem with Atlantic Yards. A 9/20/05 “DCP Checklist” that otherwise focused on AY stated:
Review of Atlantic Center (AC) overbuild. Want AC buildings at the same level of design detail as Atlantic Yards (AY).
(Click to enlarge)

The responsible parties: “GP,” or Gehry Partners, and “Jane,” or Forest City’s Jane Marshall, who sent the email to DCP to which the the checklist was attached.

Housing or office space?

Apparently the developer has already changed course and decided to emphasize housing over office space in the overbuild--and may continue to do so. (Mall photo by Daniel Goldstein for Slate.)

Initially, there was to be more office space. The Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Downtown Brooklyn Rezoning, completed 4/30/04, stated:,
While there are not yet any design plans, it is anticipated that Atlantic Center and the Shops at Atlantic Center will be developed to the maximum extent allowable under current zoning and the ATURP [Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Plan].

The plan was 711 units of housing (likely 711,000 square feet) and 875,000 square feet of office space; the project was expected to be complete in 2008.

That same configuration surfaced in a 2/18/05 Memorandum of Understanding the developer signed with government entities. FCR would develop up to 875,000 square feet of commercial space and up to 711,000 square feet of residential space on the Atlantic Center site, minus, if the Atlantic Yards project proceeds, 328,272 square feet.

Later in the year, with some subtractions, the 9/20/05 DCP memo sketched out reductions in both office space (to 711,000 square feet) and residential space (to 547,000 square feet).

Office space cut

Now plans have changed. There's a glut of Class A office space in nearby Downtown Brooklyn—some 800,000 square feet, or 10 percent of the total, according to Joe Chan, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, who spoke at a November 20 meeeting of the Fort Greene Association.

And FCR recently cut office space in the Atlantic Yards plan by 45 percent, to 336,000 square feet. So the developer must be rethinking the overbuild.

Indeed, according to the Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement, Atlantic Center now would have more residential space than office space. According to the Land Use chapter, Atlantic Center would include 850,000 square feet of residential space and 550,000 square feet of commercial space, with the retail space remaining unchanged.

The project would be complete five years later than initially projected, by 2013, halfway between the end of the two phases (2010 and 2016) projected for the Atlantic Yards plan.

How many people?

That 850,000 square feet means about 20 percent more residential space than initially contemplated. At 1000 square feet a unit, that's 850 apartments. At 2.4 people per unit, that would mean 2040 new residents.

If the project were shifted to all residential space, it could add more than 1250 apartments and 3000 residents to the area, further straining infrastructure and services.

So it’s worth knowing Forest City Ratner’s plans--and how Atlantic Center fits into the environmental review for the Atlantic Yards project.

ESDC ignores impact

In the Response to Comments chapter of the Final Environmental Impact Statement, the ESDC was told (p. 82):
The developer’s intention to further develop the Atlantic Center Mall site would increase the density in the immediate vicinity of the project site to extreme conditions.

The reponse is a generality:
As discussed in Chapter 3, “Land Use, Zoning, and Public Policy,” the New York City Zoning Resolution reflects the City’s policy of encouraging high density development in areas with significant mass transit access, such as Grand Central Terminal, Times Square, Penn Station, the Fulton Street Transit Center, Long Island City, Downtown Brooklyn, and the proposed rezoning of Downtown Jamaica. All of these examples are similar to the Atlantic Terminal area because they represent places where a significant number of transit lines and modes are converging from different directions and proximate to central business districts. The density of the proposed project is consistent with, but generally less than, the densities employed throughout the city for areas surrounding concentrations of mass transit. Thus, the proposed project would further the City’s policy of promoting transit-oriented development by locating these high-density uses adjacent to the Atlantic Terminal transportation hub.

But those areas features much more commercial space than residential space. So the state seems to be discussing density simply in terms of building sizes rather than increased population.

Stuckey says it's old hat

FCR’s Jim Stuckey, on the Brian Lehrer Show on 5/15/06, said it was all old hat:
It’s an interesting thing, because those who oppose the project sort of bring things out and recreate them every six months or so. We’ve had the rights to build over the Atlantic Center mall going back for years. In fact, when we signed the Atlantic Yards Memorandum of Understanding, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding to build over the Atlantic Center mall as well. And in fact, if you were to go on some of their web sites, you would see that six months or eight months or a year ago, this was a new discovery that they made six months or eight months or a year ago. I guess what they’re doing, because there’s really not a lot we can talk about. They really don’t want to confront the issue of affordable housing, and the fact that we desperately need housing and creating jobs here, and creating housing here. So what they do is they dust off the year-old press release and they recirculate it again. The fact is that this was studied in the Downtown Brooklyn plan’s EIS. When the City Council voted for it, that Environmental Impact Statement with the overbuild for Atlantic Center was in that EIS, there was an MOU that was signed, it was signed in February of ‘05, so well over a year ago, that discussed what we were doing over the Atlantic Center as well, or what we could do.

It’s basically as of right square footage. It’s the air rights that have existed there for probably the last 40 years that’s being discussed. And in order to do a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement that doesn’t deceive anyone but shows everyone that we’re looking at it all in a transparent way, it will be studied in this EIS.

As noted above, it hasn't been fully "studied."

Not in the Times

The plans for the Atlantic Center mall didn't make a huge impression on the New York Times, which in a 5/26/04 article headlined Different by Design, Soon to Be Less So; Rethinking Atlantic Center With the Customer in Mind, focused on the mall's unwelcoming design.

The article did include developer Bruce Ratner’s infamous quote:
''It's a problem of malls in dense urban areas that kids hang out there, and it's not too positive for shopping,'' Mr. Ratner said. ''Look, here you're in an urban area, you're next to projects, you've got tough kids.''

Ratner did say the retail design would improve. He said nothing about how Gehry was working on the overbuild--and the Times didn't raise the question.

The Times practices "rowback": Atlantic Yards (finally) is not a rezoning

An article in the New York Times today, headlined Bloomberg Administration Is Developing Land Use Plan to Accommodate Future Populations, states, in part:
City officials declined to publicly elaborate on their proposals in advance of the advisory board’s announcement. But some of its goals were foreshadowed by two of the largest rezoning revisions in city history — of the Brooklyn waterfront in Greenpoint and Williamsburg and the Far West Side of Manhattan — both driven by Mr. Doctoroff.
The two major zoning changes, coupled with other development proposals, including the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, were aimed at revitalizing underutilized land for economic development and expanding the city’s property tax base.

Note that the Atlantic Yards project is not lumped in with the rezoning efforts. This serves as an implicit acknowledgement, if not a correction, of previous misleading language.

A 1/2/06 Metro section news analysis that 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.

The new phrasing is certainly an improvement, but it does ignore the state override of city zoning for AY that would bypass local elected officials.

Fruitless protest

As I wrote in March, 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.

In correspondence, 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 Times Public Editor Byron Calame, apparently unwilling to recognize a distinction between city and state oversight, endorsed the error as published.

The new correction-without-a-correction 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."

This isn't the first example of Atlantic Yards rowback by the Times, given "downtown Brooklyn" and "on the railyards"; it probably won't be the last.

Marty (in Brooklyn!!) continues AY dance of avoidance

In April, I pointed out how Atlantic Yards was conspicuously absent from issues of Borough President Marty Markowitz's Brooklyn!! (subtitled "Where New York City Begins"), the tabloid promotional vehicle for Brooklyn and all things Marty.

The Fall/Winter issue arrived yesterday, and there was hardly a word about Atlantic Yards, even after perhaps the year's most tumultuous public event regarding Brooklyn, the August 23 public hearing on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement.

Yes, we know that Brooklyn!! is mostly about feel-good stuff like Brooklyn's holiday lights, the inaugural Brooklyn Book Festival, and readers' Favorite Waitpersons.

But if Brooklyn!! is going to tell us about the new Aviator Sports and Recreation Center at Floyd Bennett Field, or new hotels around Downtown Brooklyn, or new designs for the New York Aquarium at Coney Island, well, why not a word about the borough's biggest development project?

[An eagle-eyed reader informs me of the sixth paragraph in the "Welcome to Brooklyn--Stay Awhile" article on p. 12:
In Crown Heights, the Atlantic Motor Inn opened its doors on Atlantic Avenue near Utica Avenue in July, with 40 rooms. Hopes are high for a classy hotel to open on the Golden Gate Motel site in Sheepshead Bay, and a hotel may be part of the Miss Brooklyn building at Atlantic Yards.]

Marty's views are certainly on record. Is the topic so radioactive he couldn't inform Brooklynites about his take on the project, and maybe some responses, such as the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods or NoLandGrab?

As protesters warn of gridlock, Ratner’s security guards call the cops

They carried signs like “Atlantic Yards: Where Traffic Comes to Die” and “Atlantic Yards Gridlock Solution: Add More Cars.” Yesterday, they kept crossing the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, from 2 pm to 3:30 pm, warning drivers and pedestrians of the coming gridlock should the Atlantic Yards plan go forward—and, actually, even if it doesn’t.

(Photos by Jonathan Barkey.)

In the protest called “Merry Gridlock,” some 15 volunteers from the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods (CBN) helped escort seniors and those with carriages--and handed sheets with diagrams of gridlocked intersections to those they encountered on foot or stopped at traffic lights.

The message: "Tell the city and the state to FIX THE TRAFFIC FIRST!" (One solution could be congestion pricing.)

They also attracted the attention of three security guards from the Atlantic Center/Atlantic Terminal mall complex, owned by Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner. First, the guards told two sign-carriers outside the Target store in the Atlantic Terminal mall that they should instead walk in the street, according to Schellie Hagan of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition.

Then, in front of four reporters, the security guards told organizer Jim Vogel of CBN and several others to stop, because they were trespassing on private property, including the sidewalks outside the mall, and the sidewalks outside the Modell’s/P.C. Richard complex, formally known as the Shops at Atlantic Center.

The protesters, somewhat incredulous at the assertion, refused. The security guards, who wouldn’t give their names to reporters, called the cops. Then they waited, away from their stations, on the south intersection on Flatbush outside Modell’s for at least half an hour as the protesters continued in their quadrilateral pattern.

The cops arrive

When a squad car from the 88th Precinct finally pulled up, the security guards had briefly moved away. I asked an officer what the rules were. A security guard materialized and joined the conversation. The sidewalks, the cop explained, were open to the public.

The guard asserted, “You can walk but not picket.”

The officer responded that Fort Greene Place, in between the malls, is private, “but I think they have a right to protest. I don’t understand who’s giving you direction.”

The guard suggested that the protesters had to keep a 30-foot buffer.

The second officer (left) explained that protesters standing in front of a building would have to get a permit.

“We’re not stopping,” insisted Patti Hagan of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition (right, in picture).

“So they’re allowed to…?” the guard (center) asked.

“As long as they don’t stop and obstruct people from going into the store,” the second officer said.

(Indeed, the New York Civil Liberties Union advises: If you want to distribute handbills on a public sidewalk or in a public park, have a demonstration, rally, or press conference on a public sidewalk, or march on a public sidewalk and you do not intend to use amplified sound, you do not need any permit. If you want to use amplified sound on public property, want to have an event with more than 20 people in a New York City park, or wish to conduct a march in a public street, you will need a permit.)

With that cleared up, Vogel of CBN called it a day, and said a group would return on selected weekend afternoons. “We want to be crossing guards,” he said. “The old people love seeing us.”

Mitigation situation

Vogel even acknowledged that some of the traffic mitigations proposed in the Atlantic Yards plan—such as an all-pedestrian phase—could mean progress. But he wasn’t convinced that the solutions would be enough.

After all, despite plans for high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) parking and shuttle bus service to the arena, the Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) acknowledges numerous unmitigatible significant impacts--which could well mean gridlock on nearby streets at certain times.

During the protest, actually, the traffic could've been worse. The intersection was crowded, a few cars got stuck between pedestrians when the light changed, and various vehicles honked and speeded, threatening pedestrians. (I got some photos, but my camera later malfunctioned, so they're lost for now.)

There were some backups--but the situation was hardly as hellish as its been. Then again, as the 90-minute segment proceeded, though, traffic began to back up more. Expect the protesters to select even more opportune times to make their point in the future.

Fifth Avenue unimportant?

Another big traffic challenge presented itself a block away. Given the line of northbound drivers on Flatbush Avenue who aimed to turn right on Fifth Avenue to get to the malls, and the northbound drivers on Fifth Avenue already heading the same way, wouldn't the plan to demap Fifth Avenue to build Frank Gehry’s flagship “Miss Brooklyn” make people nervous.

However, the FEIS, in the chapter responding to public comments, downplays the issue:
The Unity Plan would not close Pacific Street or Fifth Avenue, but retaining these streets would not have a substantial benefit to local traffic circulation.

Uh-oh.

[Update: The plan is to turn narrow Sixth Avenue into a two-way street, accommodating traffic and the B63 bus. That would make for several turns, and backups at traffic lights.]

Looking at the map

Below, one of several diagrams in the FEIS regarding unmitigatible traffic impacts. Click to enlarge.

Congestion pricing re-emerges on the public agenda

One solution to the inevitable and so far unmitigatible traffic problems in Downtown Brooklyn and environs might be congestion pricing, which would cause those driving to Manhattan via Brooklyn to think twice if they had to pay for the privilege.

BrooklynSpeaks says that the Atlantic Yards proposal “offers no real plan to avoid gridlock or improve subway and bus service” and recommends, among other things, that the developer and the city “implement roadway pricing to relieve traffic congestion in and around downtown Brooklyn.” The Empire State Development Corporation says that’s not on the agenda as of now--but it might emerge.

Indeed, both business groups and transportation progressives have begun to push for congestion pricing. In an article yesterday headlined Bigger Push for Charging Drivers Who Use the Busiest Streets, the New York Times reported how the Partnership for New York City, which includes major businesses, is bouncing back from an effort a year ago, in which a congestion pricing proposal was floated, then blasted by City Hall. According to the Times:
“We were premature in terms of talking about the problem and potential solutions without thinking about how those might be implemented here in the metropolitan region and what that would take,” said Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the group. “It takes a lot of public buy-in, building consensus.”

Indeed, Wylde said this spring that it would be a challenge to sell it to the public, noting that p.r. firms recommended the term “value pricing” to dissociate the policy from a new tax. Depending on how you establish the baseline, it could be considered a tax; on the other hand, current policies could be considered a subsidy for car owners.

New studies coming

The Partnership never released its study last year, but is expected to issue a revision within a few weeks, estimating the costs of congestion at $12 billion to $15 billion per year. Another study from the national group Environmental Defense will address the environmental and health costs of too much traffic. The conservative Manhattan Institute has its own report in the works.

And to show they’re really serious, Environmental Defense has hired the p.r. firm Dan Klores Communications to help market congestion pricing to the public. The firm also works on the Atlantic Yards project, among many others.

Paul Steely White of Transportation Alternatives told the Times that any congestion pricing program would have to be combined with — or preferably preceded by — other measures like improving bus service and smoothing traffic flow. Will that be enough to get support from City Council members from more suburban parts of the city, where driving is more common? Unclear.

But Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff is preparing a long-term strategic plan for the city, and he’s been closemouthed about its contents. Should the outside groups begin the bandwagon, Doctoroff just may join in.

Congestion pricing dissed in FEIS

Chapter 24 of the Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement, which includes responses to comments, acknowledges congestion pricing, but punts on the larger issue. Below are the relevant comments, and responses.

Comment 12-27: Two-way tolls should be implemented on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Tolling of the East River Bridges should be implemented to ease congestion.

Response 12-27: Implementation of new tolls on the East River Bridges and changes in the current toll system at the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge are beyond the scope of this project. Any implementation of new tolls would be subject to an independent environmental review.

But that’s also because the state wouldn’t listen to many requests to include the East River crossings in the scope of review.

Comment 12-79: A comprehensive transportation plan should include congestion pricing and improved transit capacity and access. The failure to consider congestion charging in the vicinity of Atlantic, Flatbush, and 4th Avenues and the Downtown Brooklyn core, as a serious measure to address traffic load, is a clear shortcoming of the DEIS.

Response 12-79: The proposed project includes a major new on-site entrance and internal circulation improvements at the Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street subway station complex. In addition, the traffic mitigation plan proposed in the FEIS incorporates a comprehensive package of travel demand management strategies for arena trips that include a free-fare transit incentive program and free charter bus service from park & ride facilities on Staten Island, and a high-occupancy-vehicle (HOV) restriction of three or more occupants per car would be enforced for onsite arena parking in order to discourage single and two-person auto trips. In addition, congestion pricing has also been incorporated in the proposed mitigation plan in the form of a surcharge that would be imposed for on-site arena parking on game days.

This would be congestion pricing and traffic mitigation just for basketball games. The rest of the project, as well as certain arena events, also would generate much traffic.

Comment 13-48: The DEIS has incorporated several elements into the plan that will encourage use of transit for trips to and from the arena. However, the real mitigations for the impact of this and other developments in the Downtown Brooklyn regional area can only be carried out by the state and the city. These would include improvements to the capacity of Atlantic Avenue subway (and overall transit improvements to the station), roadway/congestion pricing, traffic calming in surrounding neighborhoods, residential parking permits and other measures beyond the scope of the developer to implement.

Response 13-48: The proposed project does include a major new on-site entrance and internal circulation improvements that would increase the capacity of the Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street station complex. However, as noted in the comment, measures such as congestion pricing and implementation of traffic calming and residential parking permit programs in surrounding neighborhoods are beyond the scope of this project.

Whether or not Atlantic Yards gets built, the case for congestion pricing will be made. Atlantic Yards would make it even more urgent to find solutions.

Looking at Spitzer's transition team and AY

On November 16, Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer announced 13 policy advisory committees to help guide transition efforts. And, should the issue of Atlantic Yards arise, there's no shortage of experts and advocates--from across the spectrum--who could lend their voices to the debate.

Note that participating on a committee does not necessarily mean that the committee will touch on Atlantic Yards. Also, of course, there are many more committee members with no overt connection to Atlantic Yards.

Here are the ones I could identify.

Arts, Culture and Revitalization

Kent Barwick is president of the Municipal Art Society, which has criticized the Atlantic Yards plan and also helped found BrooklynSpeaks, a coalition that seeks to change the project signficantly.

Economic Development

Richard Kahan, former CEO of the New York State Urban Development Corporation (now the Empire State Development Corporation) and chairman of the Battery Park City Authority, has classified Atlantic Yards among “top-down projects” but said “I don’t think they’re necessarily bad.

James Parrott, deputy director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, contributed to a Pratt Center report that criticized the assumptions behind Forest City Ratner's claim of $6 billion in new revenue from the project.

Deborah C. Wright is Chairman and CEO, Carver Bancorp, Inc. In March 2005, Forest City Ratner opened a new account with the bank, the largest African- and Caribbean-American run bank in the United States, and deposited $1 million at the Atlantic Terminal Branch. Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement signatories praised Ratner effusively.

Government Reform

Preeta Bansal is a former Solicitor General of the State of New York. She's also one of the attorneys representing the Empire State Development Corporation in the Atlantic Yards eminent domain case.

Blair Horner is legislative director for the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), whose Straphangers Campaign has criticized the Atlantic Yards plan.

Housing

John Kest is statewide head organizer for New York ACORN, which is a signatory of the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement and negotiated the affordable housing agreement for the project.

Brad Lander directs the Pratt Center for Community Development; he served as a consultant to the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods in its review of the AY plan and has expressed praise and criticism for the project as currently configured. The Pratt Center last year released an analysis of the AY plan that included both praise and criticism, but said many questions were unanswered.

Labor and Workforce Development

Kenneth Adams is president of the New York State Business Council in Albany and until recently headed the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. He previously headed the MetroTech Business Improvement District, of which Forest City Ratner is a major member. In September, Adams expressed the Chamber's support for Atlantic Yards.

Mike Fishman, president of SEIU Local 32BJ, has expressed support for AY, citing Forest City Ratner’s commitment to union labor in servicing the buildings.

Mike McGuire is Director of Governmental and Legislative Affairs of the Mason Tenders Political Action Committee , and has endorsed the Atlantic Yards project.

Transportation

Jon Orcutt is Executive Director of the Tri-State Transportation Council and Gene Russianoff is Staff Attorney for NYPIRG's Straphangers Campaign; the two groups submitted joint testimony criticizing the transportation plan in the Atlantic Yards Draft Environmental Impact Statement.

Mitch Pally is the only member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board who opposed the sale of development rights to the agency's Vanderbilt Yard to Forest City Ratner. Pally thought the agency could get a better deal and said worried that the project might be delayed.

Robert D. Yaro is president of the Regional Plan Association, which issued some significant criticism of the Atlantic Yards plan but praised the design of the first phase and said that it's too late to go back.

Other ties

On the Government Reform committee is Richard Emery a partner in the law firm that has been retained by plaintiffs in challenging the exercise of eminent domain for Atlantic Yards. His partner Andrew Celli, Jr. is on the Human Services committee.

I'm sure I missed some members of law firms that have worked for either developer Forest City Ratner or the Empire State Development Corporation.

Final EIS delayed only until Monday

So much for a quiet Thanksgiving weekend. Consultants working on the Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), which had to be revised to incorporate comments that were missed in the first version released November 15, will have it ready for a 9 a.m. meeting Monday of the board of the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), the agency confirmed.

The board again will be asked "to determine that the FEIS is complete," and again will say so. Clearly, that's just a formality. We can't expect the board to actually compare the lengthy document at hand with, for example, the comments submitted. (Apparently, according to the Brooklyn Papers, some of those comments not included came from Prospect Heights resident Raul Rothblatt.)

The board can't act to approve the project for at least ten days, until December 7, when it also will sign off on the environmental review and the approve the use of eminent domain.

Endgame delays?

Then Atlantic Yards would go to the office of State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, who could spend up to a week on a review, or waive a review. (Given Hevesi's expressed concern about increasing state debt, there's a good bet that he'd use that week.)

The Public Authorities Control Board (PACB) could theoretically approve the project before the end of the year. Still, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, one of the three voting members of the PACB, is being pressured to delay the vote until the administration of Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer, a fellow Democrat.

In an article yesterday headlined Agency error delays Atlantic Yards approval, Crain's New York Business suggested that approval of the project "will likely be pushed back to 2007." Still, Crain's pointed out, state approval is a lesser hurdle than the pending eminent domain lawsuit.

Eminent domain case gets day in court; public use, legislative process at issue

It was just a status conference, the first skirmish in a legal war, but two lines of argument emerged yesterday as lawyers in the case known as Goldstein v. Pataki, which challenges the use of eminent domain for the Atlantic Yards project, met in federal court in Downtown Brooklyn.

On the one hand, the plaintiffs (property owner Daniel Goldstein and nine others, owners and tenants, threatened with eminent domain) will be pressed to argue that the Atlantic Yards project would provide too little public use to meet the legal standard.

On the other, the defendants (Empire State Development Corporation, developer Forest City Ratner, and city and state officials including Governor George Pataki) must stretch to contend that the project was in fact considered by a legislative body, as evolving eminent domain law seems to require.

The parties were there to address two issues: a motion by the defendants to dismiss the case, and a request by the plaintiffs for discovery, the legal process under which a party to a case is compelled to provide relevant documents. But in essence they were discussing the whole case, which may break some new legal ground. (Here's the complaint.)

Was it greased?

Plaintiffs’ attorney Matthew Brinckerhoff (right) explained to U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis that the case was brought primarily under the public use clause of the Fifth Amendment, turning on the question of the motive of government officials in approving the case.

“We pleaded a whole host of facts, most of which are circumstantial,” he said, noting that that was not unusual in such cases. He said that, shortly after Forest City Ratner CEO Bruce Ratner and his company conceived of the project, they “very quickly obtained” the consent of city officials to bypass the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) and get the state to override city zoning for an oversized project.

Brinckerhoff also pointed to reports that, shortly after the December 2003 project announcement, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) had agreed to convey development rights to FCR. The MTA, he said, wound up issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP) in 2005, giving respondents about 40 days. One other developer, Extell, did offer three times more cash ($150 million) than did FCR, but the MTA board, controlled by appointees of Gov. George Pataki, “decided to select” FCR.

A Kelo violation?

To Brinckerhoff, the fact pattern points to questions raised in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 Kelo v. New London decision on eminent domain. “Why did the five members in the majority feel comfortable that this taking was not intended to convey a private benefit?” he asked rhetorically.

Because there were safeguards, he said, and such safeguards cited in Kelo are absent in the Brooklyn case: a legislative process that began before the beneficiary was known; extensive review by a legislative body; and a bidding process to select a developer that came later rather than sooner.

“Here of course the developer has driven the process,” he said. “So there’s very strong circumstantial evidence that this taking is what the Supreme Court found not to exist in Kelo.” He acknowledged that claims always could be made that a project would increase the tax base and create jobs. Even though a project could benefit the public, he said, the “purpose” and “intent” must be discerned.

Garaufis (right) asked why the plaintiffs were in a hurry. Brinckerhoff said that the ESDC soon would confirm findings under the state Eminent Domain Procedure Law and that the plaintiffs must obtain new evidence via discovery to make their claims. If there’s going to be discovery, he added, “I would imagine” that the defendants would want it to proceed quickly so the case could be expeditiously resolved.

“You don’t feel outnumbered?” the judge asked, acknowledging the reality of the courtroom: four lawyers backing the plaintiffs sat at one table, and about ten representing the defendants sat at another.

Brinckerhoff responded that he didn't mind.

Limits on the court?

Douglas Kraus (right), representing the ESDC, started off by saying that Brinckerhoff had not addressed the 12/5/05 Brody v. Village of Port Chester decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. His point: the court has little discretion to evaluate the legitimacy of the Atlantic Yards project.

He quoted Brody, which states, in part, “While a legislature may juggle many policy considerations in deciding whether to condemn private property, judicial review of the final legislative decision to exercise the power of eminent domain focuses exclusively on whether or not the taking is for a public use…. The combination of those factors – the narrow scope of issues and the broad deference to the legislature – suggests that the role of the courts in enforcing the constitutional limitations on eminent domain is one of patrolling the borders. That which falls within the boundaries of acceptability is not subject to review.”

Thus, Kraus continued, “the wisdom or advisability of a public project” is not subject to the court. The review process “began several months ago with a public hearing,” he said, citing the extensive record created by the ESDC.

A legislative agency?

Kraus then made a crucial linguistic switch from "legislative" to "administrative." He said, “If there’s a public use and you find that in the legislative record—the administrative record—that’s the end of the inquiry. The motive is irrelevant. Either there’s a public use or there isn’t.”

The judge demurred. “I’m not sure Brody is factually congruent” with the case at hand.

Kraus added that the defendants have a different view of Kelo, which, he noted, expanded the role of government and did not address blight, which is the crux of the ESDC's plan to exercise eminent domain. “We read that case as broadening the standard," he said.

Reading Kelo

Kraus pointed out that the plantiffs were basing their argument on a concurring opinion in Kelo by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who said he’d look askance at eminent domain if the process produced a favored developer.

“He didn’t muster a majority for his point of view,” Kraus noted.

“Neither did they,” the judge responded, referring to the other four justices who voted to uphold the use of eminent domain, and needed Kennedy's vote.

Kraus and other lawyers for the defendants also argued that the case belonged first in state court rather than federal court.

A second lawsuit

Jeffrey Braun (right), representing Forest City Ratner, said that “opponents and a lot of blogs” had indicated that another lawsuit was in the works, “by people who don’t live in the footprint,” challenging the adequacy of the state’s environmental review.

“Based on traffic?” asked the judge.

Brinckerhoff nodded.

“Have you ever been to that corner?” the judge continued, referring to the convergence of Atlantic, Flatbush, and Fourth avenues in Brooklyn.

Braun assented.

“Another disclosure: I’ve been to that corner,” Garaufis said dryly, to chuckles from the audience.

AY public use

Braun asserted that the project would have “significant public uses,” citing a sports arena, 2000-plus units of affordable housing, eight acres of open space, and “extensive mass transit improvements,” including redevelopment of the Vanderbilt Yard. He said there was “enough evidence to demolish the idea there’s not a public use.”

In essence, he said, the plaintiffs charge that public officials “pursued the public process for the principal purpose of benefiting a private developer. If that’s not what they’re saying, they’re asking the court to weigh public benefits versus private benefits…. I don’t think that’s something the court is entitled to do.”

Brinckerhoff responded: “Mr. Kraus referred repeatedly to the legislature... Another fundamental point—the ESDC is not the legislature. It’s one thing to defer to an elected body. It’s another to give deference to a public body that answers to the governor.”

What next

The parties then hashed out some procedural issues. “We’d like the opportunity to brief the discovery issue," Kraus told the judge. "There’s no such thing as modest or small discovery,” he said, suggesting that the plantiffs would want to pore through all ESDC documents and depose numerous board members.

The defendants must file a motion to dismiss the case by December 15. The plantiffs will have to respond by January 5, 2007. The defense will have a week to reply, and oral argument, if necessary, would be held approximately a week later.

The arguments regarding the scope for discovery will proceed even more quickly—with a submission by plaintiffs next week.

Disclosures

Garaufis at the start advised the parties that “I’m currently married to someone who at one time worked for Forest City Ratner.” His current wife, to whom he was not married at the time, worked for FCR “for a number of years, until 1994” and now works for York College.

He noted that Magistrate Judge Robert M. Levy will handle the preliminary activity in the case, providing a report and recommendations, so that if lawyers have any concern about his impartiality they can raise it at a later date.

Levy disclosed that he worked with Brinckerhoff’s partner Richard Emery at the New York Civil Liberties Union “maybe ten, 20 years ago” and that they encountered each other socially once or twice a year.

Garaufis added wryly that, when he was counsel to the Queens Borough President, he participated in a case opposing Emery, who won a landmark 1989 case at the U.S. Supreme Court abolishing the Board of Estimate. “He’s a fine lawyer,” Garaufis added.

Comptroller Hevesi warns PACB to be cautious about debt

State Comptroller Alan Hevesi yesterday warned that the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB) is moving much too fast, thus offering another potential brake on the Atlantic Yards project and many others.

Though the PACB approved an average of less than half a billion dollars in projects per meeting over the last year, it has rushed through projects totaling $11.4 billion in this month and October, Hevesi said.

In December, projects worth several billions more are expected to reach the PACB, which requires unanimity from its three voting members: Governor George Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.

Part of that December total could be related to the Atlantic Yards project, which cannot be voted on until the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) approves the project. The ESDC and developer Forest City Ratner seek rapid approval, under the administration of departing Governor Pataki, while Silver is under pressure to delay the vote and the project until the administration of incoming Governor Eliot Spitzer, a fellow Democrat.

I queried Hevesi's press office and got this response:
"The enacted budget does include two appropriation lines ($33 million each) for what seems to be Atlantic Yards related items. How these would fit into the larger project known as Atlantic Yards is unknown. This funding is part of the $603 million in economic development added in this year's enacted budget and included in the DASNY [Dormitory Authority of the State of New York] $2 billion proposal.
Atlantic Yards Railway
Redevelopment .............. 33,000,000
Atlantic Yards Railway -
Nets Project ............... 33,000,000."

Those sums are almost certainly part of the $100 million pledged by the state toward infrastructure for the project.

[Update: the PACB may also have to address a much larger issue: bonding for the project.]

Note that the Comptroller, who faces investigation and possible removal because of his use of state employees to drive his wife, seems to be reasserting his statutory role. To Albany Times-Union political reporter Elizabeth Benjamin, Hevesi is getting revenge on Pataki, who just authorized a special prosecutor to gain subpoena powers in investigating Hevesi. A Pataki spokesman blamed Hevesi and Silver for delaying projects.

The rest is from Hevesi's press release.

Too much of a rush

“New York State is already suffering under huge amounts of debt, and now in the last days of the current administration, there is a rush to push through billions of dollars of projects that will load the State with billions more in debt, in many cases without getting a proper review,” Hevesi said.

“The State should take the proper amount of time to make certain that it is entering into sound fiscal commitments that have been thoroughly vetted and analyzed with the PACB as the last step in the process of reviewing a final and complete plan. Also, the Spitzer administration should be given the opportunity to include these projects in a comprehensive plan. This is especially important since Governor-elect Spitzer has said economic development is a priority and much of this financing is for that purpose."

“I’m not suggesting that any of these projects are not worthy or should be blocked. But when they are rushed through in a long list, it is impossible to know if they are as good as they can be,” Hevesi said.

Complex financing

“Many of the projects being considered are complex financing agreements that would benefit from more, not less public debate. For example, in April 2005, my Office raised many questions about the Ridge Hill project in Yonkers. As a result, when it was eventually passed, it was revised to provide an annual revenue stream of $6.5 million for more than 70 years for the taxpayers and the people of Yonkers.”

[Ridge Hill is a project of Forest City Ratner.]

Hevesi said the rush is particularly questionable since many of these projects may not start for years. Some of the projects slated to be approved by the PACB were included in the 2006-07 enacted budget, which added an enormous $16.4 billion to the State’s debt, including $11.8 billion for which the State is directly responsible. Total State-funded debt is projected to increase to nearly $65 billion by 2010-11, or a 33 percent rise over five years.

“The PACB was created to provide oversight over the financial transactions and issuance of debt by 11 public authorities, particularly debt for which the State would be responsible to repay. As such, its final approvals should be completed as close as possible to the time the debt will be issued and only after agencies have developed full financial and operational plans for the funds that they have shared with the Board,” Hevesi said. “By authorizing these projects so early in the process, the PACB is in many cases abdicating its responsibility.”

A busy PACB agenda

The PACB agenda for October included $4.7 billion in projects, of which $3.7 billion was State debt and the remainder was for a mix of grants, loans and private debt financings. All were approved. (The Moynihan Station project which was voted down is not included in the $4.7 billion.)

For the November meeting, which was scheduled for last week but postponed, the agenda includes $6.7 billion, of which $3.9 billion is new State debt, $1.7 billion is refunding of State debt and most of the remainder is private debt. By comparison, PACB authorized an average of $469 million per meeting between September 2005 and September 2006, and had only two meetings where the agenda barely exceeded $1 billion.

Market conditions change

Hevesi raised concern about the amount of debt being authorized at the end of an administration, particularly, he said, because many projects for which funding is being approved are not going to start in the near term and because market conditions are not favorable for all of the refundings being authorized. For example, the PACB has been asked to authorize the Dormitory Authority to issue more than $700 million to refund personal income tax bonds, but under current market conditions only about $65 million of bonds can be refunded and produce actual savings.

“Rushing these projects through before the clock strikes midnight will make it very difficult to put New York back on the right track,” Hevesi said. “The PACB plays a potentially important role in ensuring that the state’s debt is issued at the right time for the right purposes. Now is not the time to write blank checks to public authorities that the new administration will be unable to revise or cancel.”

Comptroller Hevesi’s comprehensive debt reform program, issued in February 2005, would limit the State’s issuance of debt. It includes reforms to the PACB that would require more transparency and accountability. For example, it would require PACB approval for all State public authorities, increasing the number of authorities being reviewed from 11 to 200. It would also require substantially more reporting on all debt deals approved.

Incoming Assemblyman Jeffries supports AY delay, compromise

Hakeem Jeffries, the newly-elected Assemblyman in the 57^th Assembly District, which includes the site for the proposed Atlantic Yards project, has long spoken carefully about the project, offering support for affordable housing, concern about eminent domain (at least for a basketball arena), and a belief that the project would be too big.

Last night, speaking before a meeting of the Fort Greene Association, Jeffries maintained such a cautiously supportive stance. He called for the project to be delayed until the administration of incoming Governor Eliot Spitzer, and said he supported several changes in the project. Such changes, including the idea of a government subsidiary dedicated to overseeing the project, sound much like those proposed by BrooklynSpeaks, the coalition of critics that have staked out a relatively moderate stance that separates them from the Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) coalition.

(Given the requirement announced yesterday to revise the Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement, a delay into the Spitzer administration has become more probable.)

He was first asked about development pressures that were changing neighborhoods. “Generally, I think we have to guard against what several of my colleagues and I have referred to as the Manhattanization of Brooklyn. We want to allow Brooklyn to develop organically, and we welcome economic development. I think that there are some positives to it,” he said. He noted that he’d grown up in Crown Heights and now lives with his family in Prospect Heights, and had gone to Cub Scouts at the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, where some 150 people had gathered. “The beauty and the character and the history of these neighborhoods is very familiar to me… and we have to work hard to preserve it.”

“The battle is going to be a block by block battle,” he said, citing the tendency of developers “taking advantage of economic conditions and building projects that are out of scale with the block or the surrounding neighborhoods. I know the Council person [Letitia James] and the state Senator [Velmanette Montgomery] in particular have been active in that fight, and I will be joining them in that fight.”

421-a reform

It was pointed out that reform of the longstanding 421-a tax exemption has been proposed by a mayoral task force, which did not recommend that the “exclusion zone”—which provides the tax break only in exchange for affordable housing—be extended to the booming neighborhoods in Jeffries’ district. Jeffries said he was “dismayed” that Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, and Bedford-Stuyvesant were excluded. “I can only imagine that that was evidence of the influence of the real estate lobby and the developers,” he said, adding that the state legislature will have final say on the contours of the law, which sunsets in December 2007.

He said that “the state has too much influence over what takes place in our neighborhoods in New York City. As a result, you have situations where some of these authorities, and the Public Authorities Control Board, which has ultimate signoff on these projects, hold the fate of many things that take place in our neighborhoods in their hands.”

PACB reform

He noted that Spitzer has pledged reform of public authorities and said that, prior to the summer, he had considered the Metropolitan Transportation Authority the most authority most in need of reform. “And then this summer we dealt with the Empire State Development Corporation.” (Several in the crowd chuckled at his apparent reference to the release of the Atlantic Yards Draft Environmental Impact Statement and the poorly-managed August 23 public hearing.) “And I couldn’t think of a more dysfunctional agency,” he said, citing the need for more scrutiny of such agencies.

AY delay

He was asked if he’d recommend that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who as one of three voting members on the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB) could kill the project, to vote no.

“Assemblyman [Jim] Brennan, Assemblywoman [Joan] Millman and I have been working closely to devise a strategy in order to address this issue. How we’ll be dealing with it as it relates to the Speaker remains to be seen," Jeffries responded. "I’ve publicly said that I think that the vote should be delayed before the Public Authorities Control Board for any number of reasons, including the absence of transparency coming from the ESDC, as well as the developer, on some of the finances. In fact, I’ve said that to the Speaker himself, in terms of not having enough information to responsibly critique this project in a way that allows us to move forward constructively, however that does take place.”

“We’re fighting upstream here,” he added, “because the Governor and the Majority Leader and the Speaker have publicly said they support this project. That said, one reason why Millman and Brennan and I have decided to work collectively is… that the Speaker tries to respond to pressure from members of the Brooklyn delegation.”

Beyond asking for a postponement, would Jeffries ask Silver to reject the project?

“To be honest, I think it’s unrealistic right now,” Jeffries responded. “The Speaker has gone on record indicating that he supported this project. I think what we can hope for right now is to tell him that there’s simply not enough information that has been presented to the project and there are too many issues, there’s too many uncertainties, the project is too big and needs to be scaled down, we don’t have transparent financial information.”

AY plan changes

He added that the affordable housing should include ownership units, not just rentals, and that such units be built onsite. (Forest City Ratner has promised some for-sale units, onsite or offsite, but that’s not part of the plan presented by the ESDC.)

He also said a larger percentage of affordable units should be in the first phase of the project. (The state promises 30 percent of the dwelling units in the first phase would be affordable; Jeffries said the number should be at least 50 percent.) “For those reasons, I think we’re not in a position right now to move forward with approval of the project.”

“Whatever is built there has to deal with the affordable housing crisis,” he said later, facing questions from three reporters. “What has been proposed does take meaningful steps in that direction, but I’d like to see an improvement” in ownership and the percentage in phase one. As for the scale, he said “the project needs to be reduced significantly…. Until we see the financials, it becomes difficult to meaningfully critique the project in a way that deals with the neighborhood concerns about the impact on the public infrastructure, but also addresses the reality that no one’s going to build there unless there’s some profit.”

He said he hoped Silver could provide more time “to evaluate the project, adjust the project, and allow these concerns to be addressed. The other thing we’re going to push for is the creation of a subsidiary corporation, like in Battery Park and Brooklyn Bridge… to enforce promises the developer has made but not giving him a blank check.”

Eminent domain delay

What about the pending eminent domain lawsuit filed by DDDB? “I believe, and we’ll see what the courts do in terms of injunctive relief, but I believe that the project shouldn’t move forward until the eminent domain issue is resolved.”

Will Spitzer help? “I think that Governor-elect Spitzer is likely to be more responsive to the community’s concerns,” Jeffries said, contrasting him with Pataki.

And if Spitzer doesn’t help? Jeffries said he didn’t want to evaluate a hypothetical question. But even a scaled-down version of the project raises the "Manhattanization" issue.

A moderate obstructionist?

Then Jeffries faced some questions from another direction, via Steve Witt of the Courier-Life chain. Pointing out the failure of the West Side Stadium and Moynihan Station, Witt suggested that the city has gained a reputation of a place “where you can’t get any development done.” Is Jeffries worried that developer Bruce Ratner would fail to bring the Nets to Brooklyn?

“I think the fact that there’s significant government subsidies involved in this project suggests to me that Bruce Ratner would be OK, in terms of his financial condition,” Jeffries responded. He said we should be sensitive about “creating a climate where developers would not seek to build at all, but I think we’re far from that.”

Witt again asked if Jeffries thought Ratner would walk. Jeffries said that developers can use such a threat as a tactic, but “given the attractive package that’s been put forth—I didn’t encourage anyone to go out and buy a sports team that may or may not be creating a financial hardship, but I think that Forest City Ratner is going to be OK.” (The Nets have been losing money.)

“The message that came out of the election,” Jeffries continued, “is that there should be development, it should be a responsible, and we should all try to find a common ground.” (That can be debated.)

Hoops in Brooklyn

Witt pressed on: “You don’t care about seeing a basketball team in Brooklyn?”

“I’m a Knicks fan,” Jeffries said, deflecting the question, “but I do like [the Nets’] Jason Kidd and Vince Carter.”

“Would you like to see a basketball team in Brooklyn?” Witt repeated.

Jeffries responded, “I’m far more interested in the affordable housing than the Nets.”

ESDC will revise Final EIS; may delay project vote until Spitzer's term

Yesterday afternoon Empire State Development Corporation Chairman Charles Gargano issued this statement:
Shortly after the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) Board of Directors accepted the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the Atlantic Yards Project on November 15, I was informed that some comments submitted in response to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) were not included. I immediately directed ESDC staff to conduct a thorough quality control review, which is now underway. All comments inadvertently excluded from the FEIS are being carefully considered. The FEIS will be amended to include the substantive comments that had been omitted and responses to those comments, and re-presented to the ESDC Board for consideration.

It is essential that the public comment process be faithfully followed in letter and spirit.

How many comments were missed in the six-week rush to produce the FEIS? Unclear.

How long will the revision take? Also unclear.

But the delay, even if only two or three weeks, would make it much more difficult to complete the approval process by the end of the year, before Governor George Pataki leaves office.

The ESDC board would have to certify the FEIS, wait ten calendar days to approve it, then send an application for approval to the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB). At that point State Comptroller Alan Hevesi could delay the vote for at least a week by examining the project, or he could waive comments and let the PACB vote.

The PACB members are the governor, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. By the time the PACB votes, the voting governor may be the newly installed Democrat Eliot Spitzer, who supports the project but may be pressured to take a fresh look at it.

ESDC notes more evidence for a Coney arena, then dismisses it

One of the most detailed responses to the Atlantic Yards Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) charged that the state had downplayed the option of Coney Island as the location for a Brooklyn arena. A report submitted by Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn pointed out that the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) had ignored two studies regarding Coney.

In the Final EIS, released Wednesday, the ESDC did acknowledge those studies, and the argument for a Coney arena, but mainly to dismiss them. Some of the arguments are worth considering, but others misread the situation. (At right, planned arena location, from 1/31/04 Brooklyn Papers.)

In the Project Description chapter of the FEIS, the ESDC states:
Two studies published after the 1974 Brooklyn Sports Complex report—a 1984 study authored by the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development (The Brooklyn Sports Study: Phase 1 Locational Analysis) and a 1994 study commissioned by the Brooklyn Sports Foundation and Temporary State Commission on Brooklyn Recreational Facilities (Brooklyn Sportsplex Development Plan)—identified Coney Island as a recommended location for future Brooklyn sports facilities. As indicated above, one of the Coney Island sites identified for potential sports use has been occupied since 2001 by KeySpan Park, home to the Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball team.

Although it is conceivable that an arena could be built at another location on Coney Island (e.g., immediately west of KeySpan Park or on a site designated in the 1984 study as the Gateway site, located between Coney Island Creek and the Belt Parkway), these locations are deficient for a variety of reasons.

In general, Coney Island is less transit-accessible and more remote than the proposed project site. The proposed project’s arena would be centrally located for Brooklyn and the region and would be accessible via 12 subway lines, 11 bus routes, and the LIRR. The convergence of multiple transit lines would make it easy for visitors to reach the arena from a variety of origin points without having to transfer lines or transportation modes. In contrast, Coney Island is located at the southernmost tip of Brooklyn, and there are only 4 subway lines and 6 bus routes located in the vicinity of the potential arena sites identified in prior planning studies.

Those issues apparently didn't deter Borough President Marty Markowitz, who on 3/22/02 issued a press release about the Borough's State Legislative Agenda, citing a goal to "retain funding for the Coney Island Sportsplex and increase the allocation in order to attract an NBA franchise."

In January 2003, on the day of his next State of the Borough address, as noted in Chapter 5 of my report, the New York Daily News reported (Marty’s Minding Our Manners, 1/23/03):
The borough president also goes to sleep dreaming of bringing a National Basketball Association team to Coney Island.

That was less than a year before he endorsed the Atlantic Yards plan.

The transit question

While there may be only four subway lines (D,F,N,Q), that's misleading. Because Coney Island is a terminus, it has eight subway tracks. At the Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street hub, there may be 10 subway lines, but there are only 10 subway tracks--plus, the G and C stations within walking distance.

It's easier to load people on and off at a terminus, and Coney Island, with ramps as well as stairs, is designed to handle large crowds. However less accessible it might be, Coney Island has long drawn visitors from all over the city.

In the DDDB report, Simon Bertrang writes:
The Coney Island subway lines have low existing passenger loads and substantial reserve capacities. In addition, the Stillwell Avenue station is a newly renovated jewel – with wide ramps and platforms designed to handle a surge in crowds and efficient vertical movement from platform to street.

The Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street station on the other hand has no reserve capacity – the platforms and trains are overcrowded, the platforms narrow and the maze of underground corridors connecting the various platforms confusing. If mass transit’s capacity to absorb new riders, especially the kind of surge in riders associated with the beginning or end of an NBA game in New York City, is taken into account, the Coney Island sites are far superior.

Transfers needed

The FEIS states:
It is likely that a majority of visitors to Coney Island—particularly those traveling from the northern and eastern portions of Brooklyn, the west side of Manhattan, and Nassau County—would be required to make one or more transit transfers to reach the arena. This inconvenience would likely result in a higher share of automobile trips through the area’s limited number of access corridors. Travel time would be expected to be greater to the Coney Island site by both auto and transit for most arena patrons.

While it might be less convenient, it's less certain that transfers would deter people. What if there were new express trains? And, as Bertrang points out, Coney Island is actually located off a highway, unlike the Atlantic Yards site in Prospect Heights.

Concerts and circuses

The FEIS states:
The anticipated programming of the proposed arena makes geographic centrality and transit accessibility vitally important. As described in the 1994 plan, the Brooklyn Sportsplex previously envisioned for Coney Island would have promoted primarily amateur sports activities, with a small number of commercial events interspersed in order to generate revenue. The maximum capacity of the Sportsplex was described as 12,300, and the commercial events were anticipated to draw approximately 8,000 spectators.

In contrast, the proposed project’s arena would host the Nets professional basketball team as well as a variety of commercial and community events. The proposed arena would seat 18,000 for basketball games. In total, the arena is anticipated to host approximately 225 events per year. The number and variety of events and the capacity of the proposed arena make it likely that the proposed arena would draw visitors from a wider geographic area than the Sportsplex proposed for Coney Island. Therefore, it is important that the proposed arena be located on a site that is readily accessible to a broad visitor population.

But the FEIS is comparing the Frank Gehry-designed arena with the 1994 SportsPlex, not the expanded arena proposed nearly a decade later and endorsed by Borough President Marty Markowitz. In June 2003, a half-year before the official unveiling of the Atlantic Yards plan, the Astella Development Corporation of Coney Island issued CONEY ISLAND: A Vision Plan, which also endorsed an arena (at right, site at parking lot next to KeySpan park) :
Given the potential for an Olympic venue at this site in 2012, the proposal for a multi-use sports facility is gaining renewed momentum and is depicted on the NYC2012 website with a main hall seating 14,000 and a secondary hall with two additional regulation-size volleyball courts. The Borough President’s goal of an NBA basketball arena here appears compatible with these other uses.

Could the 14,000-seat venue be expanded to 18,000 seats? It's not out of the question.

As for non-basketball events, it's hardly clear that a SportsPlex-sized arena would be wanting. The FEIS states:
Non-game events are expected to attract fewer spectators than basketball events, with attendance generally ranging from 5,000 persons to 15,000 persons.

In a 9/20/99 article headlined SPORTSPLEX COULD TURN FAST PROFIT, the Daily News reported that:
leaders of the Brooklyn Sports Foundation have released a report that concludes it would run a profit of more than $800,000 in its first year. The report by Ogden Entertainment, a Conn.-based firm that operates 35 arenas across the country, said the profit would be generated by commercial tenants such as Disney on Ice, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and other for-profit shows occupying the main arena for 107 days. College and scholastic sporting events would also be held there.

Mixed-use development

The Final EIS states:
Finally, the Coney Island sites identified in prior planning studies are not large enough in size or central enough in their location to successfully support a comprehensive mixed-use development. As described above, recent experience with new arenas has shown that these facilities thrive in combination with a strong mix of urban land uses, including offices, shops, restaurants, and housing. The Coney Island sites do not presently offer such a varied mix of uses, nor do they present enough space for construction of new uses that would be synergistic with the arena.

That depends on how "synergistic" and "presently" are defined. Could there be other attractions built near the arena in the longstanding amusement zone? Could a mixed-use development be built without offices?

Coney Island is just beginning redevelopment, and there's been some furious turnover of vacant land. Developer Joseph Sitt plans a $1.5 billion mixed-use year-round development.

There are also numerous public housing complexes, at least near the potential arena site, which probably makes developers wary. But Coney Island, more so than Prospect Heights, has been in need of a kick-start from government.

Silver on AY: "We'll look at it in a very favorable light"

State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, got into a war of words this weekend with the lame-duck administration of Republican Governor George Pataki, but the news for Brooklynites were his words of steady if not complete support for the Atlantic Yards project--a suggestion that he might want to broker a compromise of sorts.

Still, Silver, whose vote on the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB) is necessary to approve Atlantic Yards, may be so peeved at Pataki and Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) Charles Gargano that he will refuse to greenlight the project during the last weeks of the Pataki administration but would rather wait until fellow Democrat Eliot Spitzer takes over in January.

"In Brooklyn, it's a mixed bag. There are people for it, people against it, and the proposal itself keeps changing somewhat," Silver said during an interview broadcast this morning on WNBC's News Forum. "So we'll look at it in a very favorable light because development is necessary down there, see how the developer responds to some of the criticism, either because of the mass of the project or some of the traffic."

The changes have been minimal, though they've garnered headlines. But the Atlantic Yards project, once it gets inevitable approval later this month from the ESDC, must get a unanimous nod from the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB), controlled by Silver, Pataki, and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.

Pressuring Silver

Various parties have been pressuring Silver to postpone a vote until the Spitzer administration takes over. Others want him to wait until the eminent domain suit is resolved. Alternatively, some are probably pressuring him to at least broker a compromise.

And Forest City Ratner is surely lobbying Silver. (Don't forget, Bruce Ratner's brother Michael Ratner and sister-in-law Karen Ranucci each gave Silver's campaign $3000 in June even though he was running unopposed.)

I'd bet that the developer would rather compromise significantly with Silver before the end of the year than let the project carry over to a Spitzer administration that might take a closer look at the project. Even if such delay didn't lead to significant changes in the configuration of Atlantic Yards, it could least increase Forest City's carrying costs and construction costs.

Compromise coming?

What might such a compromise contain? Maybe a 20 to 30 percent scaleback in the project's density, to the size sought by several Assemblymembers, albeit with increased subsidies for affordable housing. Perhaps another element in a traffic management plan, just as the developer recently added shuttle bus service from Staten Island. And maybe a revision of the interim surface parking plan that swaps some parklike space for some of the parking lot.

After all, we know that most of the cuts announced in March and September were already in the can by January--and represent, in total square footage, a return to the project as originally announced.

And I was told by a source that the developer has long had a scaleback model prepared that illustrates significant concessions. And documents from the New York City Housing Development Corporation (NYC HDC) hint that several buildings could be considerably smaller than currently projected. Indeed, no building was described as more than 40 stories tall, even though four buildings currently planned would be more than 400 feet in height. (At ten feet per story, those buildings would exceed 40 stories.)

PACB questions

The segment began with discussion of the PACB--and Atlantic Yards.

Jay DeDapper:
Let me move on to another contentious issue, the Public Authorities Control Board. It's a little complex. A lot of people had never heard of this until the stadium, the West Side Stadium came about. And it's basically, you have a representative, Joe Bruno, Senate majority leader, has a representative, and the governor has a representative. And you control when public money is going to be spent on big projects in a bonding situation. You guys have a say as to whether it's going to go forward or not. You and Joe Bruno blocked the West Side Stadium with your votes. Recently, the Moynihan station, you blocked. And now there's talk that maybe the Atlantic Yards project, which we're seeing pictures of now, that's the big development Bruce Ratner wants to put into downtown Brooklyn, Flatbush and Atlantic, stadium for the Nets, basketball Nets, lots of high-rises, that you might block that, as well. Let me ask you first about that, and then I want to talk to you about this PACB.

Silver responded emphatically:
There's no indication that I have ever expressed any intention to block that... I supported legislation that provided state subsidy to that project, to the concept of the project. Let's understand, it's the only affirmative vote I've ever taken. It's the only affirmative thing I've ever done.

Silver went back to issues of public authorities, home of most of the state's debt, the role of the PACB in monitoring that debt, and the West Side Stadium he helped block. Then he defended his role in blocking the plan for Moynihan Station that Pataki and the ESDC favored.

Silver on Gargano

Asked about Moynihan Station, Silver responded to a statement in support by Gargano:
Let's talk about Charlie Gargano, the most corrupt, most corrupt member of this administration went out to campaign, finance for this governor. That was his purpose. Take a look what he did to economic development in this state. This--he has no credibility here. He has interests that obviously lie opposite the state of New York during his entire 12 years in this administration.... His gambling interests that he's had over the years, pushing for things that have absolutely nothing to do to benefit New York. So he was selected because he was the governor's fund-raiser, and he continued in that capacity for 12 years. That's all he's interested in. He has more... And that's why we are in such a sad economic state in upstate New York, because the governor took his fund-raiser rather than an economic development professional for New York. He has no credibility in this state, no matter what he says. So let's be very clear about that.

That exchange made it into the New York Post yesterday in an article headlined GOV STRIKES MOTHER LODE IN SILVER BLAST Pataki's communications director responded in kind to Silver's criticism: "For Shelly 'Vegas' Silver to lecture anyone about ethics is like a bad standup routine, especially since he's Alan Hevesi's biggest apologist, has employed a known sex offender, has covered up internal investigations and has presided over a body that had no less than seven of its members indicted, convicted, or resign under a cloud of disgrace."

The Post explained:
The spokesman's withering response referenced Silver's controversial dinner with a lobbyist at a Las Vegas casino several years ago, his support of state Comptroller Hevesi in the wake of an ethics scandal, and his retention of his former chief counsel, Michael Boxley, after the first of two women accused him of rape..

Atlantic Yards

Silver brought up Brooklyn again, on his own, apparently wanting to make sure his position wasn't misconstrued. DeDapper asked if Silver, from his post on the PACB, would stop block Atlantic Yards.

Silver responded:
I can't tell you what Joe Bruno's going to do; I can only tell you what I would consider. One, as an old Brooklyn Dodger fan, I believe professional sports belongs in Brooklyn, as far as that goes. The merits of the project still to be examined; they're still being actually developed on a day-to-day basis. It changes. We have members of the assembly who are for it, members of the assembly who are against it. Unlike the [West Side] Stadium, where every representative of the area and the surrounding area of that stadium, be it Congress, state Senate or assembly, opposed that stadium. I wasn't the only one opposed to that stadium, let's be very clear about that.

In Brooklyn, it's a mixed bag. There are people for it, people against it, and the proposal itself keeps changing somewhat. So we'll look at it in a very favorable light because development is necessary down there, see how the developer responds to some of the criticisms, either because of the mass of the project or some of the traffic, and I would say right now, the only vote we've taken is to support the development. We have voted for $100 million as a state component to that project.

Gargano, Schumer, and Robert Moses on the march of progress, now and then

The rhetoric of progress is part of any development debate, now and then.

Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), last month told the PBS program New York Voices that Atlantic Yards was inevitable:
Look, all of these things, we cannot stop progress, stop development. I think what we have to do is to make sure we go through the proper process to assess everything, from an environmental point of view, from a traffic point of view, from every aspect of it-which we are doing. That's the important thing. It doesn't matter whether it is two buildings or 10 buildings. There's always going to be more buildings built in New York City. Thank God.

It echoed what Senator Chuck Schumer said in May:
"[Borough President] Marty [Markowitz] is taking it on the chin," sympathized Schumer, "from what I call the culture of inertia, this small group of self-appointed people. If we do not grow, we will die."

Community Planner Ron Shiffman believes we must "grow or die," but it has to be done right. However, there are always pressures to accept the project that's been proposed rather than a different one produced by a more democratic process. That's true with Atlantic Yards, and it was trebly true in the era of Robert Moses.

From The Power Broker

In his 1974 biography The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Robert Caro offers an account (p. 748-49) that seems apt today:
There was, of course, a price on the package: if you wanted it, you had to take it as is. You couldn’t ask for alterations. The borough president knew his borough better than did Moses or Moses’s engineers. He knew its people, and where they went to shop, and to worship, and to play and walk in the evenings. He knew the communities in which they lived. Therefore he might know that putting a highway where Moses wanted it would isolate a neighborhood from its shopping area or its churches, while a route just two blocks away would neatly divide two neighborhoods, which had little social intercourse anyhow.

Moses didn’t know—and he didn’t care to learn. He would not even discuss such considerations. He would allow no analysis of community feelings, or planning considerations—no discussion of alternate routes based on such considerations. Moreover, there could be no discussion—although the Board of Estimate on which the borough president sat was the key body in which such discussion was supposed to take place—of the worth of the citywide program as a whole or of whether your borough might not need other projects—schools, perhaps, or babies’ health clinics, or neighborhood public libraries—and whether those should not be built first.

What happened when a borough president sought to raise such considerations is described by an official who spent many years working for one who occasionally did. “All Moses had to do was push a button and the phone calls and telegrams would pour in: You were holding up work, you were holding up progress. ‘We need jobs—do you have any other jobs to offers us? Have you got a better idea for solving the transportation problem? Where is the money gonna come from? You’re holding up progress.’ Let me tell you—until you’ve sat on the other end of those phone calls for a while, you have no idea how hard it is to stand in the way of ‘progress.’”

(Emphasis added)

The situation, of course, has become more democratic today, given that most land use policies emerge from the elected City Council. However, the unelected ESDC is set up to cut through "red tape" and prioritize Moses-style "progress" over the post-Moses "process" reforms.

DDDB: after Final EIS, second lawsuit in the works

With the release Wednesday of the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) regarding Atlantic Yards, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) is preparing to file a legal challenge to deficiencies in the FEIS, a second lawsuit—after a recent eminent domain case—regarding the project.

State law requires that the agency conducting the review, in this case the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), take a “hard look” at the environmental impacts. DDDB legal chair Candace Carponter said yesterday that the FEIS fails to adequately explore alternatives to the project or crucial issues like emergency response times for police and fire service.

“The part about the traffic is almost a joke,” she added, speaking at a community forum held at the Hanson Place United Methodist Church in Fort Greene. “We believe there are major flaws, because they worked so fast.” The FEIS took only about six weeks to produce.

The project is expected to be approved by the ESDC board later this month, then must proceed to the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB), where a unanimous vote is required by the three controlling members, departing Gov. George Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.

Within 30 days, Carponter said, the lawsuit would be filed. She said that 30 attorneys and paralegals had volunteered to help DDDB’s retained counsel.

CBN criticism

Jim Vogel, secretary of the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods (CBN), said that the Final EIS “severely underestimates” issues like traffic and the effect on the power grid, and does not sufficiently analyze emergency services.

He criticized the lack of sufficient transit solutions. “Even with ‘No Build,’” he said, referring to the alternative in which no project is built over the Vanderbilt Yard, “we’d be in gridlock by 2013.” With Atlantic Yards, he said, it would be “bigger gridlock” sooner.

The Final EIS, he said, “serves neither the public nor the governor nor the developer” and spotlights the need for comprehensive regional planning.

CBN has begun Project Report Card, asking those who submitted comments to the ESDC to grade the response.

Seeking delay

DDDB spokesman Daniel Goldstein urged the 125 or so attendees to get local elected officials to pressure Silver to delay the vote “until the eminent domain suit is resolved.” Otherwise, he said, developer Forest City Ratner could begin demolitions, “and we’re left with a mess when we win our case.”

Though he has not criticized the project, Silver is likely the most receptive to a delay, so as to allow Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer, a fellow Democrat, an opportunity to evaluate a project that would be built on his watch.

Speaking of politicians, Carponter said, “There are a lot more that are starting to weigh in and say, ‘Wait a second.’”

Elected officials

Two elected officials rallied the troops. State Senator Velmanette Montgomery said that local representatives will try to delay a decision on the project, “at least until a new governor comes in.”

City Council Member Letitia James declared, “This is not the beginning of the end. This is the end to the beginning of a project that would destroy our community.” She urged attendees to “reject the campaign of deception, of distraction, of distortion, and of divisiveness.”

Local Assemblymembers Joan Millman and Jim Brennan were invited but didn’t attend. Incoming 57th District Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries sent a representative. More than James or Montgomery, the three might have some sway with Silver.

The two 57^th Assembly District leaders, Olanike Alabi and Bill Saunders, also vowed their opposition to the project.

Gargano on PACB reform, not-so-friendly condemnations, and RFPs

Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) Chairman Charles Gargano took questions from reporters Wednesday after the ESDC certified the Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS).

His most charged comments concerned Moynihan Station, leading to extensive criticism of the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB), which must unanimously approve major projects like the station project--or Atlantic Yards.

The board consists of Gov. George Pataki, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (like Pataki, a Republican), and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat. Some people believe that Silver delayed the station project so it can be evaluated under the administration of Govenor-elect Eliot Spitzer, a fellow Democrat.

Gargano also confirmed what lawyer George Locker, who represents some rent-regulated tenants in the project footprint, has contended: the “friendly condemnations” on buildings owned by Forest City Ratner would in fact be to remove such tenants. No ESDC official had previously acknowledged that.

Also, he said that "public-sponsored projects" require RFPs (Requests for Proposals), though it's not clear how that applies to Atlantic Yards, given that there was an RFP for only part of the proposed project--the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Vanderbilt Yards--and it came 18 months after the project was announced.

On blight at the AY site

Q: You always remember it as a blighted area?
(Gargano grew up in Park Slope.)

A: Oh, an undeveloped, blighted area for many, many years. Most of it. Not all of it. The old Long Island Rail Road depot, you remember that?

Q: Yes.

A: Then you know.

Q: Is it still blighted?

A: I would say that not all of it. There have been some improvements, but certainly I think that the development we’re talking about here is very, very representative of what’s going on in Manhattan and—this city needs to be developed, not only in Manhattan but in the other boroughs as well, to bring economic opportunities, housing, and every other kind of benefit to the community at large, whether it be Brooklyn, Queens, or any of the other boroughs. Which is what we’ve been trying to do.

The eminent domain lawsuit

Q: How do you think the lawsuit will affect this project?

A: We’re fighting the lawsuit very vigorously. We do get many lawsuits on many projects, and that’s part of democracy.

Condemnation plans

Q: How many properties will you condemn?

A: There are several properties, I think—we have the following: Number one, the Bruce Ratner organization has a couple of properties that they own, and there are tenants who don’t want to leave. So there’s a possibility we might have to use the power of eminent domain there. And there are a few other properties that the Ratner organization does not have ownership at this time, and we might have to use the power of eminent domain to make those properties available for the total project.

Most important FEIS issues

Q: The Final EIS, there’s obviously a lot of comments, and changes. What do you see as the most important comments that were reflected in whatever changes—

A: First of all, they’re all important. If people have concerns, each one of them becomes important to us. There were concerns about the density of the project, and the developer reduced it by 8 percent. There were concerns about traffic, and there’s a lot of traffic mitigation being focused on. We should keep in mind that this is an area that has a tremendous amount of mass transit—we have 12 subway lines coming into that area, the Long Island Rail Road, there is a lot of transit coming in there. That should be very helpful in terms of not having to use a vehicle. The Nets have provided all kinds of programs and plans. One is, if you hold a ticket, you get a free MTA ride, on whatever system there might be, a bus or a subway. There are all kinds of plans about intersections and traffic flow and HOV [high-occupancy vehicle] lanes and so forth that the Nets will be responsible to coordinate with the New York City Transit Department as well as the MTA. All of these things are plans that the Nets will be responsible for, to make sure that the traffic concerns are addressed.

(Note: there would be HOV parking, not HOV lanes.)

Message to opponents

Q: What do you say to the thousands of people who continue to oppose this project?

A: Well, I don’t know if it’s thousands. We have 8 million people in the city, so therefore—Listen, I understand people have concerns. We have to look at the overall picture of how it benefits the community, how it benefits the city of New York. We do not want to ignore the concerns that people have. What we want to do is address those concerns, and come up with solutions for those concerns. This project, I believe, has addressed, if not all, many of them, such as, if there’s condemnation, people will have an opportunity to move into a new facility within the area, at the same rental rate. We will help with relocation, hire professionals to help relocate them, to make it as easy as possible. All of the things that there are concerns about, we’re trying to address. Not everyone is always in support of a project. We don’t expect that. What we expect to do is do what’s best for the public at large, what’s best for the community at large, and address those concerns of those who have concerns.

(Note that lawyers for renters say the relocation agreement doesn’t protect tenants.)

How much scrutiny?

Q: When did you actually get this FEIS, when did it arrive in the office?

(A staffer answered: Friday.)

Q: So, how much—did you get to read the whole thing, part of it, what kind of evaluation were you able to do?

A: There’s a tremendous amount of evaluation. We have a lot of people, we have consultants, everyone evaluates all of the input that was put in, as I think you heard at our board meeting this morning, of the numerous comments that were made, I think 200 people made presentations or at the hearings, I think we got 1600 comments. So all of these things are reviewed in normal courses, as many of our projects are.

Q: Staff, obviously. You personally—how much did you get to look at?

A: Me, personally? Let’s put it this way. What I get, as chairman of the board and CEO, I get the general concerns, it might be traffic, it might be density. I don’t get into every comment that’s made. That’s not what we do. We have a lot of professional staff here who have expertise in this area, and they work on that. We have that kind of organization, and that’s the way we handle it.

Delays and commitments

Q: What’s the possibility that Ratner will move forward with the arena, and the condos in Phase 1, and all the good stuff—I see there’s a new school that’s been added—they drag their feet on?

A: What they’re going to do is build the arena and the housing—the affordable housing—before the condominiums.

Q: How much of the affordable housing?

(A staffer interjected, saying it would be 30 percent of the housing in the first phase, which means that affordable housing and the market-rate rentals and condos would be built at the same time.)

A: I think 30 percent, at the beginning. We want them to build that housing before the condominiums.

Q: Does the state have any enforcement power if they drag their feet?

A: Well, we do have—we have a schedule that they have given us. There’s no question about it—the state does have the ability to enforce what has been agreed upon. … We can’t always anticipate delays, which might be for unforeseen reasons. I can’t say that, if it goes beyond one year or two years, it’s not an impossibility. It could be.

(A staffer later explained: "I think what the Chairman was getting at was that we have appropriate remedies to make sure that the affordable housing is going to be developed as the rest of the housing is developed. We can have requirements in the documentation. Remember, ESDC is going to own the project site.”)

Relationship with Spitzer

Q: What kind of conversations are you having with the governor-elect about this project?

(Gargano has been criticized by Governor-elect Spitzer.)

A: I haven’t had any personal discussions with the governor-elect. We have had some people on the transition team inquire about certain projects, and we are working with them to provide information and assistance in every way we possibly can to have a smooth transition from this administration to the next administration. The project itself is under Governor Pataki’s administration and we’re dealing with it right now. If there’s any concerns by the new administration, we certainly are open to listen to them. George Pataki is governor of the state of New York until December 31.

Approval on Pataki’s watch?

Q: Do you think approval will be done by the end of the year?

(Gargano sounded a little piqued.)

A: This thing is overplayed, and I’ve seen this on a couple of projects, about how we’re trying to get things done by the end of the year. We’re trying to get projects done. This administration has had a history of getting a lot of projects completed, starting with 42nd Street, and I can give you a whole litany and list of projects that we’ve been involved in and we’ve adopted. It’s not a question of trying to get—should we delay them because we’re toward the end of this administration? Of course not. We should complete projects in a normal course, and that’s what we’re doing.

Q: Do you expect it to be done by the end of the year?

A: I hope so.

Relationship with PACB

Q: You’ve had some trouble getting projects through the PACB recently. Is this project going to be….?

(Gargano was clearly ticked off.)

A: You know how I feel about it. Having the PACB reject the Jets stadium for the benefit of Madison Square Garden is one thing. That is something you can almost accept. But the rejection of Moynihan Station for the benefit of, whatever partisan reason or whatever personal reasons a member of the PACB might have, that was a project that would benefit all New Yorkers….The rejection of that project, to me, is mindboggling. There is no sound reason other than—possible reason of protecting or helping Madison Square Garden, I know that’s a pretty bold statement to make, but it’s a reality. There have been some comments about Mr. Silver wanting to hold this project up until the new administration. As far as I’m concerned, if the new administration can move this project forward, I would be very happy about that, and we want the new administration to be successful. I’m a New Yorker, so whoever is governor, of that administration, I want them to do well….This is an absolute joke to me… We will see how this moves forward. We know the legality that we’re bound by, with an RFP…

Q: What about Atlantic Yards?

A: I don’t see why they would reject it, but I can’t speak for—listen, the whole idea of the PACB structure to me is something I think has to be somehow changed in the future. You can’t go to a project, invest taxpayer money, millions and millions of dollars, moving a project forward. You cannot have a project go before the PACB until you have everything done: the design of a project, funding in place, engineering, environmental impact statements, general project plan. All of this process that we go through, and spend millions and millions of dollars of taxpayer money, and then go up before the PACB, and have three individuals, one of them can reject it, and just lose all of the money that was invested in a project. I mean, something is wrong there. That has to be changed, in my opinion.

Financing snags?

Q: Do you have any concern for the financing of the Nets arena, considering that the the IRS has said it was going to revisit the financial structuring for projects like, y’know, the Mets stadium?

A: I can’t anticipate that. I know that the city of New York and the State of New York are providing $200 million, as we have done for other stadiums. Governor Pataki, from the very beginning, in 1995, when the Yankees were talking about moving to the West Side and wanted the state and the city to pay for a stadium, Governor Pataki made it clear, set a policy in 1995, and that was, we will not use taxpayer money to build any kind of stadiums or an arena, we will provide assistance for infrastructure development, and we have kept that policy since that time, for the last 12 years, and we’re doing the same thing here. We did it for the Yankees, we did it for the new CitiField stadium, and we’re doing it as well here for this new arena.

Benefits to Brooklyn

Q: You said at the meeting that you think this project is going to bring tremendous benefits to Brooklyn?

A: There’s no question about it. As I said, we have seen—I have seen over the last 12 years in this position, that I have been fortunate to serve in, we have seen a tremendous amount of growth here in New York City, primarily in Manhattan. We want to see that extended to the other boroughs. We are working on Queens West—through that window you can see it. Queens West is helping Queens, and Long Island City, with this very large development that we have, all these tall buildings going up, residential buildings. Similarly, we want Brooklyn to benefit. We had MetroTech, which was a very good beginning, and that should continue. Brooklyn is a very significant borough, and any new kind of economic stimulant that we can help there certainly is a good thing.

(The actual cost-benefit analysis remains highly contentious.)

The Coney Island option

Q: Opponents are talking about Coney Island, still. Coney Island—it’s just not feasible for an arena?

A: I love Coney Island… Feasible for an arena—you mean change the arena from where it is in Brooklyn, to Coney Island? There’s a minor league ballpark there that the city of New York wanted, and that’s what they have, a minor league ballpark. We have now a National Basketball Association team, one of the top teams in the country, that left New York 20 years ago, or something like that, from Long Island, and now we’ve got them back. I think that’s very significant.

(Actually, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz had until early 2003 boosted Coney Island as a location for an arena.)

Bruce Ratner as developer

Q: Can you comment on Bruce Ratner as a developer?

A: Bruce Ratner, I think, is one of the finest developers. There are many others… Bruce Ratner, in my opinion, on projects that I have worked on, and this agency has worked on with him, has certainly proved to be very responsible, and respectful, and also a developer that can complete projects without running into a lot of difficulty, and I have seen that… I know that financial [inaudible] can develop, and Bruce has the wherewithal, and the expertise, and therefore I believe that he is one of our top developers.

Projects begin with RFPs?

(Gargano was asked about Moynihan Station.)

A: The notion that we presented a project that the developers didn't want to build--who's in charge here, the developers or the public sector? We are in charge and we put a project out in RFP, and we got responses to the RFP that what we presented to the PACB…

Q: You were talking about an RFP for Moynihan Station. What percentage of projects that ESDC does come through RFPs versus not RFPs?

A: All RFPs.

Q: Was there an RFP for Atlantic Yards?

(A staffer said that the MTA did an RFP for the railyard.)

Q: Maybe for the Vanderbilt Yard, but not the entire—

A: First of all, let’s differentiate and clear this up. Number one, there are developers there that own property and want to develop a project. We don’t own it. We don’t have to put out an RFP. If they need public assistance, because of the order of magnitude of the project, what it brings to the economy, what it does in creating jobs—we respond to that. But if it’s a private enterprise, building a project, an RFP is not required. When it’s a public-sponsored project, we need an RFP at all times.

Madison Square Garden sabotage?

Q: If the Nets arena is competition for MSG, like you said, do you have any concern that MSG would again try to sabotage the process through the PACB or any other—

A: I wouldn’t put it past them. I think they have tried to sabotage a number of projects. It’s very obvious. They have done that with the Jets stadium, and now the Jets are in New Jersey. They tried to, I believe, play a role in sabotaging this Moynihan Station project, because they wanted to be sure they were included in it.

Q: Have they had any involvement, or is there any input, or have you heard anything about their thoughts on the Nets arena?

A: No, but I’m sure they’re working in the background. They wouldn’t let me know.

(This made it into the New York Post, but there's been no evidence of Madison Square Garden intervening into the Atlantic Yards dispute.)

At the ESDC meeting: a quick bureaucratic action

Here's how the Atlantic Yards action went at the meeting of the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) Wednesday.

After first noting some changes in the Atlantic Yards plan, ESDC Director of Planning and Environmental Review Rachel Shatz explained the process regarding the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS).

"The directors are not being asked at this time for approval of such a project," she said. "The directors are simply being asked to determine that the FEIS is complete, adequately assesses the environmental impacts of the proposed project, and otherwise meets the requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act, or SEQRA, and is in proper form for distribution to the public. The directors will be asked at a later date, expected to be in the near future, to make findings required under SEQRA, the UDC [Urban Development Corporation] Act, and the Eminent Domain Procedure Law, or EDPL, and to act on the proposed project."

"Before the FEIS can be filed and distributed, it must be determined to be complete by the corporation, since the corporation is the lead agency for the project. That is the only step being requested today," she continued. "The directors will be asked to affirm the General Project Plan and take all other actions necessary to complete the project at a later date."

Chairman Charles Gargano asked if there were any questions or comments. There were none.

He offered one. “I know this was a very detailed and long process, as it should be. I know, having personally lived near this area… it’s been a blighted area, undeveloped for more than 50 years. So finally we’re seeing a development here…. and bringing back a team that left New York for New Jersey…”

The ESDC board unanimously certified the FEIS. Gargano answered questions later in his office.

Final EIS moves toward approval; critics say changes insufficient

Now that the Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) has been released, the question is: will the board of the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), nearly all appointees of lame-duck Gov. George Pataki, move the project toward approval before Republican Pataki leaves office for incoming Democrat Eliot Spitzer?

ESDC Chairman Charles Gargano, a steady booster of Atlantic Yards, was asked if approval was expected before the end of the year. “I hope so,” he told reporters. He contended that it was unfair to describe the ESDC as trying to rush projects to completion during Pataki’s term. “We’re trying to get projects done,” he said.

The ESDC board, after a few short minutes, with no questions, certified the Final EIS, thus setting up a schedule in which they must wait a minimum of ten days before voting to approve it, the associated General Project Plan, and eminent domain findings. Then it would require a unanimous vote from the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB), which is dominated by the governor, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.

"I don't see why they'd reject it," Gargano said of the PACB and, indeed, neither of the two legislators nor Pataki or Spitzer have criticized the project--though there will be pressure on them to reject or modify it. And Silver, a Democrat, may want to delay the project so it can be examined under the administration of a fellow Democrat.

Changes and comments

The Final EIS contained several changes to the plan as well as a 489-page compendium of responses to comments on the Draft EIS. (There were more than 1600 written comments and 200 oral comments.) That suggests a prodigious effort on the part of the ESDC and the two consulting firms, AKRF, Inc. and Philip Habib & Associates, which must have labored overtime to finish the FEIS after the comment period closed September 29.

Not that the responses gave much quarter on issues of blight, shadows, and views of the iconic Williamsburgh Savings Bank.

Developer Forest City Ratner has tweaked the transportation plan it proposed, and would now provide a free two-way city transit fare with a basketball ticket--as opposed to previously offering a 50% discount--and would offer free park-and-ride service from lots in Staten Island for patrons from that borough and New Jersey. But larger questions like the imposition of congestion pricing were deemed beyond the scope of the FEIS.

And, by project buildout in 2016, some significant adverse impacts would remain at 35 of 68 intersections, even as critics pointed out that the traffic analysis excluded the East River crossings.

First reaction

Project opponents Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn called the ESDC's action a “rubberstamp” and urged the PACB to “postpone any vote on the project until after the federal eminent domain lawsuit is resolved in court.”

BrooklynSpeaks, a coalition of groups including the Municipal Art Society that have called for major changes in the plan, commented, “While we welcome the improvements in the Atlantic Yards plan announced today by the ESDC, we do not believe the project sponsors have come close to addressing the serious flaws that remain in the project.”

Changes summarized

Among the changes summarized by the ESDC:

--reductions in the sizes of three buildings means 427,000 gsf (430 units) less in the residential mixed-use variation and approximately 458,000 gsf (465 units) in the commercial mixed-use variation (and commensurately fewer parking spaces). This cut in condos had been “recommended” in September by the City Planning Commission and “accepted” by developer Forest City Ratner, though new evidence suggests it was in the cards for a while. The total project would be about 8 million square feet--similar to that as announced in December 2003--with 6430 residential units, including 2250 affordable rentals.

--the amount of commercial office space has been reduced by about 270,000 gsf in the residential mixed-use variation (and approximately 223,000 gsf in the commercial mixed- use variation). This means space for about 1340 office jobs, and 375 new jobs, a major cut from the originally announced 10,000 jobs.

--the building at Site 5, now the home of P.C. Richard/Modell’s at the corner of Fourth and Flatbush avenues, would no longer be a mixed-use residential/commercial development but instead be all housing or all offices.

--Forest City Ratner will build green, committing to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for the project, with a goal of LEED Silver (there are two higher rungs).

--the amount of publicly accessible open space has been increased to 8 acres from 7 acres, as “recommended” by the Department of City Planning in September.

Mitigations and changes

The ESDC also announced some new or refined mitigation measures, including:

--a new school, which a local education advocate praised but said was insufficient.

--Forest City Ratner has agreed to improve the facilities at the NYCHA Atlantic Terminal Houses that would be affected by project shadows, promising to spend $200,000 on new landscaping, upgrading of playgrounds, and new fixtures. Given the impact of shadows on the stained-glass windows of the Church of the Redeemer at Pacific Street and Fourth Avenue, the developer has agreed to replace “replacing the semi-opaque screen currently protecting the existing stained-glass windows, improving lighting, or implementing some other mutually agreed measures.”

--FCR will work with the City Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) to improve the Dean Street Playground, threatened with undue noise, by adding... toilets.

--FCR will have the publicly accessible open space managed by a conservancy or nonprofit agency.

--the Urban Room housing the entrance to the arena and "Miss Brooklyn" would be "programmed" with small concerts, cultural events, art shows, and readings

Assurances

Meeting with reporters, Gargano was asked if the developer could get away with building higher revenue-producing properties first. "They're going to build the arena and affordable housing before the condominiums," he said at one point. It was a bit of a stretch, since aides clarified that 30 percent of the housing in Phase 1 would be affordable, as had previously been announced.

Asked what the most important comments were, Gargano replied, "They're all important," before adding that the developer had reduced the density of the project by eight percent in response to concerns about density. (Or, alternatively, it was in the cards.)

There were concerns about traffic, he added, "and there's a lot of traffic mitigation being focused on."

Asked what he'd say to opponents, he responded, "I understand people have concerns. This project, I believe, has addressed, if not all, many of them."

The Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods and other groups will be looking into that.

Are the MTA or NYC responsible for upkeep of the railyards? ESDC punts

Pretty much everyone agrees that, as this photo from the Empire State Development Corporation's Blight Study shows, the Vanderbilt Yard of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority deserves better treatment.

But who's responsible? Several people commented to the ESDC, saying government agencies should be blamed for neglect.

Among their comments:

The MTA didn’t keep up the visual aesthetics of its property. Otherwise the areas surrounding the Atlantic Yards are solidly middle class.

The rail yards are not well lit. This is not the result of urban decay but the neglect of the MTA. The DEIS states that street lighting needs improvement. That may be true, but that is a conscious decision by the City of New York, not evidence of decay.

Both the City and the MTA have failed to maintain the appearance of the rail yards and have ignored local residents when we requested such attention. That said, we would support the development of the rail yards in a plan that improves, rather than destroys, our community.

The only thing you could possible see as blight are properties owned by the City, the State’s MTA, and Forest City Ratner.

The only blighted area is the open space and sidewalk beside the LIRR yards.

The ESDC's response, in toto, ignored the question of responsibility:
Chapter 1, “Project Description,” and Chapter 3, “Land Use, Zoning, and Public Policy,” describe in detail the present condition of the project site, including the Vanderbilt Yard.

ESDC: AY site blighted, because we say so

Near the end of the chapter responding to comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, the Empire State Development Corporation organized a series of comments on the charged question of blight.

The challenges:
The most absurd claim, that the site would remain blighted if the sponsor's project were not built, is disproved by the content of the DEIS itself. This developer and others have clearly identified northern Prospect Heights as an attractive area for new projects. (Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council)

Blighted areas have no economic value and little hope of acquiring any. These buildings have value and without this project will acquire more value by private investment, the same way the surrounding neighborhoods have. (Marna Garwood, Brooklyn resident)

Two buildings demolished by the developer on Dean Street were appraised by a local realtor as prime renovation opportunities that would have immediately sold for over $1 million each. The DEIS conclusion that this neighborhood would not improve without the AY development is patently false. (535 Dean Street residents)

The DEIS claims the area would remain blighted without this project. This ignores viable existing developer interest as expressed in the Extell Plan. (Daisy Deomampo, Brooklyn resident; Martin Goldstein, Brooklyn resident)

ESDC assumes that without the proposed project the yards wouldn’t be developed, which flies in the face of reality if one considers the competing proposals. The only reason they wouldn’t be developed is if Ratner refused to sell or develop his properties. (Stephen Armstrong, Brooklyn resident)

The ESDC's response:
As described in Chapter 1, “Project Description,” of the DEIS, five of the eight blocks comprising the proposed project site were included in the 1968 Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Area (ATURA). Over the past several decades, a vast majority of ATURA, as well as areas south of ATURA, have experienced substantial redevelopment. The proposed project site (which comprises the southernmost portion of ATURA) is an exception to this otherwise widespread revitalization in this area. Currently, the project site’s below-grade rail yard and dilapidated, vacant, and underutilized properties perpetuate a visual and physical barrier between the redeveloped areas to the north of Atlantic Avenue and the neighborhoods to the south. Although neighborhoods such as Prospect Heights continue to experience residential and commercial growth, conditions on the project site have remained largely unchanged over the past several decades.

Actually, the project site would extend beyond the border of ATURA, and the pending eminent domain case involves properties beyond ATURA. As for conditions "largely unchanged," that depends on the definition of "largely," given the successful renovation of three luxury buildings on or adjacent to the site, and the new construction going up across the street from the site.

Even in 1999, the New York Times had identified the area as ripe for redevelopment:
Speaking of the industrial buildings in the border area on Dean and Pacific Streets Mr. McLaren said: ''It's the last large concentrated amount of square footage in brownstone Brooklyn. These are no handyman specials. You need to have sophistication in navigating city bureaucracy to make them work.''

How fix a noisy playground? Build toilets

The Dean Playground on the south side of Dean Street between Sixth and Carlton Avenues would not just be facing some large buildings, it would experience a good deal of construction noise.

As stated in the Mitigation chapter of the Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS):
There would be significant adverse noise impacts at the Dean Playground from construction activities. The project sponsors have committed to working with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) to work with DPR’s planned improvements to the Dean Playground. This commitment would partially mitigate a temporary noise impact on the playground due to construction activities.

That mitigation also would help make up for a lack of open space.

And what might that mitigation be? According to the EIS:
The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) currently has plans for the renovation of Dean Playground to include a little league baseball field with artificial turf and some other improvements. The project sponsors have committed to working with DPR to build a comfort station for park patrons.

It was not stated whether the toilets would have soundproof walls.

Shadows in your backyard? You're SOL

The state environmental review process has some strict boundaries, and one of them involves exactly how the impact of shadows can be assessed.

Several people commented to the Empire State Development Corporation that shadows would affect energy bills, deprive solar power rights, and make parks and gardens less pleasant.

To which the ESDC responded in the Final Environmental Impact Statement that shadows falling on private spaces is not their business:
Shadows on public open spaces including parks are fully described in the EIS. Streets, sidewalks and private backyards are not considered sun-sensitive resources or important natural features according to the CEQR Technical Manual. Further, as noted in previous responses, shadows move during the day, not affecting all portions of a neighborhood all the time. During the spring and summer months in particular, project incremental shadows would be almost completely limited to the Atlantic Avenue corridor for most of the day (midmorning to late afternoon). Neighborhood street trees are expected to receive more than adequate sunlight throughout the growing season. Furthermore, street trees are generally selected by species for shade tolerance and other characteristics that allow them to thrive in urban conditions.

DOE, Ratner agree on new school, “but it’s really not enough”

An influx of 13,500 new residents at the Atlantic Yards full buildout in 2016 would tax the capacity of local schools, and several people, including Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and Mary-Powel Thomas, president of District 15 Community Education Council, have called for a new school to be included in the project.

And, according to the Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) released today, there's a plan:
At the request of the New York City Department of Education (DOE), the project sponsors would convey or lease to DOE space within one of the Phase II development sites (Buildings 5 through 15) for the construction and operation of an approximately 100,000-gross-square-foot (gsf) elementary and intermediate school. Building 5 has been identified as a likely location for the school.

(Building 5 would be east of Sixth Avenue below Atlantic Avenue. The school would be part of the DOE's capital plan, which means the city would pay for it. That's typical, though sometimes developers will build a school as part of a larger negotiation.)

Thomas offered partial praise. “I’m very glad they listened enough to put a school in the project, but I think it’s really not enough,” she told me. “The shortfall they predict is 1372 seats. Even after that school is built, you’ve still got 1100 elementary school students in Atlantic Yards with nowhere to go to school. That to me is a real problem.”

While the Final EIS suggests that students could be bused to other schools, she said, “Busing is a terrible idea at elementary school. Middle school, certainly. DOE’s big initiative is to get all children to go to their zoned elementary school. So why would they go in and allow a situation to be created where kids by definition would have to be bused away from their neighborhood?”

Who's counting?

Unlike the researchers on the EIS, Thomas actually talked to the principals of area schools to try to assess overcrowding. Her comments on the Draft EIS:
My research shows that, although there are some available seats in some District 13 schools (and some in one District 15 school, as described in my oral testimony), there are not enough to absorb an appreciable share of the thousands of additional students that would live in Atlantic Yards.

In my testimony last fall, I urged the Development Commission to interview the principals of the nearby schools to find out what their true capacity was. This was obviously not done. I STRONGLY urge the Commission to do this research for all schools in the study area, rather than relying on two-year-old numbers that treat children like sardines.

The ESDC responded, basically, that it didn't have to go beyond the letter of the law:
As per CEQR Technical Manual methodology, the DEIS, utilized the best and most recent data developed by both DCP and the New York City Department of Education (DOE).

“They punted,” Thomas said. “They said, ‘We’re just using what’s on the DOE web site, and that’s all we have to do, so that’s what we’re going to do,’ which I guess they’re in their rights to do. But as president of one of the Community Education Councils that contains part of the site, it’s my duty to point out that those methods don’t yield accurate results.”

Recommendations

What would Thomas recommend? Larger schools, and more of them. The number proposed for the school at Building 5--630 kids—“is not very many. We have elementary schools with 1000 kids.”

“I’m still not happy with the Building 5 location,” she added. “It’s right next to the arena and right off Atlantic Avenue. I think Buildings 12 and 13 would be the best locations. They’re the farthest away from the hustle and bustle.”

How many kids at AY?

The Boerum Hill Association criticized the ESDC’s framework, saying:
The analysis seems to account for 0.37 elementary school children per household. Perhaps this is a New York City statistic. The number of children per unit in a project of this size and interest and location may be greater and comparison with other projects should be generated.

The ESDC responded that it was following the manual:
The number and type of students (elementary, intermediate, or high school) generated by the proposed project was calculated based on ratios provided in Table 3C-2 of the CEQR Technical Manual. Factors contributing to student ratios include the borough in which the project site is located and the anticipated income level of the residential units included in the proposed project (low, low-mod, mod-high, and high).

Sorry, Marty: "Miss Brooklyn" would dwarf the Willy B

Borough President Marty Markowitz has called for the tallest building in the Atlantic Yards project, the 620-foot "Miss Brooklyn," be reduced so as not to trump the venerable Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower, which is 512 feet.

He hasn't gotten his wish. Unless there's a tactical concession in the wings--and maybe there is--the response in the Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) gives as thorough an explanation as possible. The explanation: another sort of tall building could block views, it would be too expensive to move the "Miss Brooklyn" (which has been modified somewhat), and the acknowledged significant adverse impact would be mitigated by new views of Frank Gehry's skyline. (Click to enlarge)

According to the FEIS:
As stated in the DEIS in Chapter 8, “Urban Design and Visual Resources,” the height, form, and locations of the proposed buildings would obstruct views of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building from many public vantage points south and southeast of the project site—primarily along the Flatbush Avenue corridor, but also from areas of Pacific Street between 4th and Flatbush Avenues, points along 5th Avenue near Flatbush Avenue, from Bergen Street between 6th and Carlton Avenues, the Dean Playground, and some points along Vanderbilt Avenue east of the project site (see Figures 8-45 and 8-46).

The loss of these views would constitute a significant adverse impact on this visual resource from these public vantage points because the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building is one of the most prominent and recognizable features of the Brooklyn skyline, and has been since it was constructed in 1927–1929. However, it should be noted that a building could be constructed as-of-right and independent of the proposed project on Block 1118 that could also obstruct views of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building along the Flatbush Avenue corridor south of the project site and from other vantage points.

Similarly, even new, low-rise as-of-right buildings on other portions of the project site could be developed that could partially obstruct some views of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building from other existing vantage points south and southeast of the project site....

The bulk and height of Building 1 have been developed in consultation with City Planning. Building 1, designed in large part to relate to the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building in form, would alter views of the Bank Building on the Brooklyn skyline... Reducing the height of Building 1 so that the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building would be visible would require a substantial reduction in this and other building heights on the project site.

It would not be appropriate to locate Building 1 elsewhere on the project site since other locations on the project site do not provide a location at a major commercial and transit crossroads. Furthermore, since the DEIS, and in response to recommendations issued by CPC, the middle and upper portions of Building 1’s design have been narrowed. This results in a more obvious tower form that is more responsive to the distinct form of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building.

However, the proposed project would result in an unmitigated adverse impact to the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building. Views southeast along the Flatbush Avenue view corridor, from northwest of the project site would include views of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building, Building 1, and the arena. These changes would be significant but not adverse (see Figure 8-44). The proposed buildings would have a significant adverse impact on the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building by obstructing views of it from the Flatbush Avenue view corridor south of the project site (except immediately adjacent to the project site) and from some vantage points southeast of the project site.

Although the proposed project would alter the context of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building that serves as a wayfinder for this area of Brooklyn, the proposed project would create new wayfinders for this area and frame the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building on the skyline.

Building a better superblock: FEIS defends AY

Several commenters on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) criticized the plan to close public streets, including Fifth Avenue and Pacific Street, to create “superblocks.” They cited the poor record of superblocks in other projects, such as Stuyvesant Town.

This generated a lengthy response in the Final EIS, which suggested that demapping streets was needed for the creation of open space and wastewater treatment.

Curiously, the Empire State Development Corporation suggested that Fifth Avenue between Flatbush and Atlantic avenues "is not an important connector between neighborhoods," which might be challenged by anyone watching traffic to the nearby Atlantic Center mall. Stuyvesant Town, the ESDC points out, isn't the best comparison, because the AY project would do more to have buildings form a streetwall.

The response:
As discussed in Chapter 8, “Urban Design and Visual Resources,” streets would be closed and blocks would be joined to create the arena block (the three blocks bounded by Dean Street and Flatbush, Atlantic, 5th, and 6th Avenues) and the large residential and open space block (bounded by Dean Street and Atlantic, Carlton, and Vanderbilt Avenues). The arena block would provide a sufficient footprint for a project), the Urban Room, and a direct below-grade connection from the arena block to the subway station. The creation of the large residential block between Carlton and Vanderbilt Avenues would allow the development of eight acres of new publicly accessible open space. This block would also accommodate water features that serve as stormwater detention basins, a major sustainable design element, as well as a new visual resource for the area.


Wide openings into the open space and the provision of a pedestrian path along the right-of-way of Pacific Street would enhance pedestrian activity and create physical and visual links to the residential neighborhoods to the north, south, east, and west of the project site. The portion of 5th Avenue between Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues that would be closed for the proposed arena block is a relatively short segment of roadway that is not an important connector between neighborhoods.

Although the closure of this segment of 5th Avenue would eliminate some views, existing views along 5th Avenue are limited because 5th Avenue jogs at its intersections with Flatbush Avenue and again at Atlantic Avenue...

One of the goals of the project’s master plan is to link the residential neighborhoods located north, south, and east of the project site through the open spaces that extend the urban street grid through the project site. Pacific Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt Avenues would be closed to vehicular traffic (and incorporated into open space) in order to create a unified, publicly accessible open space, and also allow for a contiguous footprint to accommodate a major sustainable design element—water features that serve as detention and retention basins as part of a comprehensive stormwater management system.

The larger residential block would also allow for greater flexibility in the placement of buildings on the project site and a greater amount of usable open space than would otherwise be possible. The open space would continue the Pacific Street corridor eastward on Blocks 1121 and 1129 through the introduction of a winding walking path, preserving this corridor as a pedestrian thoroughfare east of the arena block. A dedicated north-south bicycle path would be incorporated into the open space and would connect with the larger city bicycle network.

As discussed in Chapter 6, “Open Space and Recreational Facilities,” the design of the open space would include several pedestrian corridors extending the Fort Greene street grid, fostering additional north-south connections between Prospect Heights and the Fort Greene and Clinton Hill neighborhoods to the north...

Despite the closure of certain streets to vehicular traffic, the proposed project would foster and increase connectivity between the neighborhoods surrounding the project site by creating inviting open space, walkways, and a bike path connection, promoting pedestrian activity and biking through the site. Further, locating the buildings along the perimeter of the residential portion of the project site would reinforce the strong streetwall found along many of the streets in the study area neighborhoods, particularly to the east, south, and west of the project site...

In contrast to the proposed project, Stuyvesant Town is a site characterized by a perimeter of long, largely uninterrupted streetwalls with extremely limited street level retail or other street level uses. Pedestrian access points or other visual cues to encourage pedestrians to enter into the site’s inward-focused open space are similarly extremely limited. As a result, Stuyvesant Town has a defined border that separates it from the surrounding area and physically and visually restricts movement to and through Stuyvesant Town from nearby streets.

AY office jobs: from 10,000 to... 375

It sounded like a nice round number. When the Atlantic Yards project was announced, it was promoted as providing space for 10,000 office jobs. Now, after further cuts in the size of the project, it would provide space for only about 1340 jobs--and likely only 375 new jobs.

The news came in the Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) released today by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), which stated:
The amount of commercial office space has been reduced by approximately 270,000 gsf in the residential mixed-use variation and approximately 223,000 gsf in the commercial mixed-use variation.

That cut, from 606,000 square feet of office space, leaves about 336,000 square feet. In other words, the amount of office space has been cut 44.5 percent in this round, a far more dramatic cut than that in the amount of housing. And jobs fuel tax revenues more than does housing.

Divide 336,000 square feet by 250 square feet per job, and that means space for 1344 jobs, or, as rounded off in the FEIS, 1340 jobs.

Rounding down

But that's likely overstated as well. The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), in an analysis of an earlier configuration, calculated a 7 percent vacancy rate, which would mean 1250 jobs.

NYCEDC also suggested that only 30 percent of the jobs would be new to New York, rather than moved from Manhattan. That would mean only 375 new office jobs at Atlantic Yards. So much for the 10,000 jobs some columnists eagerly embraced.

Persistent optimism

Everyone knows there's a trend toward building housing rather than office space in Downtown Brooklyn, despite a rezoning. Still, the Final EIS persists in relying on both stale data and general observations, rather than an analysis of the current building plans--including the latest round of cuts.

In the Response to Comments section, the ESDC received this comment:
The DEIS assumes an increasing need for commercial space, an assumption based on the 2001 Group of 35 report, coordinated by Senator Schumer. However, the data in this report was gathered and analyzed prior to September 11, 2001. In addition, this report has not been widely publicized, nor has it received the public support required for it to be considered citywide policy.

The ESDC responded:
The Group of 35 report was not the only source predicting the need for commercial space. Although it is difficult to predict the exact amount of future growth with precision, studies show that Brooklyn will continue to grow in terms of both new residents and new jobs. According to the latest forecasts from the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC), the agency responsible for coordinating such forecasts throughout the region, Brooklyn is expected to add 60,000 jobs, 90,000 residents, and 40,000 households between 2005 and 2015; from 2002 to 2030, Brooklyn is expected to add approximately 162,000 jobs, 330,000 residents, and 120,000 households (see Chapter 1, “Project Description”). Using a general rule of 1 employee per 250 square feet (sf) of floor area, Brooklyn’s predicted employment increase of 60,000 from 2005 to 2015 will create the need for 15 million sf of additional development; the demand from 2002 to 2030 would translate to a demand for 40.5 million sf. In its Atlantic Yards statement, the Regional Plan Association (RPA) also predicts substantial growth in the tri-state (New York-New Jersey-Connecticut) region: 4 million additional residents and 3 million additional jobs by 2030, adding that much of this growth should be accommodated around the region’s transportation hubs, including Atlantic Terminal. As discussed in Chapter 2, “Procedural and Analytical Framework,” the EIS analyzes two program variations—residential mixed-use and commercial mixed-use—in order to allow the project to meet potential future greater demand for residential or office space in Downtown Brooklyn.
Reference to the Group 35 report was removed the section discussing citywide programs and policies affecting development in Chapter 3, “Land Use, Zoning, and Public Policy,” of the FEIS; recommendations of this report remain in Chapter 1, “Project Description.”

Main Lawn grows to... 1/3 of an acre

So it turns out that the Atlantic Yards "Main Lawn" might be a slightly larger postage stamp. From the Response to Comments chapter of the Final Environmental Impact Statement:

From Community Board 2:
The proposed project’s open spaces, as defined in the DEIS, are fragmented, hardscaped, and limited and insufficient to counteract or mitigate the effects of the concrete and glass structures of the project. Design guidelines show a half-court basketball court, one tennis court, two or three small playgrounds, and a pair of illegible linear features. Calling a ¼-acre of open space a “main lawn” is absurd.

The response from the Empire State Development Corporation:
The characterization of the proposed project’s open space as described above is inaccurate. The landscaping and programming of this publicly accessible open space has been thoughtfully designed to maximize the amount of tree canopy cover as trees cool and clean the air, provide transitional buffers, and create a more human and comfortable scale for the open space by creating a lower foreground that interacts with the surrounding buildings. The open space will conform to a set of design guidelines as discussed in the General Project Plan (GPP), including: creating a cohesive, continuous and inviting open space with a range of uses and activities throughout; using the open space to connect the surrounding neighborhoods from north to south by continuing the existing street grid system into the open space as pedestrian corridors; and balancing the desire to create an open space protected from Atlantic Avenue with promoting access and use by the neighborhood’s residents and workers. These guidelines also state that entrances must be accessible, without steps or ramps, while providing un-obstructed views and direct paths into the open space, and through to the adjacent street. A consistent palette of materials, paving, furnishings, and site lighting are incorporated throughout the project site. Active programming in the proposed open space includes a half basketball court, a volleyball court, two bocce courts, and no tennis courts. The remainder of the publicly accessible open space on the project site would be for passive use and designed to accommodate a maximum number of users. The oval lawn component of the proposed open space measures ⅓ acre (approximately 14,500 square feet). It is important to note approximately 36 percent of the entire project site (8 of the project site’s 22 acres) is dedicated to open space. Since the issuance of the DEIS, the project has been modified to increase the amount of publicly accessible open space from a minimum of seven acres to eight acres and relevant chapters of the FEIS has been updated to reflect this increase in the amount of publicly accessible open space.
(Emphasis added)

AY myth 2: the cutbacks weren't in the cards

The Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) is out, but prior to any analysis, I'll attempt to correct two prevailing myths. The first concerned the source of the Design Guidelines.

Forest City Ratner twice this year has garnered headlines and praise for reducing the size of the Atlantic Yards project in small increments, the most recent officially announced today.

But most of those cuts were envisioned all along, which suggests that the reductions were more tactical than anything else.

(Right, the 3/31/06 announcement.)

Indeed, a document acquired in a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request from the Department of City Planning (DCP) shows that the current proposed scale--about 8 million square feet--nearly matches a chart presented to DCP on 1/12/06, as do the heights of most of the buildings. (The document I accessed was stapled to an email from a Forest City Ratner staffer to DCP.)

In other words, we got played. The project, announced at about 8 million square feet in December 2003, was increased to 9.132 million square feet in July 2005, and was cut by the developer on 3/31/06 to 8.659 million square feet.

Response to criticism?

In fact, the New York Times got played as well, offering its prestige to front-page article 9/5/06 that leaked news of an emerging scaleback of six to eight percent. The Times didn't point out that the rumored cut--the biggest news on the planet that day, apparently--would only bring the project back to square one.

It suggested the cuts were a "response to criticism" rather than a tactic. Nor had it or any news outlet found the document that explained how it was all in the cards.

But it was. Architects produce multiple versions of the same plan, and Frank Gehry had produced several options to present to the Department of City Planning on 1/13/06.

What happened next? Nothing obvious. But as the chart below shows, the cuts in building sizes announced 3/31/06 were already on the table. And most of the cuts recommended in September by the City Planning Commission--and then quickly "accepted" by the developer--were already on the table, as well.
(Click to enlarge)

[As noted by Matthew Schuerman in his follow-up, the current plan most closely matches Option 20B, and the planning commission didn't even take up Forest City Ratner on an option to cut Miss Brooklyn 25 feet, to 595 feet.]

CPC recommendations?

Yesterday, the FEIS stated that the City Planning Commission (CPC)"made a number of recommendations with respect to the modification of the project program that was the subject of the DEIS." That refers to the CPC letter.

A close look at the DCP chart shows that, for example, cuts on Buildings 2 and 8 announced on 3/31/06 were already envisioned. And the CPC's recommendations for cuts on buildings 3 and 6 matched plans already established.

One of the few changes that was not in the cards involves a cut in the building planned for Site 5, home of P.C. Richard/Modell's. Announced at 404 feet, and with no plans to cut it, it was reduced to 350 feet on 3/31/06 and to 250 feet in the CPC recommendation, partly because it would block views of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank.

A predictable strategy

Ron Shiffman, a former member of the City Planning Commissioner and a current member of the Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn advisory board, had it scoped from the start. As the Times reported:
Mr. Shiffman speculated that the small reductions being contemplated are “more of a show than a substantive reduction,” aimed at politicians who do not want to stop the project but do want to claim credit for having gained concessions from the developer. “This is similar to the playbook and strategy that Ratner has used for all of his developments,” Mr. Shiffman added. “I think this is predictable, and that they concluded that the politicians needed something to go back to their constituents with.”

Indeed, it's not just predictable, it's obvious.

Gehry, in response to criticisms about the plan last January, told an audience in Manhattan, "It's coming way back."

Actually, it came back only a few fractions. But Gehry knew that various scalebacks were in the cards.

Could it come back more? Quite possibly. Surely there are other options.

Original document

(Below, the DCP document as originally scanned, before some cuts and highlighting.)

AY myth 1: the Design Guidelines came from the government

The Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) is out, but prior to any analysis, I'll attempt to correct two prevailing myths.

According to the FEIS, government agencies worked together (and with the developer) to create design guidelines.

The Executive Summary states:
As part of the development of the proposed project, the project sponsors worked closely with City Planning and ESDC staff to develop Design Guidelines that establish a framework for the design of the project. The purpose of this effort and the Design Guidelines was to identify the important elements of the project master plan developed by Gehry Partners and Olin Partnership and require that these elements be incorporated into the project, while at the same time providing enough flexibility to allow for the final design of the individual buildings to evolve as the project is built out.

Chapter 1 (Project Description) of the FEIS is a bit more obfuscatory:
In order to establish an overall framework for the design and development of the project site, the proposed project would follow urban design goals and principals set forth in a set of Design Guidelines developed in close consultation with ESDC [Empire State Development Corporation] and DCP [Department of City Planning} staff. The Design Guidelines are attached as an exhibit to the GPP. The Design Guidelines were supported by the New York City Planning Commission (CPC) in its recommendations on the project and have been modified since issuance of the DEIS to reflect CPC’s recommendations.

It came from Gehry

The agencies did contribute to the Design Guidelines. Memos acquired via a Freedom of Information Law request to DCP show that DCP staff commented to representatives of developer Forest City Ratner, architect Frank Gehry, and landscape architect Laurie Olin.

However, the job to "identify the important elements of the project master plan developed by Gehry Partners and Olin Partnership" seems to have been mainly the responsibility of... Gehry Partners. As the memo reproduced here shows, Gehry took the lead, and the agencies agreed with Forest City Ratner's plan to take Gehry's name off the guidelines.

Note that the original Memorandum of Underestanding, from 2/18/05, was ambiguous, stating that the Public Parties would work with the developer.

Scale: the crucial piece of information

[This had been dated Dec. 31 to stay at the top of the blog homepage, but I'm moving it down for breaking news.]Someone asked me what I thought was the most important piece of information about the Atlantic Yards plan that hadn't gotten through to the general public. I said it was the scale of the project, depicted visually. (Saying "densest residential community in the country" only goes so far.) Details here.

Final EIS coming today; will final approval come on Pataki's watch?

The Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) Board of Directors is scheduled to certify the Atlantic Yards Arena and Redevelopment Project Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) at their meeting today.

After certification, the board must wait at least ten days before approving the Final EIS, the associated General Project Plan, and the Eminent Domain Procedure Law findings. The final step would be a unanimous vote from the state Public Authorities Control Board (PACB), which is controlled by the governor, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.

But would it be Republican Governor George Pataki, who leaves office at the end of the year? Developer Forest City has suggested so, with an already-outdated timetable that predicted certification of the Final EIS in the first week of this month and PACB approval before the end of November.

A call for delay

"We can't allow, in the dying days of a defunct administration, a major planning issue voted on," said Pratt Institute planning professor Ron Shiffman, who has called for a time-out on major development projects so they can be assessed by the new administration of Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat.

Shiffman spoke last night at a forum on advocacy and community planning, sponsored by the Hunter College Center for Community Planning and Development. He said he had heard that a PACB vote would be held December 21, though he acknowledged his source was "reasonably good."

"You can compromise on the height of the buildings," Shiffman said. "You can't compromise on the misuse of eminent domain--and we need it. We need some of those tools. And if we do it wrong with Atlantic Yards, we'll create a backlash" against the use of eminent domain.

Hunter planning professor Tom Angotti, offering advice to planning students, said that they'd be challenged to turn around projects like Atlantic Yards.

"It bothers me that, when people talk about Atlantic Yards," he said, "they don't mention the UNITY plan," a community-derived plan for the Vanderbilt Yard of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. "The only alternative is cutting down the size of the towers and adding some whistles and bells."

Queens West less dense than AY--and overall more affordable

How out of scale would the Atlantic Yards project be? Well, much more dense than even the recently announced and highly dense Queens West project of middle- and moderate-income affordable housing.

Queens West, to be built on Port Authority land in in Long Island City once designated for an Olympics Village, would encompass 5000 apartments over 24 acres. That's 208 apartments per acre--significantly more dense than other projects in the city like Battery Park City (152/acre at full buildout) or Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village (141/acre).

Atlantic Yards would include 6430 apartments over 22 acres. That's 292 apartments per acre. AY would also include a significant chunk of office/hotel space. Both AY and Queens West would include retail space.)

If two acres were subtracted for the arena, AY would be 6430 apartments over 20 acres, or 321 apartments per acre. To reduce AY to the density of the quite dense Queens West, or 208 apartments/acre, Atlantic Yards would have to be cut by a third, to 4160 residential units over 20 acres.

(And maybe there's a major scaleback in Forest City Ratner's blueprint.)

Affordability compared

City subsidies would support more than twice as much affordable housing at Queens West than at Atlantic Yards, but there are some twists. A city press release stated: Up to 5,000 units of housing primarily designed to be affordable to families earning from $60,000 to $145,000 for a family of four is expected to be developed on the site.
(That leaves some room for market-rate units.)

At 30 percent of a family's income, the rent would range from $1500 to $3625 a month. Were the apartments evenly distributed--and the ratio is unclear--that would be an average rent of $2562, compared to an average monthly rent of $1542 for the affordable apartments in the Atlantic Yards project.

The difference is that all of the Queens West project would be affordable, but to middle- and moderate-income families, while only about one-third (2250) of the onsite units at Atlantic Yards would be affordable, with 40 percent (900) of the affordable units going to families earning under $35,450.

The average monthly rent or payment in the Atlantic Yards project would undoubtedly be more than $2562, since nearly two-thirds of the households would earn more than $113,440.

Cost per unit

According to a city press release:
In exchange for the land and the Port Authority's other rights at the site, the City will pay the Port Authority $100 million and will fund the Port Authority's remaining obligations for infrastructure and related costs at the site, which are currently estimated to total $46 million.

Add to that $146 million another $270 million, since Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff has said that the Queens West units would be built for approximately $54,000 each in city funds. (By contrast, he put the cost at preserving affordable housing at Stuyvesant Town at $107,000 per unit.)

So, 5000 units at $416 million = $83,200 per unit. How would that compare to the cost for affordable housing planned at Atlantic Yards? We don't know.

Not Jacobs vs. Moses

In an article on Queens West in Gotham Gazette, Brad Lander of the Pratt Center for Community Development, suggested that Queens West doesn't fit the Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses frame. While "the development will likely be in high-rise towers with a master plan created by City Hall," something Jacobs wouldn't have liked, "local residents, community board leaders, and elected officials all praised the proposed development."

That's an interesting contrast with the Atlantic Yards development, which has received much more mixed--and often scathing--reviews, including from the three affected community boards.

Affordable to whom?

Lander wrote:
It is important to note that the proposed development hardly serves the diversity of Queens. More than 60 percent of Queens residents earn less than $60,000 – so most of Queens two million people will not be able to afford even one of the proposed 5,000 “affordable” units. A diverse set of Queens community organizations, known as Queens for Affordable Housing, is calling for a far better mix, with half of the units affordable to families earning less than the Queens median income of $48,000.

(Note that the Brooklyn median income is about $35,000.)

Queens for Affordable Housing pointed out several ways to improve the project, including making the units affordable in perpetuity rather than for 40 years. (The units at Atlantic Yards would last 30 years.)

And by planning for at least 20 percent of the units to be affordable to those earning less than $35,000, the city could gain advantageous tax-exempt bond financing .

Columnist criticism

Curiously, in a Daily News column headlined Build for the middle class, columnist Errol Louis called the Queens coalition "well-intentioned but misguided," saying that a call for low-income housing "misses the important point that working families who have made it a notch or two up the economic ladder supply much of the social glue, political clout, income tax and disposable income that hold communities together."

Louis, on the other hand, has praised the plan for Atlantic Yards, which would have more low-income housing than at Queens West--even though many people at an AY affordable housing information session in July were taken aback by the cost of most affordable apartments.

FOIL follies IV: how much would the affordable housing cost?

This is the fourth of four articles about Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests. The first concerned the Department of City Planning and the second concerned Assemblyman Jim Brennan's request to the Empire State Development Corporation, both regarding Atlantic Yards. The third concerned the mysterious tower planned at City Tech.

How much would the affordable housing at Atlantic Yards require in subsidies? How would the cost per unit compare with the cost at other projects, such as Queens West? Where are the subsidies coming from? Does this diminish the availability of subsidies to other projects?

These are all questions that should be part of the public discussion.

On July 26, I filed a FOIL request with the New York City Department of Housing, Preservation & Development, seeking documents regarding the Atlantic Yards project, particularly those regarding the funding and provision of affordable housing.

The agency responded within three weeks, saying that I should receive a determination regarding my request within 30 business days. I didn't hear from them--perhaps it was because, as city officials told the City Planning Commission in September, it was still being developed.

Last week I spoke to HPD Records Access Officer Donald Appel. His letter following up our conversation indicated that HPD "expects to issue a final response" to my request on or before November 22.

A response does not actually mean they'll deliver any documents, so we'll see.

Delivered vacant? Bricked-up building on Dean Street isn't quite there

One of Brooklyn's more bizarre real estate tales is taking place on Dean Street two doors down from the proposed Atlantic Yards footprint. At 499 Dean Street, two buildings east of the 100-foot plot east of Sixth Avenue designated for the project, landlord Mark Scheiner has bricked up most windows in the eight-apartment building.

Why? According to the Daily News, in a 9/27/06 article headlined Her brick prison: Holdout tenant is walled in, one family--Migdalia Barreto, her daughter, and her elderly mother--have refused a buyout and are being pressured to leave. Scheiner called it a safety issue, though he did received a violation from the Department of Buildings for working without a permit--and numerous violations have been filed by the Department of Housing, Preservation, and Development.

Barreto said other tenants had received buyouts and she had her hot water turned off:
"He just wants us out so he can renovate the building and rent it for thousands and thousands of dollars."

Last month, when I took the above picture, the family had posted a sign reminding passers-by and police--who had checked for squatters--that people are living there. The other day the sign had been replaced by two American flags.

Big profit

Barreto, who pays $535 for (apparently) a rent-controlled apartment, rejected an offer of $30,000 to leave. There's big profit to be made--more . According to Property Shark, the building was sold in June 2004 for $500,000.

Though Scheiner wouldn't reveal his plans to the Daily News, a real estate notice, featuring a full-windowed version of the building, offers a pretty clear clue, a profit of more than $1 million (minus expenses for relocation and renovation):
JUST LISTED!
BRING YOUR BUILDERS!
499 Dean Street, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
CONDO CONVERSION OPPORTUNITY!
Asking $1.6 mil
Why start from scratch when you can custom renovate this 1930’s classic 8 family brick being offered to the savvy developer for CONDO CONVERSION. 6 units will be delivered vacant, 2 TBD. All apts. are large 3 BR’s. There is a huge, full basement w/separate entrances and access to a large yard. Lots of possibilities. Located in HOT Prospect Heights, minutes to Manhattan, close to ALL.

That "2TBD" means "to be determined." Adding another layer of strangeness, the property might not be the most attractive place to live. Should the Atlantic Yards project proceed, the 100-foot plot of land east of Sixth Avenue, a row of five houses, would serve as parking and staging for nearly a decade--and perhaps longer. The condo conversion would be right next to a construction site.

Then it would be two doors down from a 272-foot tower, known as Building 15, in the bottom left of the map below. That tower would have a parking garage, as suggested in the second map below.

The postage-stamp "absurdity" of AY's "Main Lawn"

Central Park's Great Lawn is 15 acres. Prospect Park's Longmeadow is 90 acres.

The "Main Lawn" of Atlantic Yards would be .25 acres. That's a quarter of an acre. See the circular squiggle, between three towers, in the eastern third of the 22-acre project.

(The larger green circle at left is the arena roof, some 150 feet up, which would be private open space. Design by Laurie Olin. Below, a rendering of the project by the Environmental Simulation Center for the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods.)

My suburban quarter-acre

How could a quarter of an acre not be inundated by the new Atlantic Yards population--at least 15,000--or some fraction of the thousands of people visiting the Brooklyn arena? Could this really be, as the Atlantic Yards web site promises, "publicly accessible open space that everyone can enjoy"?

By way of comparison, other quarter-acre sites include the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library, the Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park City, and the habitat deemed insufficient for the elephants at the Philadelphia Zoo. It's so typical a plot size for suburban homes that Quarter Acre has entered Australian and New Zealand English as a slang term.

According to the design guidelines that are part of the General Project Plan released by the Empire State Development Corporation:
Main Lawn
i. The Block 1121/112 open space shall include a sloped lawn area with a minimum size of 0.2 acres, such space to be located within the area identified on Figure 2.2 attached to these Open Space Design Guidelines. The lawn shall be sited to optimize solar exposure and may include one row of trees along its perimeter within the Main Lawn area.

Comparison & criticism

OK, it's not quite fair to compare the open space at a development project with that at a major park. Still, the lawns at Battery Park City are considerably larger and none is given the hubristic title of "Main Lawn."

(At BPC, about one-third of the land is parks, as would be the ratio at AY, but the parks at BPA serve a smaller residential population per acre, and many came before the first phase of the project, unlike the plans for AY.)

Commented Community Board 2 (in an observation I missed in my post last month about CB 2):
The active recreation space created as part of the project is very limited. The design guidelines (Figure 3.4) illustrate what appears to be a half-court basketball court, one tennis court, two or three small playgrounds and a pair of linear features that are not graphically understandable. It is a gross misrepresentation, because of the size and the more likely passive use, to consider the quarter-acre “main lawn” an active recreation space. That a quarter-acre of open space is called the “main lawn” borders on absurdity.
(Emphasis added)

"Community" and the Times's race story

In my analysis of the Times's article yesterday about race and Atlantic Yards, I skated over the issue of the Community Benefits Agreement.

The article stated:
Bruce C. Ratner, Forest City’s chief executive, is white, as are most of his executives. Several local community organizations with black leaders receive funds from the developer as part of a “community benefits agreement” they negotiated last year.
But a closer look at the coalitions lined up for and against the project, and the arguments they have mustered, suggests that Atlantic Yards has drawn no true color line in Brooklyn, but only a blur of intersecting agendas, opinions and constituencies, both black and white.

However, the Community Benefits Agreement, part of what the Times more than one year ago called part of Ratner's "modern blueprint for how to nourish - and then harvest - public and community backing," only represents some segments of the community.

What is the community? Brooklyn? Central Brooklyn? Minority Brooklyn? The Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a CBA signatory, said last spring, “The community is Brooklyn and beyond.” If so, many more groups should be included.

After all, as Bettina Damiani of Good Jobs New York told the City Council 5/26/05:
The BAY [Brooklyn Atlantic Yards] project is the first project we know of in New York City in which the developer has advertised that he seeks to participate in a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA). As a sponsored project of Good Jobs First, which provided support for the CBAs negotiated in California and continues to act as a clearinghouse for information on CBAs, we feel it is important to draw the Council’s attention to several major differences between CBAs as they have been used in other parts of the country and the series of negotiations that FCRC is calling a CBA.
Perhaps the most striking is that elsewhere CBAs are negotiated by one broad coalition of groups that would otherwise oppose a project, a coalition that includes labor and community organizations representing a variety of interests. The coalition hammers out its points of unity in advance and then each member holds out on settling on its particular issue until the issues of the other members are addressed. This way, the bargaining power of each group is used for the benefit of the coalition as a whole.
In the BAY case, several groups, all of which have publicly supported the project already, have each engaged in what seem to be separate negotiations on particular issues.

About that brochure

Also, anonymous blogger Dreadnaught points out that, despite the denial to the Times by Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco that the developer has tried to use race, the most recent brochure promoting affordable housing featured only black faces. (Actually, racial identification can be ambiguous, so let's say that they're all minorities.)

The Times's race story: Caldwell, Lewis careful, Law says DDDB could do more

So here's the news from the Times's article today on the intersection of race and Atlantic Yards: BUILD CEO James Caldwell and ACORN executive director Bertha Lewis have backed off some racially inflammatory statements, and Forest City Ratner remains closemouthed about such statements.

Here's what's not new but was important to repeat: most of the affordable housing wouldn't be available to average Brooklynites; the project would be located (useful Times graphic at right) at a crossroads of race and class; and concerns about environmental impact are most acute among those closest to the project.

Also, black opponents of the project think race was used as window-dressing and some of those opponents think that the Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) coalition should have reached out more to black allies.

Here's some of what's missing: a fuller acknowledgement of the race-baiting that went on during the August 23 public hearing on the project and an acknowledgement that a recent poll--which the Times found more credible than I did--found blacks actually opposed the project slightly more than whites did. Also worth mentioning would have been the debate as expressed in the black-oriented Our Time Press, in which columnist Errol Louis has regularly endorsed Atlantic Yards (and denounced opponents), but cofounder Bernice Elizabeth Greene has criticized the project.

Leading off

The article, headlined Perspectives on the Atlantic Yards Development Through the Prism of Race, begins:
It was the first of three public hearings on the $4.2 billion Atlantic Yards development, and Umar Jordan, a 51-year-old resident of Bushwick, Brooklyn, strode to the front of the auditorium and offered a vigorous defense of the proposal. “I’m here to speak for the underprivileged, the people that don’t get the opportunity to work, the brothers that just came over out of prison,” he said.
Those who opposed the plan, he said, were not true Brooklynites. Their concerns about traffic and noise were trivial. And stopping the project would force “young black men” into a life of crime. “I suggest you go back up to Pleasantville,” he concluded.

It was the first of three public meetings; this was the only public hearing, while the two subsequent meetings were community forums. Also, Jordan's remark came after a resident of suburban Pleasantville--an anomaly among project opponents, who mostly live close to the site--had spoken. (The reporter on this article wasn't there.)

No color line?

The Times suggests:
But a closer look at the coalitions lined up for and against the project, and the arguments they have mustered, suggests that Atlantic Yards has drawn no true color line in Brooklyn, but only a blur of intersecting agendas, opinions and constituencies, both black and white.

That's not untrue, but it is fair to say that the bulk of the supporters--other than union members--at public hearings are black, and that the bulk of the opponents are white.

And two intervening factors (acknowledged in the Times) are class and the payments that have been made to several signatories of the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement.

The article states:
When pressed, nearly all of those involved in the debate played down the suggestion that opinion on Atlantic Yards cleaves to any purely racial contour. They point out that the project’s leading political booster, Borough President Marty Markowitz, is white, and its leading opponent, Councilwoman Letitia James, is black. In neighborhoods around the project site, they say, the pressures of class and gentrification have been as potent as race.
“Some of my friends are in the opposition, and they’re blacker than I am,” said the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a supporter and well-known Brooklyn pastor. “It ain’t a straight race question.”

That's true, but Daughtry at the public hearing was portraying the project as a landmark in inclusion. Assemblyman Roger Green called it a "coalition of conscience" and invoked the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Housing: a closer look

The Times reports:
[Council Member Charles] Barron also calls the project “instant gentrification,” a view shared by many opponents.
Atlantic Yards would include a substantial portion of subsidized housing for families at different income levels; but only about one-seventh of the project’s roughly 6,500 housing units would be classified as affordable for tenants making less than half of the median income for the New York City area.

In other words, Barron is right and the numbers are stark.

About that poll

The article states:
Most recent public polls about the project show supporters outnumbering opponents. But those polls have generally been too small to reliably measure sentiment among specific ethnic or racial groups in Brooklyn or the city as a whole.

There's only been one recent poll announced publicly. (Is there some other poll of the public that hasn't been made public?) If the Times is going to treat it as reliable, the racial breakdown should be acknowledged.

Also, the Times states:
Though Brooklyn as a whole has been losing white residents for decades, the number living near the project site — in neighborhoods like Fort Greene, Boerum Hill and Prospect Heights — has grown steadily in recent years, according to census data.

Actually, as the Brooklyn Papers recently reported, Brooklyn from 2004 to 2005 experienced an increase in white residents and a decrease in black residents.

Backing off

The Times reports:
In interviews, activists on both sides said they believed support and opposition cut across racial and class lines.
But some in the debate previously expressed less benign views. Last year, James E. Caldwell, who heads Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development, a job-training group known as Build, said it would be a “conspiracy against blacks” if Forest City did not win its bid for rights to build over the railyards on the site. Bertha Lewis, the New York executive director of Acorn, a national advocacy group for low-income people, attributed concern over the project to “white liberals.”
Interviewed recently, both Mr. Caldwell and Ms. Lewis backed away from those remarks. “Everybody said crazy things on both sides,” Ms. Lewis said. “I’ve apologized to folks and folks have apologized to me.”

At a forum 2/28/06, Lewis said the issue was "about black and brown people in Central Brooklyn" and charged Atlantic Yards opponents with displacing people in the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning.

The Times also mentions the "wealthy white masters" email from Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn spokesman Daniel Goldstein:
“Interestingly enough, the African-American leaders who have supported us, or who we have worked with, every single one I spoke to said, ‘Sorry about what happened, you didn’t really say anything wrong, but you weren’t the person to say it,’ ” Mr. Goldstein said.


Black opposition?

The article closes:
Opponents of the project say they had to fight against a perception that black Brooklynites tend to favor the project. Ms. James said that because black opponents of the project were likely to be less well-off, “they just don’t have the luxury of going to these meetings and reading 2,000-page documents.”
Others, however, suggest that the main anti-Yards organizations — their manpower, energy and funds provided largely by white members — have not reached out effectively to the older, more established network of black community activists.
“The problem that whites who are organizing are having, groups like Develop Don’t Destroy, is that they really are a one-issue organization,” said Bob Law, a radio program host and business owner who is a member of Develop Don’t Destroy’s advisory board.
Mr. Law does not spare Forest City. He said that the developer tried to “inject race” into the debate, urging its surrogates to cast whites as solely concerned with traffic and building height, and black residents as interested in basketball, housing and jobs.
But the leading opponents of the project, Mr. Law said, “are only concerned with the project, so they play into Ratner’s hands.”

Law has a point. The issues raised--affordable housing, neighborhood planning, eminent domain--inevitably connect to larger issues in Brooklyn. (The developer's surrogates may claim that opponents care mainly about traffic and scale--legitimate questions--but many are also concerned about larger issues of democratic process, which suggests they're not "only concerned with the project.")

At the DDDB rally 7/16/06, Law said, “Don’t let this be the only issue you organize around. Take advantage of that. Make this a permanent movement. Let DDDB be a significant organization, not a one-issue organization.”

Though DDDB could do more to reach out, it's hard to judge how much--it faces a significant challenge in money and manpower trying to keep up with the Atlantic Yards project. And some of the more established civic groups that are part of the coalition, such as the Fort Greene Association and the Fifth Avenue Committee, have long played a wider role in neighborhood debates and revitalization.

Charges of being concerned only with the project could apply just as well to Forest City Ratner and some AY supporters. The developer portrays the project as a milestone in bringing affordable housing to Downtown Brooklyn (or near Downtown Brooklyn). But the developer hasn't lobbied those interested in Atlantic Yards housing to reform the 421-a tax break--a change in governmental policy that would provide much more affordable housing.

And ACORN's Lewis has stressed, "I can't do environment" and thus try to evaluate anything beyond the affordable housing component of AY.

AY: how big?

The article states:
Like Mr. Jordan, many of the most fervent supporters of Atlantic Yards present the project as a beacon of hope for black residents of areas near the proposed 8.7-million-square-foot project.

8.7 million square feet? That's what was proposed in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, but the Times has reported prominently on a proposal to reduce the project by six to eight percent, the City Planning Commission's recommendation of an eight percent cut (to 8 million square feet), and the developer's acceptance of that "precooked" recommendation.

If that proposed cut was such a scoop that the Times made it the 9/5/06 lead story, shouldn't the cut, as accepted, be part of the current square footage projected for AY?

A partial correction from the Times

There's a correction in the Times's Real Estate section today about AY, but I think it's incomplete.

Bloomberg on Spitzer: Day One, big development projects on track

Yesterday, during his weekly appearance on John Gambling's ABC radio show, Mayor Mike Bloomberg was asked how he'd get along with governor-elect Eliot Spitzer. After mentioning various compatibilities, Bloomberg added, "He understands our need for the big development projects."

Which projects? The Post, reporting on an earlier statement, cited Moynihan Station, Ground Zero, and the Second Avenue subway.

On the Empire Page, consultant Joseph Mercurio opined:
What major projects will begin? Look for quick starts on projects like the Second Avenue Subway, Ground Zero, Governors Island, Moynihan Station, and the new Tapanzee Bridge, not to mention Congressman Jerry Nadler’s rail freight tunnel getting started in earnest.

Was Atlantic Yards contemplated? It wasn't clear, but Spitzer and Bloomberg could both do a little more research.

More carelessness from the Times: three mistakes, one sentence

[scroll down for update]

An article in the 11/5/06 New York Times Real Estate section about a development in Yonkers contained an aside about Atlantic Yards, and that one sentence contained three errors.

The article, headlined Reclaiming a River, and a Downtown, began:
In the first phase of a stunningly ambitious $3.6 billion plan intended to transform swaths of this dated industrial city into a sleek metropolis, developers plan to undertake four million square feet of new construction in the next three years. After razing sections of the downtown, they plan to build stores, condominiums, a minor league baseball park, parking garages and a movie theater.

The final paragraph attempted to give some context:
The project in Yonkers is almost as large as the development proposed for the Atlantic Yards in downtown Brooklyn, which has been described as the biggest project in that borough’s history and is one of the biggest ever in New York City.

First, "almost as large" is incorrect if we consider the common meaning of size: square footage. The Atlantic Yards project would have about 8 million square feet. (The costs would be closer: $3.6 billion vs. $4.2 billion.)

Second, there's no such place as "the Atlantic Yards." The name "Atlantic Yards" is a brand; the project, as the Times well knows, would be built over and around the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Vanderbilt yard, which would make up about 38 percent of the 22-acre site.

Third, the project would not be built in "downtown Brooklyn" but near it, as multiple Times corrections have made clear.

Any newspaper with such an enormous volume of stories as the Times will contain an inevitable amount of mistakes. However, a newspaper like the Times should avoid making the same mistakes, even if the articles are being published in the Real Estate section, or the Sports section, rather than the Metro section. And when the topic involves a project being built by the parent company's business partner, the Times, as I've argued, has an obligation to be exacting in its coverage.

The correction

The Times published a correction on 11/12/06:
The “In the Region” article in Westchester, Connecticut and Manhattan copies last Sunday, about the first phase of a $3.6 billion plan to redevelop sections of Yonkers, referred incorrectly to a major project being proposed for Brooklyn. The Atlantic Yards project is near downtown Brooklyn, not in it.

That's mistake #3. The Times was not, I suspect, going to give ground on mistake #2, the common error of assuming "the Atlantic Yards" is a place.

As for mistake #1, the issue is ambiguous. The Times in February described size in terms of funding:
Indeed, the cost of the proposal here is almost as large as the plan for the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn, which has been described as the biggest project in the borough's history and the third-biggest ever in New York City.

It looks like the most recent reference was just an awkward rewrite of that. But size is more commonly described in terms of square footage. Phase 1 of the Yonkers project (right) would be 4 million square feet, so it's possible that future phases bring the project closer to the 8 million square feet proposed for AY, or even well above it, but the Times didn't say.

I did a check and found that the Yonkers project would encompass 450 acres, versus 22 acres for the Atlantic Yards project. If so, some context was missing; the Yonkers project undoubtedly would be much less dense than Atlantic Yards.

Fewer retail jobs than promised at AY? The Brooklyn Papers suggests yes

An article in this week's Brooklyn Papers, headlined Ratner jobs fall short, suggests that, given the track record at Forest City Ratner's two Brooklyn malls, there would be fewer retail jobs than projected at the Atlantic Yards project.

The article states:
Ratner’s Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center malls created a combined 1,680 jobs — a whopping 42 percent, or 1,220 jobs, less than what should have been created according to the state’s standard job-projection formula.
That state formula — one job for every 300 square feet of shopping area — is now being used to create the impression that Ratner’s Atlantic Yards’ proposed 247,000 square feet of retail space would generate 824 jobs.

Apply the track record to Atlantic Yards, and there would be only 477 jobs. (Forest City Ratner initially predicted 770 retail jobs.) “The state should be basing all its decisions on information that is verifiable and creditable,” Assemblyman Jim Brennan (D-Park Slope), told the newspaper.

Not all the space at the malls is filled, and two government agencies--the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Empire State Development Corporation--occupy space at Atlantic Center initially designated for retail, but isn't open on evenings and weekends.

Should it get built, Atlantic Yards retail might benefit from better design and thus come closer to fulfilling predictions. Still, the track record is an argument for a closer look and continued caveats.

After Michigan vote, AY project wouldn't fly there

What if the Atlantic Yards project were proposed for Michigan? It would be much, much tougher to approve a project that, like AY, is predicated on the elimination of blight. On Tuesday, Michigan voters by a 4-1 margin endorsed a constitutional amendment tightening the use of eminent domain.

According to the summary by the Michigan League of Women Voters, the amendment will:
--Prohibit government from taking private property for transfer to another private individual or business for purposes of economic development or increasing tax revenue.
--Provide that if an individual's principal residence is taken by government for public use, the individual must be paid at least 125% of property's fair market value.
--Require government that takes a private property to demonstrate that the taking is for a public use; if taken to eliminate blight, require a higher standard of proof to demonstrate that the taking of that property is for a public use.

The nonpartisan Citizens Research Council (CRC) offered a mixed assessment in its preview, concluding:
This proposed amendment would end the uses of eminent domain that are seen as abusive by the advocates of property rights, but at the expense of making eminent domain harder to use for even legitimate uses. It would make eminent domain more expensive for the condemning governmental units, which ultimately translates to higher costs for taxpayers, or to foregone projects.

The amendment enshrines a decision by the Michigan Supreme Court that the transfer of condemned property to a private entity may be appropriate, as the CRC notes, if:
1. “public necessity of the extreme sort” requires collective action;
2. the property remains subject to public oversight after the transfer to the private entity; or
3. the property is selected because of “facts of independent public significance,” rather than the interests of the private entity receiving the property.

Clearly, #2 would not apply to Atlantic Yards, while the other two provisions would certainly be arguable. In other words, part of this measure--which critics say go too far--likely would stop projects like AY. (And AY, independently of the Michigan moves, may violate the Supreme Court's Kelo decision because, according to a lawsuit, there was no public planning process.)

Blight redefined

In Michigan, there's a higher burden of proof to show that the property proposed for condemnation is blighted, and a requirement that blight be considered on a parcel-by-parcel basis, rather than in a neighborhood. That would eliminate the acquisition of nonblighted parcels necessary for a project. Note that there are several buildings in the Atlantic Yards footprint that the state acknowledges aren't blighted.

The CRC states:
Like “art,” “blight” is a somewhat ambiguous, relative term. What may be considered blighted in a well-to-do community may be considered perfectly acceptable in less wealthy communities. This proposal would require that the governmental unit proposing condemnation provide clear and convincing evidence that the property is blighted and the application of eminent domain will serve a public use of eradicating blight.

The implications of blight eradication on a parcel-by parcel basis, as is proposed in the amendment, are very different. It has been legislatively recognized that “blight is observable at different stages of severity, and that moderate blight unremedied creates a strong probability that severe blight will follow.”… Michigan law authorizes governments to engage in area-wide blight eradication so that moderate blight can be stopped from becoming severe blight. Requiring governments to use condemnation on only the most severely blighted properties, for which they can prove by clear and convincing evidence that blight exists, may overly restrict government officials in their efforts to make their communities attractive places to live and work. This amendment would weaken government’s ability to address moderate blight before it becomes severe.

On NPR last month, Jerry Rosenfeld, president of the JR Group in Detroit, defended eminent domain in assembling parcels, but ultimately acknowledged that the definition of blight is problematic:
But we have huge areas of property that are vacant. Let's take an area that's defined as a blighted area. And there is someone who in the middle of the blighted area that is non-conforming and we have the opportunity of a development in that property to revitalize that particular area through blight and through condemnation.
Now we happen to have done this - as people are familiar with brand new stadiums, the Lions and the Tigers - just north of here was an area called Brush Park, and this was as scary, blighted, drug-infested area as you could find in the city of Detroit. Today, because they had the ability to condemn the property, to take the people out of there - and which they did, and some of the people stayed and they had the opportunity to stay in by the homes that are in there - and they went forward and they have a great development over there.

Bob Woodson, the founder and president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise in Washington, DC, responded:
You see, Jerry assumes that everybody has the same definition of blight. A place where there are rats and roaches and trash and drugs and - but that is not the case. For instance, there are neighborhoods on colonial homes in Lakewood, Ohio, they were defined as blighted because the yards were too small and they lacked two-car attached garages. The city's redevelopment plans call for upscale condominiums and retail, and therefore they condemned these properties.

So when you use the word blight, it's an emotional term and the assumption is that it is defined singly.

Rosenfeld responded:
And, Bob, you're right. That is - it is an issue. I think there should be a much better definition of the term in blight and how it is used.

The search for a better definition is ongoing nationally--and slowly.

Editorials

The state's major newspapers were split. The liberal Detroit Free Press editorialized against the measure, calling it “well intentioned but a flawed and, really, unnecessary effort,” warning that the state already had more restrictive eminent domain laws than the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 Kelo decision, and that the failure to define "fair market value" could lead to endless litigation.

The more conservative Detroit News endorsed the proposal, acknowledging that it would “make it more expensive for government to take private property even for legitimate public uses,” but said “its use should be expensive and relatively rare.”

After Spitzer's election: Day One, everything changes?

A reader asked me what voters could do to send an Atlantic Yards message yesterday. The answer: not all that much. NoLandGrab compiled a list of candidates (independent, Green, WFP, Libertarian, write-in) who oppose the Atlantic Yards project, but only incumbent State Senator Velmanette Montgomery was elected.

The more interesting question involves our new governor, Eliot Spitzer, whose campaign slogan is "Day One: Everything Changes." He's pledged a program of reforms, and some of them are promising.

Will he get there? Former state Senator Seymour Lachman, speaking last week on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show, was both encouraging and cautious: “I know this man. He is a reformer. And I also feel it’s going to be very difficult. Eliot Spitzer cannot accomplish this in six months, or a year... or eight years.”

Then again, Lachman, in his book Three Men in a Room, coauthored by Robert Polner, suggests that only a constitutional convention can truly reform our dysfunctional state government.

And Spitzer, despite his undeniable reform credentials as Attorney General, isn't so pure as to follow his own prescriptions before the playing field is leveled. He wants to make it illegal "for those who do business with the state... to donate to candidates for state office."

However, as the New York Times reported Sunday, in an article headlined Many Former Pataki Donors Gave to Spitzer This Time:
Many of those lining up behind Mr. Spitzer are wealthy individuals or institutional givers with interests in Albany — political action committees, lobbying firms, labor unions and the like — who tend to gravitate to a perceived winner, regardless of political affiliation.

Governmental reform

Among Spitzer's pledges:
Accountability. In a democracy, elections are supposed to keep elected officials accountable to the people. In our state, however, incumbents are often isolated from the will of the people because of the influence of money in politics and the way election districts are drawn. Government has lost touch with the people it is meant to represent.

We need to end the pay-to-play culture in Albany by making it against the law for those who do business with the state to give gifts to state employees or to donate to candidates for state office. And to level the playing field in our election process, we must adopt robust campaign finance reforms, including public financing for campaigns and independent, non-partisan redistricting reform.

Efficiency. We must reform the way state government works so it comes into line with basic principles of good management. We must improve the governance of our public authorities. We must also enact debt reform that covers all state-supported debt.

The implication: old ways of doing business will change, and the state's many public authorities, including enormous ones like the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), will face new oversight and perhaps consolidation.

But will Spitzer heed Ron Shiffman's call, repeated yesterday, for a time-out on major development projects like Atlantic Yards and Columbia University's Manhattanville expansion?

Spitzer on AY

Spitzer's campaign told The Real Deal that Spitzer seeks more transparency for the Atlantic Yards project, which is proceeding under the auspices of the ESDC. What that would mean exactly is unclear.

Note that Spitzer recently declared that the most recent eight percent cut in the Atlantic Yards project was "appropriate" and sufficient. It seemed clear he had little idea that the project would be as large as initially proposed.

Support for housing

Spitzer's housing policy suggests new roles for the state, which has lagged behind New York City in supporting affordable housing. Advocates want the state to commit much more.

Some excerpts:
We must increase the supply of affordable homes by using three tools that New York State has: land, capital and increased densities where appropriate. First, we must increase the amount of land available for affordable housing. To increase supply, we should take inventory of all public land to determine where building affordable housing might be appropriate, revise the state's Brownfields laws to make it easier to build housing and create a "New York Affordable Housing Land Trust Program"...

Second, we must improve access to capital for homeowners and builders. We need to better leverage current state and federal housing resources and permit the state's housing agencies to use more of their resources for the development of affordable homes. We should also work with the State Comptroller's Office to expand its existing efforts to use a small portion of New York State's pension funds as a source of capital for affordable homes...

Finally, we should partner with local communities to encourage reform of zoning laws and permitting and approval processes to allow for higher densities of residential housing and make it easier for sites to become buildable.

Preserve existing affordable housing stock. New York State's affordable housing stock is a precious resource, yet we continue to lose affordable units for a variety of reasons. We must review rent regulations, when appropriate, encourage owners to rehabilitate and maintain our existing affordable housing and develop a strategy of how best to preserve the affordability of housing built under subsidy programs that are soon to expire.

Better administration, better planning and better leadership. Achieving the efficient production of affordable homes requires consolidating the state's housing efforts to eliminate administrative bureaucracy and inefficient regulations, appointing effective leaders to head our housing agencies and engaging in planning that integrates all levels of government more than simply the housing agencies and their programs.

A few billion dollars here, a few billion dollars there. That could add up to some significant changes, and remind people that the Atlantic Yards project would hardly be the only source for affordable housing.

Grow or die? Yes, but do it right, says Shiffman

Ron Shiffman, founder of the influential Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development (PICCED, now the Pratt Center for Community Development) and former City Planning Commissioner, has always been a community planner. So he took advantage of a prominent platform last night to offer some useful history of housing reform and some ambitious proposals for a more democratic city.

His prescriptions: more than double the amount of affordable housing planned by the Bloomberg administration, a time-out on major developments like Atlantic Yards, and a new emphasis on taming the market to achieve equity and diversity.

The occasion was the annual Ratensky Lecture sponsored by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) New York Chapter, in honor of Samuel Ratensky (1910-1972), a progressive architect and housing official in New York and a mentor to many. Shiffman’s title: “Beyond the Marketplace: Towards an Equitable Housing Program. The setting: the Center for Architecture in Greenwich Village.

“Housing policy cannot be distilled into a simple sound bite or set of catchy slogans,” Shiffman allowed. “New York City, because of its geographic and demographic diversity, needs a broad and complex set of policies to address its housing and community development needs.”

Grassroots groups key

Shiffman reminded his audience of architects and planners that it was community groups in the 1970s and 1980s that helped reverse neighborhood decline. Even as banks had redlined the neighborhoods, such groups demonstrating the need to stem the tide of abandonment, and renovate buildings. They pushed for changes in insurance laws to discourage owner-sponsored arson, and they developed new ways to finance the rehabilitation of housing.

“They demonstrated that a comprehensive housing policy must be comprised of a combination of tenant protections, preservation strategies, and development that includes both rehabilitation and new construction,” said Shiffman, emphasizing that such strategies are interdependent.

He recalled the formation in Bedford-Stuyvesant of the country’s first Community Development Corporation (CDC), a new institution to take action when neither the private sector nor the government could do so.

Not anti-development

Shiffman said that community-based housing organizations have, in partnerships, sponsored and renovated more than 80,000 units of housing—setting the stage for private investment. Community-based developers, community organizers and environmental justice advocates are not anti-development, he stressed.

However, they have fought “against badly conceived public and private development projects -- urban renewal projects, Westway and the Lower Manhattan Expressway of the past,” he said, pointing to today’s fights against “Forest City Ratner’s ill-conceived and out-dated 60’s urban renewal proposal tarted up in an oversized titanium dress and Columbia University’s arrogant expansion into Manhattanville.” (He’s on the advisory board of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn.)

Shiffman acknowledged that a reflexive dependence on “community design” can be counterproductive, if professionals don’t engage in dialogue. “True decision-making and true empowerment arise from choosing among informed alternatives,” he said. “How can the important issues and values that transcend any particular community be put on the agenda? How else can we confront exclusionary and discriminatory policies and practices, particularly when they masquerade as market decisions or, in some cases, as a misrepresentation of the desire to preserve the character of an area?”

Saving Stuy Town?

Shiffman criticized the city administration’s decision to sit out the sale of Stuyvesant Town, calling it more cost effective for middle-income residents to live in the outer boroughs: “So much for diversity, so much for maintaining New York City’s heterogeneity--let Manhattan, dominated by policies of economic determinism, continue its trend to becoming a borough of the super-rich and the super-poor.”

Under the “luxury decontrol” provision of the rent regulations, added in 1994, landlords can deregulate units that rent for more than $2000 when they become vacant, or when the tenants have earned at least $175,000 for two consecutive years. The average rent in Manhattan is now $2400 a month. Moreover, the annual increases granted by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board would lift that $2000 figure to $2995, and if indexed to rent increases, it would go to $3300. So he called for the city and state to raise the ceiling on stabilized rents to $3300 and index it to the housing increases.

Also, though it may be seem too late, he called for the city and state governments to offer capital funds and tax incentives to maintain about half of the units in stabilization. One tactic, he said, might be to place a surcharge on higher-income families occupying rent stabilized units to support a housing trust fund—but not to lose that rent-regulated apartment.

421-a tweak

The 421-a tax abatement program is due for an overhaul, but a mayoral task force recently recommended that an affordability requirement be extended only to small parts of the outer boroughs, essentially maintaining a gentrification subsidy in for development in thriving areas like Park Slope and Fort Greene.

“Why not allow the tax-abatement provision to go only to developers who are building 100 percent affordable housing?” Shiffman asked. New taxes could be steered to affordable housing.

Holding onto housing

While there are 77,000 units of HUD-assisted housing in the City of New York, much of that under the Section 8 program that subsidizes rents, 33,000 units may be lost from the program in the next five years. That means numerous families face the risk of displacement. While a new city law, the Tenant Empowerment Act, gives tenants and not–for–profit organizations the right to purchase Section 8 developments, such groups need financial, technical, and legal resources.

Shiffman said city should set aside $75-$100 million for use by tenants and community groups to convert such at-risk developments to permanent affordable housing. And the city and professional organizations must advocate that HUD maintain support for such housing.

New development for whom?

New development is crucial because of a shortfall in housing and the steady growth of the city’s population. An unreleased study conducted by planner Alex Garvin has recommended that the city build platforms over railyards and highways for new developments.

However, he warned that the city must not build only for the wealthy. Land currently zoned for manufacturing must be protected—and the city may develop new industries for components needed for green development. Given the large numbers of families seeking public housing—140,000, with an average wait of eight years—most new development must be for low-, moderate-, and middle-income housing, he said.

He called for a balance regarding density, saying that in some areas it’s too little, while in other areas it could be burdensome.

ESDC warnings

Shiffman warned that the Atlantic Yards proposal Columbia University’s proposed expansion “undermine our future ability to undertake the proper planning and development of these kinds of needed mega-projects,” calling them “the culture and codification of cronyism.” Both lack “the necessary participatory processes to develop a program, land-use plan, set of urban design guidelines and a transparent selection process.”

Shiffman’s not against eminent domain—which he said should be used only after a public planning process and when the public purposes is clear--or even the ESDC. “As planners, we know that eminent domain and the power of public authorities, properly crafted and used, can be important tools to address public purposes,” he said. “But the abuse of eminent domain feeds a public sentiment that could lead to a complete backlash.” Given a right-leaning Supreme Court, he said, “we may lose an important tool because we’ve misused it in these cases.”

He called for Eliot Spitzer, the presumptive next governor, to convene a working group to examine emerging large-scale development projects and review projects in the pipeline so they “are not hastily pushed through at the 11th hour prior to Governor Pataki’s departure from office.” (He last month called for such a time-out.)

The ESDC and its parent the Urban Development Corporation, he said, “should be restructured to meet its original purpose honoring Martin Luther King,” to “promote low-income affordable and mixed-income racially integrated housing,” among other things.

New policies

The state and the feds must do more, Shiffman said, but “the city can’t wait for other levels of government to act.” He suggested that the city could draw on a variety of sources to commit at least $12 billion to preserve and build affordable housing over ten years. This could upgrade at least 100,000 units and produce at least 300,000 new units—more than double the mayor’s $7.5 billion plan to create and preserve 165,000 affordable units.

He called for 50 percent of all new housing be affordable—a model in some other “world cities”--based on a combination of incentives, capital subsidies and regulations be adopted to achieve this objective. Where could the money come from? A housing trust fund could include funds from Battery Park City, PILOTs (payments in lieu of taxes) from major developments, surcharges on real estate transactions, and other sources.

Grow or die?

Shiffman encouraged the audience to lobby their elected representatives to put affordable housing on the agenda—and to call for a time-out on poorly planned development. What, he was asked, should be said to officials like Senator Charles Schumer who express a “grow or die” sentiment?

(Schumer last May denounced critics of new development as "the culture of inertia, this small group of self-appointed people.")

“You do grow or die,” Shiffman responded. “But you have to grow right. You fight for qualitative development, not quantitative development.”

Another interlocutor lamented decreasing government and public support for social and economic integration. “Too much of what we’re doing is surrendering to cynicism,” Shiffman said, citing those who say “it’s a done deal” regarding Atlantic Yards or say “it’s the market” regarding the sale of Stuyvesant Town.

“The markets are conditioned by public policies,” he said. “I have greater faith in people.” And, he said, he would be in contact with Spitzer's transition team.

Art, the "contested city," and the challenge of affordability

What roles do artists and the arts play in revitalizing neighborhoods: are they the creative spark, or vanguard for the developers? Maybe both, and more, as indicated by ART IN THE CONTESTED CITY: A Conference Exploring the Role of the Arts in Contemporary Struggles over Urban Space, held Friday at the Pratt Institute’s Higgins Hall in Clinton Hill. A diverse selection of artists, arts professionals, and civic activists from New York and beyond spoke on four separate panels.

It was an interesting mix, even for Pratt, since the Institute's advocacy planners historically have little relationship with colleagues in art and design, as noted by Brad Lander, director of the Pratt Center for Community Development.

While the discussions were wide-ranging, one fundamental theme emerged: artists, like many in New York, struggle to find affordable places to live and work.

In the 1970s, New York City was in fiscal crisis, but a lot of prominent artists recall that era as very promising for their careers and creativity, observed Miriam Greenberg of Pratt’s Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies. The reason: rent was cheap and “art developed in all kind of spaces.

Indeed, one panel included a performance, in which two members of the Fort Greene-based dance troupe Urban Bush Women alternately danced while the other read self description under the rubric “Where I come from.” For both Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Maria Bauman, the bottom line was affordability. “I wonder if my decision to base myself in Brooklyn was a good one,” wondered Zollar, while Bauman mused, “I wonder how my artist friends and I can live in smaller and smaller spaces… in Brooklyn.”

Zollar later expressed concern about the working poor. “I hear the prices of ‘affordable housing’,” she said incredulously. “Who are they talking about?”

Interlopers?

How much are artists welcome? Ella Weiss, president of the Brooklyn Arts Council, took a mainstream view, citing how Greenpoint, Williamsburg, and Red Hook have been revitalized, and pointing to the “new frontiers” of Bushwick and Sunset Park.

But those frontiers are where people live, and may not welcome newcomers who help raise their rent. Juan Flores, a professor in the Department of Africana and Pureto Rican-Latino Studies at Hunter College, CUNY, observed that “the prevalent concept is the artist kind of moves in from outside to take part in development. There’s really an alternative map—communities often engender artists.”

In the South Bronx neighborhood of Hunts Point, some panelists observed, The Point, a community development corporation, has made a special effort to produce such home-grown artists.

Rick Lowe helped revive the historically African-American Third Ward in Houston by encouraging fellow artists (most of them black like himself) to renovate and put art in shotgun houses, only to see developers invade the neighborhood. He’s a central character in a documentary film, “Third Ward, TX,” being completed by director Andrew Garrison.

Lowe acknowledged some contradictions which face longstanding homeowners: why shouldn’t they sell to developers and make some money; then again, if they want to stay in their community, what can that buy them?

(That dilemma has been faced by some homeowners in gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhoods; the sum from a sale doesn’t buy them much if they’re staying, but it might buy a nice spread if they’re moving well out of the city.)

Policy questions

Jonathan Bowles of the Center for an Urban Future observed that the arrival of artists and more affluent people may actually reduce the number of residents in a community, since singles and couples may replace families. While the fundamental problem is finding affordable space, he said, “the challenge is to ensure that long-time residents share in the benefit.”

That means that the city must create and preserve affordable housing in general, that local residents should get jobs that are connected to arts development, that longtime merchants get technical assistances, and planning includes community members from the outset.

He and others commented on the need for arts organizations to own their own buildings so they weather economic changes. Esther Robinson’s organization ArtHome offers a home-buying curriculum for artists, since home ownership is a key factor in an artist’s capacity to pursue a career. “We’re not trained as artists to think about our financial lives,” she said. “You will be your most generous when you are at your most stable.”

Robinson offered a larger context. “We’re an under-resourced nation,” she said, and indeed, statistics showed far more governmental support for artists in previous decades.

Where to go?

Risë Wilson of the Laundromat Project aims to make art more accessible to communities of color by buying a building and using the proceeds from a laundromat to support arts projects. “So many arts organizations are being pimped as gentrifiers,” she observed, citing the offer of a “sexy lease” followed by rising rents. “We have to be prepared to be there for the long haul.”

While her group has done projects in Crown Heights, Clinton Hill, and Harlem it is still seeking a building in Bedford-Stuyvesant. However, since the formation of the project business plan, she said, prices have doubled in the neighborhood, which is “in the throes of gentrification.”

Performance artist Danny Hoch, commenting from the audience, took off from Wilson’s comment that “Fort Greene doesn’t need us.” What would happen, Hoch, said, “if artists, before they moved to New York City, said, ‘They don’t need us’?” As Hoch tours the country—he can’t make his living just in New York—he meets students who anticipate moving to the metropolis. “I say, wouldn’t you be contributing more if you stayed home?”

New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco far outpace other cities as magnets for artists, but some other cities aren’t so shabby. Ann Markusen of the University of Minnesota showed slides of how an old brick factory in St. Paul had been renovated into handsome, airy workspaces for artists.

To Brooklyn eyes, the “before” photo depicted the old factory in a far more dilapidated state than is the "blighted” Ward Bakery on Pacific Street, slated to be demolished for the Atlantic Yards project.

Educating the public

Rosten Woo of the Gowanus-based Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), said he was inspired by Robert Moses—not the master builder, but the educator and community organizer who made his name in the civil rights movement. The arts, he said, can play a significant role in “this long-term project of building active citizenship.”

In the exhibition space upstairs at Higgins Hall was a CUP project, The Subsidized Landscape, an installation that portrays the vast array of government interventions that shape the built environment, from public housing to the mortgage interest deduction.

Produced in 2003, the model remains relevant, especially in the New York City context, since nearly all market-rate development in Brooklyn is subsidized by the 421-a tax deduction without any requirement that affordable housing be included. (The Atlantic Yards project would include affordable housing as part of a privately negotiated deal between developer Forest City Ratner and the advocacy group ACORN, with no city oversight over the scale.)

Joe Matunis of El Puente, the community organization in Williamsburg’s South Side, explained how demonstrations and protests aimed at Radiac, which stores and transfers hazardous and nuclear waste, has led the company to scale back its Williamsburg operations and make plans to leave.

Finding consensus

The Radiac protest involved Williamsburg’s diverse communities, including Latinos, hasids, and hipsters. Other struggles remain contested.

Author Jonathan Lethem, who in June wrote “an open letter” to Atlantic Yards architect Frank Gehry in Slate, headlined Brooklyn’s Trojan Horse, recalled that, “I was immediately informed that, as an artist, I…didn’t have authority to speak on behalf of the community. Fortunately, I had real street cred—I had occupied this turf since I was 6.” Earlier this year he joined the advisory board of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB).

Then again, as Lethem acknowledged, his novel The Fortress of Solitude--which takes on gentrification in Boerum Hill/Gowanus in the 1970s--encompasses "hugely ambivalent feelings” about the changing neighborhood his white and black characters observe.

Beka Economopoulous of Not an Alternative, a Williamsburg collective, discussed local activism regarding the recent rezoning of Williamsburg and Greenpoint. The plan, which could bring in 40,000 more people, “fractured the public,” she said, with different factions concerned about open space, economic development, affordable housing, and the height and bulk of buildings.

“We wanted to make clear we were not anti-development,” she said of her group’s work with the Williamsburg Warriors, trying to point out how the rezoning would disrupt the neighborhood. It sounded like an echo of the DDDB coalition opposing the Atlantic Yards project.

In Williamsburg, however, the hipsters entered too late to reframe the issue. “You were either for affordable housing or height and bulk people,” she said. “If we’d gotten in earlier, we should have been talking about what is sane development.” (Actually, the local community board's plan had also been bypassed.)

Jesus Gonzalez, one of the relatively few people of color in the audience, commented on gentrification in Bushwick, where he lives. “My advice to people who want to be involved in helping fight against gentrification: just let the community make the changes themselves," said Gonzalez, an alumnus of El Puente programs. "Let the people who are directly impacted take the lead.”

Several people clapped enthusiastically, but others kept their hands still. After all, are the hipsters and artists moving into Bushwick the "community"? Questions of community and authenticity have emerged as well in the Atlantic Yards debate, especially at the highly charged public hearing on August 23.

Jason James, another member of Not An Alternative, observed, “It’s a long-term process.” He was referring to his group's effort to educate and organize the public. But the comment could equally apply to the effort to create more affordable spaces to live and work.

Williamsburg, redux

Economopoulous warned that the rezoning in Williamsburg, which offered developers a bonus in floor area for including affordable housing, had not paid off as predicted. And today's New York Times, in an article headlined City Sees Growth; Residents Call It Out of Control, suggests she's right:
City officials say that their plan is right on schedule, especially by the waterfront, where construction has started on projects that will produce 460 below-market apartments, plus an initial few acres of parkland.
But among many residents and community leaders, there is a nagging sense that the government has not moved fast enough to keep pace with developers.
In September, the city’s Department of Buildings received 337 complaints about construction in Greenpoint-Williamsburg, more than twice the filings from the community board of another fast-growing area nearby. In the heart of the rezoned area, near McCarren Park, luxury towers climb skyward, yet only nine new apartments of low- and middle-income housing are being built, far below the city’s original estimates.
Meanwhile, money for a legal fund to help tenants fight displacement has yet to be distributed because of snags in the city’s complex scheme to finance it.

What it might look like (again)

Two weeks ago, in response to a photo in the New York Times that depicted part of an empty railyard as the only image of the project, I suggested that a rendering of Atlantic Yards would have been a far better substitution.

Others apparently noticed the deficit too. On Friday I was at a symposium at the Pratt Institute, and spotted a poster created by Pratt professor Brent Porter, who with his students has studied the significant impact of shadows that the project could cause.

Porter already had a graphic of the rendering created for New York magazine, with shadows based on his studies (left in photo). He had tacked onto the poster the aforementioned photo from the Times (right in photo).

The juxtaposition is timely, and stark. The best way to inform people about the project is to show them what it might look like.

Major tenants steer clear of Downtown Brooklyn office space; what of AY?

An article in the New York Observer's blog The Real Estate last week followed up on the curious phenonmenon in Downtown Brooklyn: despite a 2004 rezoning aimed primarily to promote major office development, residential projects instead have taken off.

Under the headline New Brooklyn Boss: Hits, Not Homers, Matthew Schuerman writes:
Downtown Brooklyn's lament has been the inability to attract mega-tenants to four different sites that were painstakingly drawn and measured in a city-led massive rezoning two years ago.
Joe Chan, the president of the new Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, indicated in an interview last week that he was headed in a different direction: go for singles rather than home runs. Small parcels here and there might work better for the "creative industries" that he says could make Brooklyn home.
"Those four major sites that you are referring to were assuming large buildings of 30-40,000 square feet," he said, referring to the size of the floor plates. "There are a number of other sites that were rezoned as a result of the Downtown Brooklyn Plan that may accommodate maybe 15- or 20,000 square feet.... There is a significant amount of opportunity beyond those four sites. Those four sites may change. They could be divided into two or three development parcels. The most important thing in terms of planning and economic development and real estate is creating an environment where the planners and real estate developers can be flexible."

Market conditions have changed, said Chan, who used to work for Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, and the financial service firms that were being lured to Brooklyn--rather than Jersey City--for their back-office operations aren't expanding at all.

AY questions

There may indeed be a market for smaller parcels for "creative industries." But that raises questions about the Atlantic Yards plan. Remember, developer Forest City Ratner initially promised office space for 10,000 jobs. Last year, the amount of space was cut by two-thirds, and the number of jobs projected to about 2500. The explanation from FCR's Jim Stuckey: "Projects change, markets change."

So what kind of jobs and tenants does the developer expect? Phase 1 wouldn't be completed for four years, under the optimum conditions. Can anyone predict? And if the market for office space changes, so might the market for residential space, which means that Phase 2--which would contain most of the affordable housing--can't be guaranteed.

And would "creative industries" prefer to be in a couple of giant office towers or less standardized spaces either adapted from existing buildings or in smaller buildings than those planned for Atlantic Yards?

[Addendum: While it's clear that the market for office space at Atlantic Yards has shrunk, a reader informs me that the the office space projected may in fact be compatible with the same kind of uses Chan foresees for the "creative industries" in Downtown Brooklyn.]

A humbling encounter with a (civilian) reader

I assume that most readers of this blog have a keen interest in the Atlantic Yards project, whether they be concerned local residents, government or organizational officials, people who work with the developer, or the press.

But earlier this week, at a bank in Park Slope, I encountered someone far less invested. She told me she'd noticed my op-ed in the print edition of Monday's Metro, which was accompanied by my photo.

Me What did you think?

She: Well, I didn't finish it.

Me: It was only 500 words.

She: I'm not much of a reader.

The lesson, as a reader reminds me: very few people, even Brooklynites, have an informed opinion of the Atlantic Yards project.

Transit-oriented development, the lagging MTA, and the AY example

Maybe the issue is regional, and the outsize scale of the Atlantic Yards project relates partly because of the failure to develop housing at sufficient density and affordability in the car-dependent suburbs.

Indeed, there’s a lot of transit-oriented development (TOD) taking place—in New Jersey, at least. “New York State is more than 15 years behind New Jersey in its smart growth and TOD policies,” declared Ellyn Shannon, a transportation planner for the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee (PCAC) to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

She spoke at a symposium Wednesday on Transit Oriented Development in the New York Metropolitan Region. The PCAC two weeks ago released a report, Where is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Transit Oriented Development, calling on the MTA and its operating agencies to work in partnership with State and local governments, community organizations, and private developers to encourage TOD, which it defines as "a pedestrian-friendly, compact, mixed-use development pattern that lies within walking distance of a transit station and contains or adjoins a core commercial area."

For New York, the issue is the suburbs more than the city--after all, as one panelist pointed out, most development in the city could be considered TOD. Or, perhaps not. Though the symposium conspicuously avoided controversial developments like Hudson Yards and Atlantic Yards, Jon Orcutt, executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign
offered a caution in the Q&A period. “There’s a lot of bad car development going on,” he said, citing big box stores on Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx or in Red Hook.

Even projects near transportation hubs, he added, citing Atlantic Yards, show “it’s possible to do design that isn’t the best transit-oriented development.” TSTC has issued some tough criticism of the transit plan for Atlantic Yards and contributed to the criticisms voiced by BrooklynSpeaks.

Recommendations

Larry Gould of NYC Transit said some posit TOD as “strong medicine. The fact is, TOD creates wonderful places to live.” Still, he lamented that in many suburban communities the zoning code doesn’t allow mixed-use facilities.

Indeed, the PCAC recommends "coordinating State policy and providing State resources to assist local governments in planning for transit-friendly development, linking land use and transportation in the regional transportation planning process," seeking increased resources for TOD, and working closely with local governments.

Community must be heard

But how get there? "It is a community engagement process,” said Vivian Baker of NJ Transit, which has been planning developments at land and parking lots near train stations statewide.

Long Island, reported Eric Alexander of Vision Long Island, progressive planners are fighting a legacy of single-use zoning for single-family residences that have left isolated car-dependent neighborhoods. There are numerous TOD projects in the works, including on around Nassau Coliseum.

“We need 50,000 units of affordable housing,” he said. One small but important change: a willingness to embrace something common in the city, apartments above stores. In the village of Farmingdale will move from one-story retail to two-story retail-plus-housing. “We don’t have to freak people out with seven-, eight-, ten-, 15-story plans,” he said.

What a difference a suburb makes. In Brooklyn, of course, Forest City Ratner offered fictional 15-story buildings at Atlantic Yards to distract people from the real heights.

“We have to engage the citizenry,” Alexander added. “It’s sometimes ornery, difficult, challenging, [but] they have to own these and say, ‘Hey, this is my plan.’”

To move forward, he said, planners must “educate the community on density,” must have incentives for development (such as credits to clean up brownfields), and must engage the community.

The recommendations sounded more like an endorsement of ULURP, the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, rather than the fast-track process used by the Empire State Development Corporation for Atlantic Yards.

Schematics necessary

Robert Lane of the Regional Plan Association advised that, besides town hall meetings, charettes, and other public meetings, planners must offer photo simulations of projects so the public can evaluate what’s on the table. It was a reminder to me that most press outlets have ignored simulations of the scale of Atlantic Yards, such as this from the Environmental Simulation Center for the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods.

He encouraged planners to find the intersection of transit-agency priorities, community-based goals and objectives, and technical constraints. (For AY, add to that political influences, such as the desire for a sports team, or a developer's history in the borough.) “If you’re honest with people, they will help you get there.”

“Only time is the true indicator” of whether TOD works, said Joseph Chan of the MTA.

Queens coming?

Elisa Picca of the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) observed that LIRR access to Grand Central, by 2013, could have an enormous influence, cutting commuter time to the East Side of Manhattan and also leading to further development along the line. (Does that boost Sunnyside Yards as an option for the Nets?)

NYC Transit's Gould had no slideshow--he gestured out the window at the SoHo neighborhood. “You’re looking at a landscape that’s TOD,” he said, citing contiguous neighborhoods, narrow streets to slow traffic, high transit use, and a walkable design with “zero setback on buildings” away from the sidewalk.

He cited some promising TODs in New York: the Arverne development in Far Rockaway; the new Stillwell Avenue terminal, “designed in part to jump-start redevelopment in Coney Island”--a location, of course, that some have pushed for a Brooklyn arena--and the extension of the 7 subway line, “which makes it possible to develop the West Side.”

The assumption, Gould said, is “that you must provide capacity.” That raises questions in the Atlantic Yards context, as experts examining the issue for the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods have challenged the state's assumption that there is sufficient capacity for the planning project.

“We should keep an eye on each development and try to bring it to the highest quality of transit-oriented standards,” Gould concluded. And that’s what stimulated Orcutt’s comment about Atlantic Yards.

Gould responded that the MTA had the technical chops to analyze the use of platforms and stairs, and to run trains to deal with crowd surges. In the larger picture, he acknowledged, “virtually all these developments go through the policy and political structure. We technicians participate in that structure.”

Whither BRT? Flatbush Avenue won't be first test for fast buses

Will there be Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)--with a dedicated express lane, staggered stoplights, and perhaps new loading platforms--on Flatbush Avenue past the proposed Atlantic Yards site? Maybe someday, though it's not the priority in the city's new test of BRT.

Will BRT be considered in the Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), due perhaps within weeks from the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC)? It's possible.

However, the Draft EIS, issued in July, didn't mention the city's plans to test BRT on Flatbush Avenue, even though dramatic improvements in transportation would be required to make such a megaproject work--and Flatbush Avenue could benefit from BRT whether or not Atlantic Yards proceeds.

(Above: the city's Flatbush Avenue BRT concept plan, which envisions new dedicated bus lanes north of Grand Army Plaza.)

Clashing plans

Plans to implement BRT on Flatbush would conflict with developer Forest City Ratner's current plan for drop-off lane on Flatbush to serve the arena block. In its comments on the Draft EIS, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign said:
One significant oversight in this regard in the EIS is any consideration of how the Flatbush Avenue drop-off lane is supposed to mesh with the current NYC DOT/NYC Transit effort that is considering a bus rapid transit line on Flatbush Avenue. Bus lanes on Flatbush and therefore bus service to and from the project site will be significantly disrupted by taxi, limousine and car traffic pulling across it to the planned drop-off area. The need for drop off lanes is not made clear in the DEIS. We urge that the Flatbush drop-off lane be removed from consideration, that rapid and high-frequency bus service along Flatbush Ave be fully designed into the project and that drive-up auto/taxi access be re-routed and restricted to smaller streets such as 6th Ave and Dean St.

Will that drop-off lane remain in the Final EIS? Will BRT be mentioned?

The Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods (CBN), in its response to the DEIS, also criticized the failure to mention BRT:
Because of the scale of the proposed project, transportation for the Atlantic Yards should be planned in coordination with the numerous other transportation plans and studies underway. The DEIS fails to incorporate proposals from these studies on the pretext that none are “final.”
One example: the city's BRT study.

CBN experts Brian Ketcham and Carolyn Konheim of Community Consulting Services wrote that bus statistics point to a crying need for BRT:
When we re-examine bus ridership using historic growth patterns of each line, it is clear that the addition of Atlantic Yards bus trips will put 7 out of 10 bus lines over capacity, with a demand on the B38 and B41 that warrants more significant measures such as Bus Rapid Transit.
No mention is made of bus advances under study, like Bus Rapid Transit, to serve high use feeder corridors and subway-starved, high auto use areas. Bus Rapid Transit lines being considered by the MTA along perimeter streets around the Atlantic Yards project are not mentioned in the DEIS, yet BRT infrastructure could very well interfere with the pedestrian infrastructure and vehicle drop-off lanes proposed in the project. Once again, although the Applicant boasts that Atlantic Yards is an example of “transit-oriented development,” no additional surface mass transit is proposed, nor is any additional rail transit proposed.

They said that the environmental review should, at a minimum, include a recommendation to accelerate implementation of "Bus Rapid Transit" corridors, including Flatbush Avenue.

The B41 bus traverses Flatbush Avenue; it has a "Limited" version that makes selected stops, but there are no special bus lanes or procedures to facilitate it.

The city's test case: Nostrand Avenue

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has since 2004 studied BRT, and earlier this year identified 15 transportation corridors in the five boroughs that could benefit from--and handle--BRT. The three from Brooklyn under considration: Flatbush Avenue; Flatlands Avenue/Kings Highway; and Nostrand Avenue.

Last week the New York Times reported that the MTA had chosen one route in each borough for a test case--in Brooklyn, Nostrand Avenue. The Times quoted city Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall as saying that two of the five routes--which she wouldn't identify--would be functional by the fall 2007, and the others by 2008. The Times reported:
Stops would be spaced from one-half mile to a full mile apart. The bus lanes would be painted a special color, and the buses would get a distinctive paint job, to differentiate them from their pokier cousins. Cameras would be mounted on buses and bus stops to photograph trucks and cars blocking the bus lanes, so tickets could be sent to the vehicles' owners.

On StreetsBlog, Aaron Naparstek pointed to Bogotá, Colombia, where BRT has helped make the city (7 million people, nearly as large as NYC) become a model for urban development. He noted that in Bogotá (and Paris, right), buses get their own, physically-separated right of way, while in New York, BRT would be vulnerable to double-parkers and other scofflaws.

Tweaks and twists

As the Times noted, to move things along, passengers on some buses could pay before boarding. Indeed, a simple rule requiring everyone to exit the bus from the rear would make service more rapid--though that might be physically untenable for some riders. (In Rio de Janeiro, as I observed a few years ago, bus riders enter from the back, pay a ticketseller at a turnstile, and exit through the front. Buses move like rockets.)

The Times reported:
One of the greatest obstacles to the program could be political. To clear the way for bus lanes, parking would be eliminated along some stretches of the routes, which could lead to protests from business owners or residents.

Even with all that, the Nostrand Avenue bus would move people 20 percent more rapidly, according to city estimates.

How would BRT on Flatbush work? Stay tuned for the Final EIS. Then again, it may not come up until after the Nostrand Avenue test case--and that pilot project might not begin until 2008.

Times Sports section: Nets move assumed (& corrected)

From an article in the Sports section of today's New York Times, headlined Nets’ Hopes Riding on Three Main Attractions:
Still, another early playoff exit would be disappointing for this team and its New Jersey fan base, which could be growing antsy given the Nets’ coming move to Brooklyn.

The Atlantic Yards project hasn't been approved. The move is "planned," or "expected," or "hoped-for." At this point, it's inaccurate to describe it as "coming."

[November 2 update. The Times published a correction:
A sports article yesterday about the Nets’ three main attractions — Vince Carter, Richard Jefferson and Jason Kidd — referred incorrectly to the team’s plans to move to Brooklyn. The team has announced that it will move to an arena to be built as part of the Atlantic Yards development, but because that project has not yet been approved, the move to that particular venue is not a certainty.]

Housing displacement? The map points to Prospect Heights/Crown Heights

Maybe Christopher Morris, the real estate investor quoted in the 10/21/06 New York Times as anticipating a rise in property values because of the Atlantic Yards project, was right. Or maybe he was riding on trends that already existed, trends that suggest that blight and stagnation are trumped by development.

Indeed, as Brooklyn College sociologist Aviva Zeltzer-Zubida recently reported at a panel in June, "Housing Displacement in Brooklyn: A Discussion," there’s some stark evidence about gentrification trends, and they point directly to areas in the orbit of the Atlantic Yards proposal. It's not common for areas of poverty to nudge up against areas of wealth, but when they do, the poorer areas are vulnerable to displacement.

Looking at the map

That evidence is based on 2000 census information, which captured the beginning of the trend. In the map of Brooklyn’s housing patterns she produced, Zeltzer-Zubida reported a multi-faced segregation--with poorer households in the tracts colored red-orange and green.

She counted four types of housing tracts in Brooklyn, but most people live in the first two. In type 1 (red-orange), where 60% of Brooklyn residents live, the median per capita income in 2000 was $12,090; in type 2 (green), where nearly a third of Brooklynites live, it was almost $21,000. (The median Brooklyn household income in 2000--not the same as per capita--was $32,135 and certainly has gone up. Still, the poorer majority must be offset by a much wealthier minority to reach $32,135.)

But her analysis went well beyond income to include race, large families, owners vs. renters, and housing costs, among other things. In type 1 households, about 30% of residents are white; in type 2, it’s almost 60%. In the blue and yellow (types 3 and 4) tracts, incomes are considerably higher and more than 70% of residents are white.

Honing in on displacement

In the type 1 census tracts, about a quarter of the people pay more than half their income in rent, which means their tenancy is precarious. “What I think is going on, and if we think about housing displacement, and the bottom line here is that orange next to blue or yellow presents risk of housing displacement. Somebody told me that I should show this to real estate developers and make a lot of money,” Zeltzer-Zubida said, to some laughter.

Indeed, if you look at the right side of the small map, where the blue nudges up against orange-red below a black line, that tract in orange-red includes Prospect Heights and Crown Heights.

What the Census says

My eyeball analysis is that the orange-red tract east of blue is between Atlantic Avenue and Bergen Street, and Vanderbilt and Grand avenues--just east of the Atlantic Yards footprint. (Grand Avenue is just east of Washington Avenue, which formers the border between Prospect Heights and Crown Heights.)

The incomes for the tract, according to the Census (below) do not precisely conform to what Zeltzer-Zubida reported, because she was analyzing per capita income (which depends on household income divided by household size), while the Census focused on household income.

Still, the Census confirms a dramatic transition going east from Vanderbilt Avenue below Atlantic Avenue, at the center of the map. Whereas the section to the west, between Sixth Avenue and Vanderbilt, is the wealthiest category (dark green), going east, the next tract, between Vanderbilt and Grand north of Bergen, is the middle category (light green), thus skipping the intermediate category (medium green).

(The wealthy segment would include most of the Atlantic Yards project. While there's a diversity of incomes there, including rent-stablized apartments, the presence of the Newswalk condos and some other high-end buildings undoubtedly raises the average income.)

Last month, in a New York magazine article headlined Brooklyn is Burning, with the subtitle “Do development and arson go hand in hand?” Mark Jacobson observed:
Within three months, from December 7, 2005, to February 24, 2006, there were eleven such fires along Prospect Heights’ “Pacific Street Corridor,” formerly home to single-story factories and flat-fix establishments but now part of the realty zone sandwiched between the escalating rent sprawl of Williamsburg and Fort Greene and the proposed Atlantic Yards megaproject to the West.

So, would the Atlantic Yards project stem gentrification, as ACORN and other proponents argue, or accelerate it? The component of affordable housing contrasts with other luxury development in the area, and thus has been seen to balance gentrification--except that much of the affordable housing wouldn't be accessible to average Brooklynites.

Also, given Zeltzer-Zubida's theory, the acceleration of luxury development near a poorer census tract makes vulnerable poorer neighbors who don't live in rent-regulated housing. It should be no surprise that luxury condos have begun to appear on and around Washington Avenue, in the transition zone.

The development map

The map from the November 2005 issue of the Real Deal lists oodles of condo projects. Some of the info isn't correct--there's no plan to develop 636 Pacific Street, as far as I know, since it's a building slated to be demolished for the Atlantic Yards project--but you get the general picture. (Click to enlarge)

It certainly raises questions about the Empire State Development Corporation's Blight Study, which contends that only government action can change the 22-acre proposed project site:
Given the pattern of successful economic development in ATURA [Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Area] north of Atlantic Avenue and general neglect on the project site, south of Atlantic Avenue, it is highly unlikely that the blighted conditions currently present will be removed without public action.