Sparse turnout on Day 2 of hearing on “Ghost Project Plan”; Jeffries, Kruger testify; open mike night for BUILD, unions

The second day of the two-day Atlantic Yards hearing held by the Empire State Development Corporation was even more of an anti-climax than the first day.

Without a contingent from ACORN and with only a handful of project opponents, no more than 100 people attended during the 2-5 pm day session and far fewer showed up for the 6-8 pm evening session, leaving a sea of empty seats in the Klitgord Auditorium of New York City Technical College. During the latter, hearing officer Edward Kramer several times paused to go “off the record” before new people showed to testify.

In fact, the hearing at times seemed like open mike night for members of the construction unions and Community Benefits Agreement signatory (and Forest City Ratner-funded) BUILD (Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development), who touted the expected benefits of the project.

(Photos by Tracy Collins)

By my estimation, fewer opponents and critics attended the two-day hearing than the 130 who attended the June 9 update on AY held at Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Fort Greene.

While the reasons--location, weather, vacations, belief that the effort was futile?--are unclear, it suggested that, however much residents in the area near the project dislike AY, it’s tougher to get them out. (Still, nearly all candidates for seats in two nearby City Council districts either oppose or are critical of the project and Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn mustered a vigorous press conference/rally before the hearing Wednesday.)

Some telling testimony

Still, some telling testimony was lodged by project opponents, including Patti Hagan (left) of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition, who called the Modified General Project Plan under consideration a “Ghost Project Plan” because it lacks a site plan, renderings, and a current financial analysis.

Michelle de la Uz of the Fifth Avenue Committee, ramped up previous criticism, said the benefits promised came at much too high a cost: "I believe this project is flawed beyond belief, and ESDC would be wise in stopping this miscarriage in its tracks."

Two elected officials came to speak, following a larger group who spoke on Wednesday. Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, always somewhat on the fence about AY, reminded representatives of the ESDC of legislation--passed by the state Legislature but not yet signed by Governor David Paterson--that they act according to their fiduciary duty. He called for both a commitment to affordable housing as well as a Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement requested by project critics and opponents.

And state Senator Carl Kruger, always a project booster--and also a recipient of campaign cash from FCR officials--continued his vociferous support.

Minimal coverage; process going forward

There was minimal press coverage; the New York Times’s blog The Local sent another “citizen journalist,” whose report does not mention Jeffries or Kruger. (I attended the second segment of the hearing but also have relied on videos, all shot by Jonathan Barkey, to report on the first segment.)

By the way, the Brooklyn Eagle coverage of the first day of the hearing erroneously says that the project must go back to the Public Authorities Control Board--an ESDC official last week said no. Another error: the Eagle states that there's a major change "[t]his is now largely a public plan" in which the state will own most of the land and then lease it Forest City Ratner; actually, that was contemplated in the 2006 Modified General Project Plan (see p. 2 of the PDF).

(Above, Marie Louis of BUILD.)

The ESDC will accept public comments on the plan--essentially changes in the financing of the project and a revised deal between Forest City Ratner and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)--until August 31.

The ESDC board is expected to approve the project during a meeting in early September. Before that, however, the ESDC has committed to another informational session, a bookend to the one held July 22, though no date has been announced and it’s not clear if FCR will show up.

(In photo, ESDC attorney Steve Matlin confers with Forest City Ratner's Jane Marshall.)

Also, before the approval, it’s possible that new litigation spearheaded by DDDB may complicate the situation. A lawsuit, for example, against the MTA, has been discussed but not announced.

Call for SEIS from BrooklynSpeaks

While Jeffries pointedly has not stood with Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, the main project opponents, he testified that he joined BrooklynSpeaks--the mend-it-don’t-end-it coalition that has gotten increasingly tough on the project--in calling on the ESDC to conduct a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) “to assess the impact of changes to the phasing and design of the Atlantic Yards project prior to approving a modified plan for the site.”

Jeffries reminded the ESDC of the letter, which was announced on the eve of the hearing. The letter was signed by State Senator Velmanette Montgomery and City Council Member Letitia James, both project opponents, as well as Assemblyman Jim Brennan, who has ratcheted up his criticism and stood Wednesday with DDDB, and Assemblywoman Joan Millman, who’s been critical but closer to the fence. It was also signed by the civic groups that are part of BrooklynSpeaks.

The DBP’s take

Joe Chan, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership--which is funded in part by the city--put aside his prepared remark to “keep this simple, and speak from the heart.”



“My job is to ensure that Downtown Brooklyn grows and continues to grow as an economic center,” he said. “Let me make it very clear that there is no other single project that will have a greater positive economic impact on Downtown Brooklyn and Brooklyn for decades to come than the Atlantic Yards. For all the reasons that have been mentioned—it’s economic opportunity, it’s affordable housing, it’s also treating Brooklyn the way Brooklyn should be treated—to think our downtown does not have an arena, does not have a public gathering space for thousands of people.. .is a shame. This is Brooklyn’s time. This is a once-in-a lifetime opportunity. I don’t want to be standing here... 50 years from now talking about how we lost the Nets like the Dodgers were lost in 1957.”

But Brooklyn lost the Dodgers not merely because of the intransigence of planning czar Robert Moses but because there was a public consensus against providing Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley with the low-cost land he wanted to build a new stadium near the Atlantic Terminal--not the AY site but what is now Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Center mall.

An effort at rebuttal


Given the paucity of speakers, twice yesterday those testifying took advantage of the opportunity to speak again. After Chan spoke, Audrey Doyle, a 40-year resident--which she announced because everyone seemingly was claiming bona fides--returned to the podum,.

Doyle in her first round of tesitmony said she had been opposed to the original plan, and opposes the modified plan, questioning “pie-in-the-sky promises” of jobs and housing, as well as warning of parking lots and an arena delivering private profits to Forest City Ratner.

She returned to recall how Chan once attended a block association meeting. He was asked him about a construction site at 80 DeKalb Avenue nearby. “He said he didn’t know anything about that building,” Doyle recounted, noting that, within two days, she found online a rendering of FCR’s planned building.

“I don’t trust the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, I don’t Joe Chan, I don’t trust Forest City Ratner,” she said. “I certainly don’t trust ESDC, but I hope they do the right thing in this case.”

A lingering question about ESDC’s AY volunteer

Doyle also raised a question that most likely had been planted by others in the opposition: “Who is Susan Rahm, what is her position in ESDC, and what is her connection with the Atlantic Yards project… We really wonder what it is that she does.”

Indeed, Rahm is a volunteer, as I’ve pointed out, in the unusual position of playing a key consultant’s role on ESDC’s Atlantic Yards team. However, while ESDC sent several staffers working on AY to the two-day public hearing, Rahm was not present.

Historic district

Also, Prospect Heights resident (and Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats' rep) Raul Rothblatt referenced the recent landmarking process for Prospect Heights and said that the ESDC did not respond to his comments he submitted during the process in 2006.

"This is a very important historic district," he said. "It is a glorious neighborhood. If you look at the ESDC documents, it paints an image of a decrepit, blighted neighborhood, and that just bears no relationship to reality, as far as I can tell. And I would think the LPC [Landmarks Preservation Commission] would agree. If you look at the final designation map, it basically cuts close to the Atlantic Yards footprint as possible, because the feeling was, this historic neighborhood... is being threatened by the Atlantic Yards proposal, and taht was not addressed in the environmental impact statement, at all."

(The final map of the landmarks district cuts as close to the AY footprint as possible--indeed, a planned parking lot would be bookended by “fingers” of the district.)



The impact on Prospect Heights

Gib Veconi of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council, which has spearheaded the landmarking effort and worked with the Municipal Art Society to form BrooklynSpeaks, warned that the likely outcome of the project as it stands would be blight, not benefit to Brooklyn, with the impact on surrounding neighborhoods.

The project could include an arena, one or two buildings, and surface parking lots.

Had the ESDC proceeded in 2006 with a credible analysis of the project finances, he said, the changes now sought might have been foretold. He warned that ESDC appears to be fast-tracking the project without a site plan, and that the agency is setting the stage for another meeting two years from now to again revise Atlantic Yards.

Bruce = GW?

Lance Woodward of BUILD contended that, among great people who have through Brooklyn, "two specifically have changed Brooklyn for the better," one of them George Washington and the second Bruce Ratner. "He has done more for the borough of Brooklyn than any other human being that I am aware of, in terms of development, prosperity and progressive advancement."

Veconi popped back up to discuss how Washington, as an underdog, led the Battle of Brooklyn and went on to continue to fight an uphill battle: "He's the antithesis of a large real estate developer" who enlists government to get a piece of land "and then be able to exploit it for private gain.""

de la Uz on project costs

Brooklyn deserves all of the things promised with Atlantic Yards, said de la Uz of the Fifth Avenue Committee, which builds and manages affordable housing,

But “the project was never designed to actually deliver those things,” she said, citing affordable housing, living wage jobs, and open space. “The revised project does even less,” she said, “and it does so at an incredibly high price tag for the public.”

She noted that FAC was recently chosen with a team of for-profit developers to develop a project at Public Place in Gowanus that “will deliver more affordable housing” than the revised Atlantic Yards plan, at one-tenth the cost to the public. (An apples to apples comparison isn't easy, however, so let's just say the cost issue deserves more scrutiny._

“We have to ask ourselves: are we getting what we deserve for our tax dollars?” de la Uz asked. “If there has been a true public process… we could have a project that would actually deliver on the promises.”

Other supporters

Also testifying were representatives of Downtown Brooklyn entities such as the New York Marriott at Brooklyn Bridge; Polytechnic Institute of NYU; and the Brooklyn Hospital Center. Also testifying were several people from ReBUILD, which places construction workers at job sites.

ReBUILD head Darnell Canada cast the equation as simple. Critics of AY have the luxury to worry about issues like shadows or traffic--required areas of the state environmental review--but those “are insignifciant to people who worry about basic needs” like food, clothing, and shelter.

“They come against a man who wants to be benevolent,” Canada said of developer Bruce Ratner, noting FCR’s plan to use union labor.

Of course, taking Canada’s argument to the extreme suggests that environmental and land use controls--how about housing in Prospect Park, as NLG suggested--should be subordinated to the “Build It Now” philosophy.

Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries



Jeffries referenced the circus-like atmosphere that sometimes accompany these hearings, noting that the public officials who testify go back to neighborhoods like Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge. (That sounded like a dig at state Senator Marty Golden, a Bay Ridge Republican and loyal AY supporter, who disrupted the May 29 state Senate oversight hearing with his entrance.)

Jeffries, sounding sympathetic to many of the people who testified in favor of the project, said the ESDC should keep in mind "people desperate for employement opportunities" and "people gentrified and displaced." He cited the BrooklynSpeaks letter which articulated his concerns.

"Everyone seems to agree that, if anything should be built there, it should be affordable housing, for the people who have been pushed out," he said. "You must make sure that the affordable housing is not held hostage to the arena. The affordable housing could be built right now." (Well, that's not the developer's priority and, without plans for the arena block, it's not clear how that would work.)

"Second, you must make sure you enforce the promise that the developer made to build on-site affordable condominiums," he said, referencing a Forest City Ratner pledge for 200 on-site condos that has not been memorialized in any state documentation.

He warned the ESDC to make sure that the community "doesn't get shortchanged" by 200 or 300 affordable units over a 12-year period. While the developer has pledged more units and faster in the arena block, it remains possible, according to current documentation, to build just 300 affordable units without penalty.

State Senator Carl Kruger



Kruger began by praising Forest City Ratner's Beekman Tower in Lower Manhattan. "We're talking about incredible things happening," he said of AY. "We're talking about office buildings being built... dreams realized for affordable housing... a world-class sports arena... thousands of jobs... a stimulus package, when it's fully blown, will mean billions of dollars coming back into our city."

(Billions? There's no such claim in new city revenue; in fact, the New York City Independent Budget Office estimates that the arena would be a money-loser for the city.)

"True, it's not the Atlantic Yards we once envisioned," Kruger acknowledged, but said it had the desired components: arena, housing, commercial realization. "It takes blight and it eradicates it from an area that desperately needs it," he said, contradicting others' descriptions of Prospect Heights.

"It's a sad state of affairs when our economy's threatened," he said. "It's even a sadder state of affairs when we're looking to look in a negative way at what a great proposal Atlantic Yards is." He went on to praise Ratner's work on MetroTech.

Michael White of Noticing New York



White, an urban planner and lawyer, specifically targeted ACORN's plan for affordable housing, saying that the low-income housing was required by the tax code and most of the rest would be at market rates.

BUILD President James Caldwell



Caldwell, as is typical, began by citing his belief in Jesus Christ and his history in military service. The latter, he said, was a vision of diversity, while Brooklyn has had a segregated economy.

"Along came Forest City Ratner," he said. "If you need a job, color do no make a difference," he said, taking pains to avoid rhetoric from the meeting of July 22, where he said, "Maybe you don’t want to hear it, but black folks are not working in our community."

Caldwell acknowledged that he's been criticized for saying Bruce Ratner's "like an angel sent from God" but reiterated his belief. Responding to a previous speaker's criticism that there were no jobs for locals at MetroTech, he said of AY, "The project hasn't even started yet, but we have been able to put over 200 people to work."

I'd note that, undeniably, any large project creates jobs and, if tailored via contractual guarantees, can steer jobs and job training to locals. Many other projects don't, but those using public money often do, even if they do not go as far (in New York) as the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement (CBA).

More importantly, the cost of the CBA might be seen as one element of the developer's bottom line. Support for organizations like BUILD is a big deal for those organizations. But if Forest City Ratner can save, say, $100 million on a new railyard, it's easier to absorb those costs.

PHAC's Patti Hagan



Hagan, a 30-year resident of Prospect Heights, said “It’s nonsense to ask the public to comment, much less ESDC to approve the Modified GPP, without a plan. The ESDC cannot be serious.”

She cited the lack of a financial analysis, a description of the height and footprint of buildings, or an SEIS. “To rubberstamp Atlantic Yards in such deplorable ignorance is to shirk your responsibility as a Public Benefit Corporation,” she said.

“This Atlantic Yards Modified Ghost Project Plan is nothing but a Bush-style faith-based initiative,” she said, adding that, “At the July 22 Atlantic Yards informational meeting, it was as if Donald Rumsfeld took over and answered for the ESDC.”

“ We were told that ‘the MTA has determined that the upgraded yard is the upgraded yard,’” she said, referencing the fact that, while there are plans for modernized facilities, the Vanderbilt Yard would get smaller, not bigger.

Union carpenter Derrick Taylor



Bleu Liverpool, an employee at Freddy's

Why the DOT's cars-on-the-sidewalk plan was approved, why it wasn't announced, and how safety has been improved

Yes, it really is kosher for the Department of Transportation (DOT) to approve temporary use of a sidewalk for vehicles, as it did for [updated] 12 weeks--beginning this week--on Pacific Street going east of Sixth Avenue in Prospect Heights, while utility work goes on nearby.

However, after inspecting the initial configuration of the site--perhaps in response to concerns raised online once Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn on Tuesday posted a photo of a potentially dangerous situation--the DOT took additional action to increase safety.

Indeed, as I commented Wednesday on Streetsblog, I walked by there that morning around 9 and a pedestrian--walking west, approaching Sixth Avenue--was smack in the middle of the sidewalk-turned-road, at approximately the location of the black car in the second photo. There was a uniformed traffic cop in the intersection helping steer traffic, but I didn't see (or hear) him motioning for the pedestrian to get out of the way. The pedestrian didn't look confused, but she sure wasn't aware of the change.

Changes made

DOT spokesman Scott Gastel responded on Wednesday:
We approved a plan at this location to permit two-way traffic using a portion of the sidewalk during sewer installation for approximately 12 weeks. This kind of arrangement is not unique and has been used on projects such as the Second Avenue Subway and on major projects on 34th Street in Queens or Richmond Terrace on Staten Island.

We inspected the location this morning and instructed the contractor to replace the wooden barrier with one made of concrete and to extend it in both directions while maintaining at least a five-foot-wide pedestrian walkway, and to install additional signs as was part of the original, approved plan. We will continue to monitor the area.

As the photo above shows, the pedestrian barrier now extends west to the light pole. The photo below right shows that an additional barrier has been set up at the southwest corner of Pacific Street and Sixth Avenue. (Photo above and photos below by Tracy Collins.) It's unclear, however, why the original, approved plan was not fully implemented--I haven't heard back yet from a query posed yesterday to Gastel.

Caught off-guard

However, it does seem that both DOT and the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), the agency in charge of the project, were caught somewhat off-guard by an unexpected change in the utility work schedule.

As announced in an ESDC Construction Update for the weeks beginning July 6 and July 13, work related to the required Maintenance and Protection of Traffic (MPT) was to commence, but the MPT, as approved by the DOT, was only to include work on Sixth Avenue, with barricades installed to isolate the Chamber 4 (sewer) work from vehicular and pedestrian traffic, and the west lane of Sixth closed between Pacific and Dean streets.

No announcement was made in the Construction Update for the weeks beginning July 20 and July 27; it was issued a week before the DOT implemented the sidewalk-as-street change.

Shift in work causes changes

ESDC spokeswoman Elizabeth Mitchell explained:
As I believe you are aware, the Maintenance and Protection of Traffic (MPT) was installed pursuant to a plan that was approved by DOT. The recent shift to this current configuration was due to a field condition encountered during the construction of Chamber 4 – during the course of this work, the contractor came across private (ConEd) utilities that were not supposed to be in the area.

As a result, they shifted to Chamber 5 work, requiring the reconfiguration of the MPT. Given the real time nature of this, there was no way for it to be reported in the Construction update. The current configuration is expected to be in place for the next 2 weeks – but, note, this is subject to how the work progresses and conditions in the field.

I asked if the traffic changes were to last 12 weeks, as the DOT message seemed to indicate.

Her reponse:
The total timeframe for the construction/installation of Chambers 4 and 5 is 12 weeks. The current configuration of the MPT is estimated to be 2 weeks. This 2 weeks is within the 12 weeks.

(Update: the 12-week time frame holds.)

Mitchell added:
Furthermore, inquiries were also made directly to the DOT and they requested that there be some modifications made to make it directionally clearer to pedestrians and motorists on where they needed to go in the intersection. This included signage, stripping of the crosswalk and installing barriers/bollards that clearly separated pedestrian and motorists. This has all been done.

Better process?

Given the consternation that ensued regarding an approved but somewhat alarming situation, the Construction Updates, issued every two weeks by the ESDC but prepared by developer Forest City Ratner, obviously can't suffice in all cases.

As pre-construction work and utility work proceeds--and, especially, if arena construction proceeds--it's hardly unlikely that similar situations will occur. Perhaps the ESDC could consider an additional layer of communication, whether via press release or even (!) a project blog, to ensure that community members get information even faster. After all, there is an ombudsman in place.

Indeed, as Collins notes in photo above right, even the new configuration has its flaws, given that the pedestrians in the background didn't seem to realize they were in the traffic lane.

On the radio, Nets' Yormark continues to spin about housing, litigation, arena timing, and arena renderings

In an interview on ESPN Radio's Seth Everett Show, as No Land Grab puts it, "Newark Star-Ledger columnist Steve Politi and New Jersey Nets' CEO Brett Yormark give the reality and fantasy on the state of the Nets in back-to-back interviews."

NLG suggests:
The award for best delusional Yormark line? A tie between "we're having one of the best off-seasons that we've had in years" and "I think the world of Nets basketball right now couldn't be better."

Affordable housing

Well, there are other contenders. Yormark perhaps shouldn't be expected to know the nuts and bolts of Atlantic Yards details, but, if so, the uber-salesman shouldn't be so confident as he spews inaccuracies.

"First and foremost, the driver for the project, in many respects, has been job creation and affordable housing," Yormark said. "Those two key components Bruce Ratner has never wavered on. As recently as a month ago, he reiterated, when he started the project there were 6400 units, half of would be affordable... and there would be 6400 when the project was completed, affordable and market-rate rentals."

Actually, there were supposed to be only 4500 units total at the beginning; three of the four office towers around the arena were converted to housing. Half of those unit were supposed to be affordable. The developer later added 1930 market-rate condos.

The renderings

Yormark disavowed the renderings of the Ellerbe Becket-designed arena: "I hate to use the word leaked. They were inappropriate renderings, not approved by us.... 30-45 days, you'll see some great architecture."

As noted, even if they were leaked at first, they later appeared as illustrations in the Empire State Development Corporation's revised documents.

State of the Nets

"Our fans have never wavered," Yormark asserted. "They stay committed. We're having one of the best off-seasons that we've had in years. I think the world of Nets basketball right now couldn't be better.

OK, but From NetsDaily summarized the situation:
A consensus seems to be emerging about the Nets among pundits: They’re going to be awful, maybe God awful, next season, but with a lot of good young players, they’re moving in the right direction.

Arena timing

As for the timing of the project, Yormark said, "We are very confident, as we've stated earlier, that we will break ground this fall. We plan on being in Brooklyn for the 2011-12 season. We are committed to that, and we feel very, very good about it."

"We'll be ready to break ground this fall, it's a two-year build, and we'll be in Brooklyn for the '11-'12 season," he added. "We've shown great perseverence, we're committed, and we'll get there.

Well, the Empire State Development Corporation, more circumspect, has predicted construction by end of the year, not by fall.

Yormark did confirm, as others have suggested, that the arena could be built in two years; the earlier design by Frank Gehry was to take at least two-and-a-half years.

Yormark is known for dubious statements and ever-changing predictions regarding the arena opening date.

As for whether the arena could open at the beginning of the 2011-12 season, that's very unlikely. Could the team move during the season? It's not out of the question, but it certainly would not make things simple for season ticketholders who live near the current arena in New Jersey. The distance is not far, but travel can be dicey.

Litigation scorecard

Yormark continued to repeat the canard about Forest City Ratner's alleged perfect record in court: "We're 25 and 0 in litigation."

First, many of those case involve not FCR but the Empire State Development Corporation. Also, and perhaps most importantly, the eminent domain appeal wouldn't have been put on the calendar of the state Court of Appeals in October if FCR and its allies had a perfect record.

At lightly-attended (and sometimes raucous) public hearing, dueling electeds, some déjà vu, and a “sham process for a sham project”

In the end, the first day of the public hearing on the revised Atlantic Yards plan, though hardly uneventful, was less raucous and more lightly attended than many expected. Many, but hardly all, of the arguments recycled those at the epic public hearing held on 8/23/06.

The key new argument for opponents and critics emerged from information--or, more precisely, the lack thereof--from the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) and developer Forest City Ratner (FCR).

(Photos by Tracy Collins except as two marked below.)

The absence of a site plan, arena renderings, economic projections, a solid timetable, and a meeting with the cops over security informed a series of arguments, backed by several elected officials, that the approval is premature. They called for either a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement or for the project to be scrapped.

The most telling piece of theater occurred when Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn spokesman Daniel Goldstein went up to testify and, before speaking about “a sham process for a sham project,” methodically altered the landscape behind him, placing placards with question marks over the three ESDC-provided panels that offered minimal information about the project as it stands. DDDB had both local elected officials as well as several candidates for two City Council races--in districts near the project site--in its corner.

(Indeed, the New York Daily News, the only one of the three daily newspapers to cover the hearing in print, headlined its story Developer Bruce Ratner doesn't offer renderings of Atlantic Yards plan. The New York Times blog The Local, again deploying former Brooklyn Paper reporter Jess Wisloski as an unpaid "citizen journalist," headlined its coverage Atlantic Yards Hearing Attracts Politicians, though, arguably, it was equally interesting for the politicians who didn't show--such as City Council Member and Public Advocate candidate Bill de Blasio. The Brooklyn Paper's roundup coverage was headlined Atlantic antics! A week of Yards hearings did little to change things. The Brooklyn Paper also published A tale of two Yards at hearing, quoting several individuals.)

Meanwhile, project supporters, notably from the construction unions and the housing advocacy group ACORN (left), reiterated their call for jobs and housing, arguing that the economic situation made it more rather than less important to move ahead. (ACORN has been bailed out by Forest City Ratner.) Along with Borough President Marty Markowitz, the elected officials testifying (or sending representatives) supporting the project mostly came from Southern Brooklyn and other areas more distant from the site.

Calmer than meeting last week

Despite the periodic sound and fury, the event--given that no one official was supposed to answer questions--was far less enlightening than the July 22 informational meeting hosted by three community boards, where representatives of the ESDC and FCR were forced to answer or evade questions from the public. Several ESDC executives (right) were in attendance, but no board members were present.

(From left are attorneys Steve Matlin and Joe Petillo; planner Rachel Shatz; attorney Anita Laremont, in second row; and spokesman Warner Johnston.)

The Klitgord Auditorium at New York City Technical College in Downtown Brooklyn was no more than one-quarter full at peak, with perhaps 100 opponents over the course of the day and easily three times the number of proponents, mainly from the unions and ACORN, who supplied their largest contingents in the second segment of the hearing, from 6-8 pm. (The first was 2-5 pm.)

Though numerous red-shirted representatives of ACORN got up to speak in the second segment, the hearing actually ended 15 minutes early, with no one left to offer testimony.

That suggests that turnout might be light today, the second and final day of the hearing, which again will be held from 2-5 pm and 6-8 pm. (Photo taken at about 2:30 pm.)

(The ESDC, via a statement by former CEO Marisa Lago at the June 23 board meeting, also has committed to another community informational meeting in August, before the comment period concludes, but the date hasn’t been set and it’s not clear if Forest City Ratner will appear.)

Media event

Then again, yesterday was more a media event than a public hearing, given that the ostensible formal changes--a revised deal with the MTA and a delayed plan for eminent domain--are largely expected to be approved without question by the ESDC board in September. Several people signed up to testify, both pro and con, were no longer in the room when their names were finally called.

In fact, some of the big names didn’t bother to testify but instead spoke at dueling press conferences, one by opponents outside the event before it began, and one by proponents, in the auditorium hallway even while testimony continued. That made sense; their presence was more to influence the media than the ESDC.

Given concerns about behavior at the packed, epic 8/23/06 hearing as well as last week’s informational meeting, the ESDC set ostensibly strict rules, with a digital clock counting down a speaker’s allotted three minutes, with a chime announcing that they had 30 seconds left and another indicating that time was up.

Hearing officer Edward Kramer, who endured the 2006 hearing, had a light touch; he did not automatically cut off people’s microphones after three minutes but simply urged people to finish, and most complied. (He only cut off one person, at least while I was in the room.)

With numerous New York Police Department community relations officers in attendance, as well as campus security guards, the situation was mostly under control. At times, they had to remonstrate with hecklers and others arguing, but only a couple of people were ejected, notably Goldstein, who was outraged when Assemblyman Alan Maisel declared that "a small group of people should not be deciding what happens to our borough"--a slam at DDDB and its supporters but, they'd say, exactly a description of the unelected board of the ESDC. Goldstein later returned to the room.

(Last week, Forest City Ratner's MaryAnne Gilmartin set the stage by criticizing "a relentless campaign of a few to deny benefits to the many," somehow leaving out her own company. Maisel has received campaign contributions from FCR executives. More from DDDB and NLG.)

The cops also kept watch on--and, at times, quieted down-- the Forest City Ratner-organized hallway press event, less a press conference than a rally. No representatives of the developer spoke. Featured were State Senator Marty Golden, the Partnership for New York City’s Kathryn Wylde, union leaders Gary LaBarbera and Sal Zarzana, and Community Benefits Agreement signatories Bertha Lewis (of ACORN) and the Rev. Herbert Daughtry (of the Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Alliance).

Some conflict

It was certainly more calm than last Wednesday’s meeting, where chanting project supporters actually prevented questions from being asked. Yesterday, project opponents had the single rudest moment, notably as Scott Turner of Fans for Fair Play, wearing a DDDB button, bitterly dissed Borough President Marty Markowitz (right) as a “fat fucking slob of a sham.”

Then again, the project supporters probably heckled more. At one point, a group of men chanting about jobs drowned out an outdoor press interview held by Queens City Council Member Tony Avella, a project opponent and mayoral candidate.

Union officials, signing in members, used the flat surface of a police department vehicle. Nearby was a van offering sandwiches to attendees. Walking by, at one moment, I could overhear a union official patiently instructing arrivals on the protocol: cheer for people who support the project, and boo the opponents. (That does not appear on the video below.)


(Photo above and below by Jonathan Barkey; video by Adrian Kinloch)

Some rapprochement

There were some, but relatively few, moments of rapprochement. One project supporter acknowledged that the benefits had declined but the project was still worth it.

One opponent agreed that it was a shame that, as project proponents point out, there are lots of condos built in Downtown Brooklyn with no affordable housing nor union labor. (Then again, some AY opponents did protest the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning, aimed at increasing office space but instead leading to a condo boom, and ACORN sat out the opportunity to comment.)

And the recent production by BrooklynSpeaks and the Municipal Art Society of a chart comparing project promises from 2006 to 2009 got respectful attention from at least some proponents. In photo at right, Peter Krashes of the Dean Street Block Association goes over the chart with Delia Hunley-Adossa, chairperson of the AY Community Benefits Agreement coalition.

Con and pro

Among attendees, opponents included City Council member Letitia James, Assemblyman Jim Brennan, State Senator Velmanette Montgomery (at podium below, with Siegel), and a host of candidates, including Public Advocate candidate Norman Siegel, longshot Mayoral candidate Rev. Billy Talen, and several candidates for the city council seats in the area around the project--a group that, Goldstein suggested, would not have been with them five years ago.

As at the meetings last month of the ESDC and Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), representatives of several groups and institutions in the Downtown Brooklyn area--notably the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Long Island University--spoke in favor of the project.

Among opponents, beyond neighborhood groups such as the Atlantic Avenue Betterment Association, the major presence was the Municipal Art Society, which has updated its warning of “Atlantic Lots,” featuring indefinite interim surface parking.

Opponents’ press conference

Along with the elected officials mentioned above, 33rd District candidates Ken Baer, Ken Diamondstone, JoAnne Simon, and Evan Thies were present; so too were 39th District candidates Brad Lander, Josh Skaller, and Bob Zuckerman. Given that they had to wait their turn to speak at a fairly brief press conference, several of them seemed to be a bit impatient.

“Let us stipulate that everyone here wants good jobs and truly affordable housing,” Goldstein said, criticizing Governor David Paterson and “his puppets on the ESDC” for pursuing “a public hearing on a phantom project.” (He wore a button on his hat that read "Jobs, Housing, & UNITY," a direct riff on the Jobs, Housing, & Hoops button Forest City Ratner issued early on. The Jobs, Housing, & UNITY slogan also appeared on posters.)



(Video shot by Adrian Kinloch.)

“It’s time to put the proposed Atlantic Yards out of its misery,” James declared, asking, “Mr. Markowitz, Mr. Bloomberg, Governor Paterson, who do you serve?... The Gilded Age is over. The age of Corporate Welfare is over/”

“It’s a racist attempt to divide the community,” James said, referring to the considerable racial tension that has periodically arisen during the conflict.

“Yes,” shouted Beverly Corbin, a tenant activist from the Wyckoff Houses who’s also black.

Brennan addressed opponents as if acknowledging that he had not always been with them, which is true, since he’s more carefully criticized the project without--until recently--standing more with the opposition. “Thank you for your courage,” he declared. “You have been condemned, over and over again. You have only gotten stronger.”

He noted that the MTA deal with Forest City Ratner allows a 22-year payment schedule, which he declared--though the ESDC wouldn’t admit it--stands as the construction timetable for this project and asked, "Does anybody believe it’ll be over in 2031?" 
He predicted that ESDC would rubberstamp the project and people would continue to litigate.

Montgomery called the project a “total subversion of the economic development authority of this state.”

Faye Moore, a union leader from Fort Greene, said she represents people who will be priced out as the development “will move the working class out.” (ACORN contends the opposite.)

Author and former Congressional candidate Kevin Powell said some people thought he was brainwashed for opposing the project. “This is about greed,” he said. “We’re not going to stop until the Nets stay in New Jersey permanently."

Simon, also the 52nd District leader, recalled her testimony at the 2006 hearing and other warnings of lingering blight. “I was not looking to be prophetic, I was hoping there would be changes,” she said. “This project has not been this project for a long time.”

Siegel declared that he was not present as a candidate but “as a New Yorker and a civil rights lawyer.”

Siegel, who formerly represented DDDB and now represents a property owner resisting the use of eminent domain for the Columbia University expansion, said that New York’s processes were uniquely favorable to the state, given the lack of opportunity to challenge a taking in a trial court. “When Daniel is talking about it being a sham, he’s understating it,” Siegel said.

“In his history as a civil rights lawyer,” he observed, “I have learned, it’s good to be smart, it’s good to be right. But the most important single ingredient I have discovered is stamina—you gotta outlast the bastards.”

In testimony

Later, when testifying, Brennan pointed out that the state is ignoring evidence from the New York City Independent Budget Office that the arena is likely a money-loser for the city. Beyond that, he said, the state is “pretending that the recession does not exist;” rather, he said, the recession has killed the commercial office market and the luxury condo market. The fiscal impact statement in recent ESDC project documents, he said “is just a statement; it has no backup documents” and assumes the presence of a commercial tower that is unlikely to be built.

Later, Assemblywoman Joan Millman testified, acknowledging the difficulty some elected officials have had in taking a firm stand. “When I first testified in Octobe 2005 I recognized that the arena and the affordable housing and the union construction jobs were benefit to Brooklyn but the government subsidies, use of eminent domain. and size of proposed project was too high a price to pay,” she said.

Now, she argued, the benefits have all but disappeared. “It’s impossible for me as an elected official to be against affordable housing, to be against construction jobs that pay a living wage,” she said. “The sad irony is that if project had gone through ULURP”--the city’s land use review procedure-- “and if ESDC had respected democratic process, the project would be long along the way to completion.”

Maybe, maybe not--a lot of people still would’ve protested the arena.

Markowitz speaks



(Video shot by Jonathan Barkey)

When Borough President Markowitz spoke, a couple of people stood up and turned their backs to him in silent protest. “I would never any support any project that I didn’t believe was in the best interest of this borough today and for the years to come,” he said, reading his testimony rapidly.

He again said he was confident that the project, when completed, will serve as a model development and that current opponents will support it someday. “For more than 100 years,” the “empty” railyard has been a barrier between neighborhoods, he said, somehow ignoring that it has been a working railyard.

He again said that AY was the right project in the right place at the right time, closing to loud cheers and boos.

Electeds in support

Along with Maisel and Golden, respresentatives of Congressman Ed Towns and Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz were present, both of them mangling some facts.

The Cymbrowitz rep, quoting some old (and distorted) Forest City Ratner numbers, said that, over next 30 years, the city stands to raise over $5.6 billion in additional tax revenue. (A representative of CB Richard Ellis also used that figure.)

The Towns rep said, “If we do not act now, mounting construction costs will continue to threaten the viability of the project.” (Actually, construction costs are going down now.)

A few candidates supporting the project also were present, including 41st City Council hopeful Anthony Herbert, as noted in The Local. Also testifying was Hunley-Adossa, who’s challenging James in the 35th District but didn’t mention her candidacy while at the podium.

“Five years later, it’s long overdue that this particular project, Atlantic Yards, be built,” Hunley-Adossa said, adding “I deserve a round of applause from those who are in agreement.” Applause actually was somewhat tepid, given that the majority of project supporters had yet to arrive.

Former Assemblyman Roger Green (right), now teaching at Medgar Evers College, called developer Bruce Ratner “ a person of good will and integrity” and said that, given the current unemployment rate, especially in the housing projects in his old district (now represented by Hakeem Jeffries, who was not at the hearing yesterday).

MAS, BrooklynSpeaks on urban planning

Architect Stuart Pertz, representing MAS, said that, since the project was approved in 2006, “the project design and timeline have changed dramatically. However the information necessary to truly evaluate these changes, such as new site plan, have not been made available.”



(Video shot by Jonathan Barkey)
He said MAS calls on ESDC for a Supplemental EIS and to reconsider certain aspects of the plan. Given the apparent reorientation of arena, he said, “it makes little sense to demap Fifth Avenue,” and also Pacific Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt Avenues should be left open rather than used to create a superblock.

It is unacceptable, he said, that AY "has proceeded so long without any meaning public participation.”

Following up a bit later, Krashes of the Dean Street Block Association--and the MAS-affiliated BrooklynSpeaks, said the SEIS “must assess the risk and impact of an Atlantic Yards scenario that contains only the elements that the ESDC and MTA have created meaningful obligations for the developer to deliver.”

(Here's a slideshow from BrooklynSpeaks.)

“A snapshot of the footprint based on the developers funding commitments looks like this,” he said, showing a picture of a large parking lot on Block 1129, the southeast block, and a railyard left uncovered except for the segment below the arena.. “The consequences of this new project were not assessed in the FEIS.”

"The new modifications abandon the disclosed overarching goal and principal benefit, purpose and use of the project, which is to eliminate blight," he said. "In the meantime, the ESDC has not disclosed any credible independent feasibility analysis of the project as a whole and in its parts."

The Salvation Army

Travis Lock of the Salvation Army praised Forest City Ratner for planning to provide an intergenerational facility. “It is not here, because the Atlantic Yards project has been delayed,” he said. He said that while FCR has sponsored dozens of basketball clinics, long term benefits have not arrived because the project has been delayed.

Actually, the intergenerational center would be in Phase 2, and the timetable is very uncertain.

Turner gets tough



(Video shot by Jonathan Barkey)

Turner began by challenging those booing in the crowd, saying, “you don’t even know me.” He quipped that support from a Salvation Army representative “demonstrates how powerful Bruce Ratner is… he’s paid God off.”

“You may think, where’s the unity in this room?” he asked rhetorically, going on to argue that all parties “have been made fools of by the city, the state, and Forest City Ratner,” given unrealistic estimates about jobs and housing. “Stop dragging Brooklyn through the mud.”

“When we are doing being used by Forest City Ratner,” he said, “you won’t hear a peep out of Forest City Ratner.” He closed with his angry attack on Markowitz.

Goldstein's testimony



(Video shot by Jonathan Barkey)

When Goldstein took the stage, he put placards on top of each of the three posters: the AY site plan, the phases of planned eminent domain, and an overhead photo. His placards had headlines—AY site plan, AY cost-benefit analysis, AY affordable housing schedule--but question marks instead of images.

“I’m just doing some housecleaning,” he said leading off, ad libbing a seeming endorsement of Turner’s insult: “I disagree with Scott: Marty’s not fat any more.”

“Is there anyone who doesn’t stand to gain financially from Forest City Ratner who will come up and speak”” he asked, acknowledging that “I’m sure there’s a few.”

He touted the community-derived UNITY plan aimed at the Vanderbilt Yard. “Too many people continue to act and talk like the project is just over the railyards,” he said. “Anyone who says that is lying. If the project is just over the rail yards, we wouldn’t be here, it would be under construction.”

“It’s a farce,” he said of the hearing. “It’s a sham process for a sham project.”

Dark comedy

Author and futurist Michael Rogers, a project opponent, reflected, “If I was writing a dark comedy about the abuse of public authority and public money, it would be hard to set a scene better than this one: a public hearing about a project whose details are secret.”

Where could it be set, he mused: the old Soviet Union? China?

Security issues

Alan Rosner, who co-wrote a 2005 White Paper on security issues, said, "I am here today to thank Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly for issuing a report that for the first time states the City can no longer support Atlantic Yards as specified in the Modified General Project Plan."

"This report, Engineering Security: Protective Design for High Risk Buildings, provides the ESDC with criteria and a method for determining which of the City’s endless potential targets are in the very highest risk category."

"Using those standards, both the Arena and Building 1 rank as high-risk, while the adjacent Atlantic Ave. Station has been a known target since 1997," he continued. "With three high value targets in one convenient, easy to reach location, AY will become one of the city’s highest risk targets."

"Early last year, after the DHS and the NYPD met with FCR, securitizing the arena helped push its cost up over 300 million dollars," Rosner testified. "As the Daily News writes, that is one big bottom line reason for Gehry vanishing, for FCR’s turn to value engineering, and for the ESDC being forced to issue this Modified Plan. Were it not for lawsuits hiding the fact, the security issue has already cost this project over a year’s additional effort."

Here's FCR's MaryAnne Gilmartin on why the developer hasn't yet met with the cops: designs aren't ready.

In response

Several project proponents responded to testimony from opponents. “It sounds like we heard tales from the crypt a minute ago, and we heard insults about our borough president, and that gets us nowhere,” commented Daisy Dobbins, a member of Faith in Action, the little-known CBA signatory founded as the All-Faith Council of Brooklyn.

“Let the dream come," she said. “We as a community will not only enjoy having our own sports team, but we will enjoy a wholesome community upgrade.” (Those concerned about interim surface parking might disagree.)

(Video shot by Adrian Kinloch)

The Rev. Lydia Sloley, who heads Faith in Action, gave an enthusiastic but brief speech, declaring, “I have the audacity to believe in change.”(She didn’t say her group was a CBA signatory.)

While the CBA signatories all receive funds from Forest City Ratner, Carpenters Union leader Sal Zarzana declared, “I’m not paid for by no one.” (True, though obviously the construction unions have an interest in getting work.)

“It’s amazing that after six years, a few are taking over the rights of many,” he declared, adding that, “When Bruce Ratner asks for tax money, I don’t think it’s unrealistic to give it to somebody who’s going to create tax revenue.” (There’s no accurate estimate of the latter.

“Let’s bring a sports arena here,” he said, concluding, “and let’s make some money.”

Richard Anderson, president of the New York Building Congress, testified—again, without specifics—that “This will be an economic engine of substantial value to this city.”

(Anderson is at left in the photo, with Alan Rosen of Junior's restaurant at right.)

Housing issues

The affordable housing issue got an airing—if not a particularly factual one—during the second part of the hearing. Maisha Morales, a displaced small business owner and a Fort Greene resident, acknowledged she was torn, feeling both critical of the project but noting that “my people--people of color” were supporting the project.

“The development I want is not 20% affordable housing; the development I want is 70% affordable housing,” she said, not acknowledging that Forest City Ratner’s plan is supposed to be about 35% affordable—though, of course, there are many questions about exactly to whom it would be affordable.
.
An ACORN member—I believe it was Debbie Tiamfook—responded by saying, not unreasonably, that 70% affordable was not practical.

“You want to know the truth,” she asked. “Ratner--Forest City Ratner was shaken down, they paid market rate for housing; nobody’s house was taken.”

She was cut off by heckling, but the issue is a lot more complicated. Actually, FCR paid more than market for some housing—but it was far less than the perceived value of the new development rights, and it was bolstered by $100 million from the city. And people sold under the threat of eminent domain.

Lewis at the mike



(Video shot by Jonathan Barkey)

Bertha Lewis, CEO and Chief Organizer of ACORN, was pugnacious, as usual, declaring the project “a national model.” “It is finally time to make this a reality. You want to know who’s gonna make sure that the housing is affordable?” she asked.

“We will. We’re not going to make sure that some politician takes care of us,” she stated. “We’re not going to stand by and try to have some agency take care of us. ACORN will take care of us.”

Her big selling point is that “every single rental unit is going to be rent-stabilized. That is unbelievable, considering what’s going on in Albany--losing affordable housing every single day.”

Except that Lewis, not unlike FCR’s MaryAnne Gilmartin on July 22, did not actually mention the potential rents.

Earlier, when I had tried to ask her during a break how much ACORN owes Forest City Ratner, she blew off the question.

Affordable housing for whom?

After Lewis spoke ACORN’s George Finley said, improbably, that the affordable housing in the contract signed with “Forest Ratner” had to be available to those earning $20,000 or less.

That’s not true. As the chart linked here shows, very few of the units--as of 2006, before the Area Median Income has gone up considerably--would go to those earning under $20,000.

A little later, Green Party member Maureen Shea offered a dash of melancholic skepticism: “What I think is so sad is so many people think they’re going to get a good job and a nice house.”

Housing feasibility

David Pechefsky, the Green Party candidate for the 39th Council District, said that, rather than repeat what’s been said about urban planning, he wanted to address the issue of financial viability.

He noted that last week, at the informational meeting, he asked about Forest City Ratner’s internal rate of return--which had not been voluntarily made public by the developer, but had come through in some documents--and FCR refused to answer.

“If this is truly a public project for the public good, it absolutely should be talked about,” said Pechefsky, a former City Council staffer. Back in 2006, he said, “I looked at the numbers on the rental buildings… What they suggested to me that the affordable housing was really unlikely to get built in the time frame of the project, unless there was going to be additional public subsidies.”

His point was never addressed by the affordable housing advocates who spoke later.

BAM and beyond

Alan Fishman, co-chair of the (city-funded, in part) Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, spoke as the chairman of board of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).

He suggested that the project could benefit BAM by bringing in more diverse crowds and more activity in the area. (He didn’t mention traffic.)

Someone heckled a piece of relevant information: “[Bruce] Ratner’s on your board.”

Later, Michael D.D. White of Noticing New York caught up with Fishman and found out that, no, the BAM board was not consulted.

In the ‘hood

Several people pointed, as some did in 2006, to what they consider the transformative potential of the project, with statements that some may have interpreted as threats.

Rasheem Allah of Central Brooklyn Housing Contractors, said, “I save lives by trying to keep these kids from killing each other in these projects. Ratner is offering us an opportunity.”

“If this thing is not getting taken care of”—a reference, seemingly, not just to Atlantic Yards but the struggles in Brooklyn for jobs—there’s going to be chaos,” he said.

“This project was supposed to go forward a long time ago,” declared Darnell Canada of ReBUILD, which places workers at construction sites.

“Community Benefit Agreement. It speaks for itself. It says Community Benefits," he said. "It’s simple to me, but it seems to be a problem, and I know people are against it, I know people are for it, but the reality is: what is the state of affairs in our country. I walk around every day with hundreds of people who are looking for jobs.”

“I’m constantly on the van looking for work,” added Kareiff McDuffie of ReBUILD, who claimed that, “under this Community Benefit program, they’re giving us 17,000 jobs.”

He added, “You want a better community--you have to give these kids a reason to kids to get off the street. I can’t tell that brother to stop robbing, I can’t tell that brother to stop selling drugs.” He went on to slam “these frivolous lawsuits.”

At one point, architect (and Park Slope Civic Council trustee) Gilly Youner, who turned her back on Markowitz when he spoke, referenced Forest City Ratner's anti-urban design for the Atlantic Center Mall, quoting Bruce Ratner as saying it was "built inside-out to keep out 'tough youth.'" (Actually, the quote was "tough kids.") Ratner, of course, has pledged to do better, and the mall went unmentioned by supporters.

Some jousting

There was some interesting jousting in the auditorium for about half an hour into the second segment of the hearing. Rev. Clinton Miller of Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Clinton Hill, an ally of Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, led about 15 men from his church into the auditorium, an effort—as he said earlier this week—to help ensure that the hearing was orderly.

One of the men with Miller got into a dispute with another man—a construction worker?—and the cops had to smooth things out for a moment.

Miller, when he spoke, warned against a “circus-like atmosphere” and said, “I’m here insofar that the process be transparent, and we engage ourselves in a civil environment.”



(Video shot by Adrian Kinloch)

While he said that his group was neither for or against the project, he warned of a pattern in which jobs and contracts don’t go to people in the area where the project is being built. He added a personal note: “I have introduced a qualified contractor to the developer only not to get a callback.”

“We will not allow people from other neighborhoods come and intimidate people from the community,” he said. “We will not allow people come in and have people disrespect our officials, especially Velmanette Montgomery, Hakeem Jeffries, and Tish James.”

Montgomery and James, of course, are project opponents, while Jeffries has been more on the fence. But Miller seemed to be saying that he was taking care of his people no matter what.

Miller added a note of clerical portent: “As I told Borough President Marty Markowitz, if the process is not right, and the process not fair, God is not going to allow it anyway.”

Comic relief, and enlightenment



Near the end of the hearing, musician Steve Espinola, who was either very philosophical or very spacey, got up and acknowledged, “I have no idea what I’m going to say. I keep changing my mind. You’re either making a circle or breaking a circle at any moment.”

He went on to acknowledge that “We’re all just animals… and we all just gotta eat.” A “Build It Now” chant emerged from the crowd.

Espinola, getting his groove, acknowledged the chant: “There’s something to be said for that. You could do it… just dismantle democracy. You can take out due process. You can turn a hearing about it into a public mockery.”

He went back to his “circle” reference, leaving many in the audience befuddled, including--as the video shows--ESDC attorneys Matlin and Petillo, having a chuckle after a very long day.

(Update: More here on Espinola's motivations.)

BrooklynSpeaks, electeds call for Supplemental EIS; DDDB plans rallies, press conferences outside hearing today

So, what should we look for at the public hearing today and tomorrow on the 2009 Atlantic Yards Modified General Project Plan (MGPP)? (The official times are 2-5 pm and 6-8 pm, at the the Klitgord Auditorium of New York City Technical College at 285 Jay Street.)

The cameras, most likely, will focus on the conflict, the signs and chants displayed by project supporters and opponents, both outside the venue--and, perhaps, inside. It would be newsworthy if disruptive people are ejected, as the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) promises.

But the news might more concern which elected officials--and candidates--show up, and what they say. There's not much to say directly about the ostensible purpose of the hearing, which concerns, among other things,the plan to pursue eminent domain in two stages rather than one and Forest City Ratner's revised deal with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for the Vanderbilt Yard.

But there is a lot to say about the project, and the process.

BrooklynSpeaks: new SEIS needed

Yesterday, the BrooklynSpeaks coalition--which has taken a tougher line on AY while steering clear of litigation organized by Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB)--and several elected officials called for a supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) to assess the impact of changes to the phasing and design of the Atlantic Yards project. 

The electeds include Assemblymembers Jim Brennan, Hakeem Jeffries, and Joan Millman; State Senator Velmanette Montgomery; and City Council member Letitia James. Only the latter two have consistently stood with DDDB.

They expressed concern about indefinite interim surface parking, the delay in providing stormwater management measures to reduce runoff, the reduction in railyard track capacity, the possibility that delayed affordable housing would represent only a small net gain (and at a high price), and the possibility the risk that Atlantic Yards will fail to complete the decking of the rail yards.

DDDB efforts

Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) promises a press conference at 1:30 pm and a protest at 2pm, then another cycle, with a press conference starting at 5:30 and a protest at 6 pm.

Scheduled for the first press conference are Faye Moore, President of Social Services Employees Union (SSEU) Local 371; City Council Member Letitia James; State Senator Velmanette Montgomery; Assemblyman Jim Brennan; and Public Advocate candidate (and former DDDB lawyer) Norman Siegel.

Scheduled for the second press conference, so far, is City Council Member Tony Avella, a longshot candidate for mayor.

It will be interesting to see how many elected officials both endorse BrooklynSpeaks's call for a Supplemental EIS and go beyond it.

Other electeds

How many pro-AY elected officials will show up, and what will they say beyond "Build It Now"? Will Borough President Marty Markowitz defend approval of a project that lacks a rendering, a site plan, and a fiscal impact analysis--and which has not been the subject of a security review by the New York Police Department?

And will Council Member Bill de Blasio, last year somewhat critical of the project, maintain his strategic silence in his quest to become Public Advocate? 

What about Council Member David Yassky, who's been somewhat critical of AY in his pursuit of the Comptroller position?

ACORN rally at 3:30 pm

Surely project supporters will rally as well. ACORN, I'm told, is recruiting supporters to come to a rally at 3:30 pm, asking them to wear red shirts. Here's the carrot: food and drink will be provided at 4 pm.

I'm sure that other Community Benefits Agreement signatories will bring groups of supporters as well.

The second day

Though the New York Times's blog The Local warned yesterday, "Prepare for two days of sound and fury over Atlantic Yards. Significance to be determined later," I suspect that the second day will be pretty quiet, at least during work hours.

Most cameras likely will be gone. Even in 2006, the community forums that followed up the public hearing were relatively calm.

A sidewalk becomes a street

Meanwhile, DDDB points to (right) something brutally weird--the temporary conversion of a Pacific Street sidewalk into a street to accommodate cars as utility work continues nearby. (Click to enlarge)

Why the rush? Because Forest City Ratner needs to save money; also, MAS produces new rendering with tower, open space

Why, as I write today, is the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) preparing to approve the Atlantic Yards plan in early September without having renderings of the arena (but having Design Guidelines), without having the New York Police Department examine security, without having an updated fiscal impact analysis (not to mention a real cost-benefit anlaysis), and without even clearing up how high the buildings would be?

Well, the timing is all driven by the needs not of the public but of developer Forest City Ratner. 

Remember, the answer by Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) CFO Gary Dellaverson, when asked in June why the MTA board had less than 48 hours to examine a revised deal for the Vanderbilt Yard.

"I think that, in terms of why must it be now in the summer versus in the fall, I think that really relates to Forest City's desire to market their bonds as a tax-exempt issuance [by a December 31 deadline]," Dellaverson replied. "If the structure... is not such that allows for the marketability of the bonds, then the financial aspect of the transaction, as it relates to arena construction expenses that Forest City Ratner would incur, become less viable and perhaps not viable. That's not something that I'm prepared to say from my own knowledge... but I would be remiss if I suggested anything other--that's the principal driver of the timing."

New MAS rendering

Meanwhile, in the absence of any official renderings, the Municipal Art Society (MAS) has produced a new rendering of the project, as shown in the New York Post, with no Building 1 office tower nor Urban Room but instead interim open space, plus one tower.

The ESDC last month acknowledged that “prolonged adverse economic conditions” could slow all buildings after the arena--scheduled for first quarter of 2012--and just one tower.

MAS also has produced a list comparing projected "public benefits" between 2006 and 2009. Keep in mind that the identity of the architects is not a public benefit--and, allegedly, Frank Gehry's master plan is still in force--and that in both 2006 and 2009 the ESDC merely "anticipated" a timetable rather than guaranteed it. The difference now is that the ESDC more readily acknowledges the potential for a delayed buildout.

After all, former ESDC CEO Marisa Lago said the project could take decades--even though it officially is supposed to take just ten years to build.

The Post quotes the head of MAS:
"The rendering reveals the dramatic differences between the new design for the Atlantic Yards arena and what was approved in 2006, and it highlights why the state must reevaluate the new project and its environmental impact," said Vin Cipolla, President of the Municipal Art Society.

No such reevaluation is planned; the main purpose of the hearing over Wednesday and Thursday is to accept comments on the revised financial terms, including a new deal with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and a delayed acquisition of the project site via eminent domain.

Would it cut corners for ESDC to approve AY plan before arena security is discussed with NYPD? Video offers some clues

It was another astonishing moment during the informational meeting last Wednesday. Moderator Craig Hammerman, District Manager of Community Board 6, asked, "Has the Police Department reviewed the arena plans with the same level of detail that they did initially, and have they offered you any comments that you can share with us?"

Forest City Ratner's MaryAnne Gilmartin responded, "As the design is not complete yet, that review will take place, obviously, before the closing. But we’re in constant contact with the city, and expect to see the police department about the changes to the design in the fall."



(Video shot by Jonathan Barkey; edited by Norman Oder)

Not required

In the fall--meaning after the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) board in early September is expected to rubber-stamp the revised Modified General Project Plan (MGPP). The closing is simply the signing of contractual documents.

Now the ESDC and FCR may not be required to consult the New York Police Department (NYPD) before the ESDC board votes. After all, security is not required to be part of the environmental impact statement (EIS) and, anyhow, the ESDC asserts that no Supplemental EIS is necessary.

Rather, the ESDC claims that the only material changes for the agency board concern the terms of the deal for the railyards and the timing of eminent domain. Those are the ostensible subjects of the official public hearing Wednesday and Thursday.

Meanwhile, project opponents and critics, pointing to the absence of a site plan and renderings, contend that a Supplemental EIS is necessary.

Is blanket trust deserved?

As a practical matter, maybe the ESDC and FCR should consult NYPD before the ESDC board votes. 

Indeed, as the screenshots show, the ESDC's Darren Bloch (left) and FCR's Gilmartin (below) seemed to express discomfort when being confronted with the security question.

I can't be sure why, but I suspect it's because they know that the public deserves a little more than "trust us."

NYPD warnings

After all, on July 1, the NYPD released a new guide to security for high-risk buildings, a category that likely includes the arena and could include the flagship officer tower (Building 1) still planned. It states:
The NYPD recommends that stadium and arena owners consult with blast engineers and the NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau to determine site-specific DBT [design basis threat] standards within the M3 range.

That, apparently, has not happened yet.

As Alan Rosner, co-author of July 2005 White Paper (PDF) on terrorism and security issues regarding Atlantic Yards, commented, "They have done more with this single publication than the five-year community and local elected officials' effort to get the ESDC to take this issue seriously."

Redesigning the Freedom Tower

Remember, in May 2005, state officials said that the Freedom Tower would be significantly redesigned to address security issues--18 months after the design was unveiled. 

Security was significantly enhanced.

The Newark example lingers

Frank Gehry's arena design would have been 20 feet from the street, given that it would have been flush to the sidewalk, and preliminary renderings of the new Ellerbe Becket design suggest it would be as close--though we can't be sure.

ESDC officials have already said that streets won't be closed, even though they are closed outside the Prudential Center in Newark, which is 20 feet from the street.

As Andy Newman wrote in November 2007 in The Times's City Room blog, after finally learning details of the AY arena plan:
That is the same distance as the Newark arena is from its neighboring streets. So what’s different about the Atlantic Yards arena? That, [FCR's] Mr. [Loren] Riegelhaupt said, is a security question, to be directed to the Police Department. The Police Department has said that its policy is not to comment on such matters.

For now, NYPD certainly can't comment--not even to assure the public it thinks the new design is fine--until it sees that design.

Can the Design Guidelines suffice in the absence of arena renderings? ESDC/FCR say yes, but look at the evidence

One of the major messages from last Wednesday's informational meeting on Atlantic Yards was this: It's OK to have a public hearing and approval process for the project without arena renderings because "rigorous Design Guidelines" are public.

In fact, ESDC Senior Counsel Steve Matlin pronounced the phrase "Design Guidelines" five times in a single paragraph and Forest City Ratner Executive VP MaryAnne Gilmartin also clung to the phrase.

The only problem: the Design Guidelines regarding the arena, as detailed below, are quite general, with the major distinctive factor a requirement that there be transparency from the street. In other words, as long as people along Flatbush Avenue can see into the arena bowl, the architects have a lot of leeway.

Unlike with residential or commercial buildings, an architect explained to me, it's impossible to make design guidelines specific enough for an arena, because much about an arena can't be delineated until it's designed. For some buildings, he said, design guidelines aren't the answer.

After all, consider the differences (from top) between Frank Gehry's renderings from 2003 and 2008, and then the "placeholder" rendering this year from new arena designer Ellerbe Becket. They may all offer transparency, but they look quite different. 

(The Design Guidelines, which are attributed to the ESDC, were written in large part by architect Frank Gehry's office, as I wrote in November 2006.)

The question

As shown in the video below, moderator Craig Hammerman, District Manager of Community Board 6, read a long question, which he summarized: “I think the essence of the question here is: why are the renderings and other information regarding the project not being made available before next week’s public hearing?”

Matlin responded, “Well, I think, as MaryAnne mentioned before, the design of the arena is evolving. We have Design Guidelines in place--those Design Guidelines were made public--and those Design Guidelines remain unchanged. We are also, along with the city, constantly reviewing the design, and we will make sure that the design is suitable for the project. But the important, I think, factor is: there are Design Guidelines, those Design Guidelines are public, and the new design of the arena will comply with those guidelines.”

The Urban Room



(Video shot by Jonathan Barkey; edited by Norman Oder)

CB 6 Chairman Richard Bashner followed up to ask about the “public entrance,” an apparent reference to the Urban Room, as well as “any other general design features.” He asked if any formerly public spaces would no longer be public.

Gilmartin responded that the Urban Room would be built when the B1 office building is built; until then, there would be an “urban plaza with many of the elements that were contemplated in the Urban Room,” including a new transit entrance, retail, and a grand arena entrance, and “generous outdoor space, which will be space available to and belonging to the public.”

(Belonging to the public? The plan has never been to have public park space but rather publicly-available space that is controlled by a nonprofit entity.)

Back to the Design Guidelines

Gilmartin continued: “I think the best guidance as to what the arena design might look like is to look at the Design Guidelines and understand that the transparency from the street into the bowl itself, some of the features about the arena that you found in the earlier Frank Gehry design will be maintained and honored in the design we will show the public as soon as we possibly can, but it looks like it will be, again, September-October, and so I think that’s the best way to sort of think about it.”

“But none of the spaces that were previously public spaces in nature have been changed into private spaces,” she continued. “None of the transparency goals and objectives of the arena design itself have been changed. None of the locations of the entrances of the arena have been changed. All of that will be honored in the alternate design.”

The ESDC’s Darren Bloch followed up: “If I could just add one thing to that--one of the parts of that question is: how could we as ESDC contemplate this without some--y’know, some of the visuals there, the renderings. And part of that is that, as MaryAnne and Steve said, there are fairly rigorous Design Guidelines in place, that are already part of the plan, and that gives us a certain degree of comfort that a lot of that’s already been contemplated. So that allows us to go forward with some degree of confidence of what we’re going to see.”

Looking at the Design Guidelines

The Design Guidelines are part of the Modified General Project Plan issued in 2006.

There are Envelope Plan Diagrams and Envelope Isometrics for all the buildings--except the arena--in Part 2 and Part 3 of the Design Guidelines.

As the architect commented to me, the absence of detail regarding the arena in the Design Guidelines is not an effort at deception; it's simply a recognition of the difficulty in designing such a special-purpose building.

In Part 1 of the Design Guidelines states:
i. Arena
A. Located in center of Arena Block, bounded by Buildings 1- and the Urban Room.
B. Principal entrances to the Arena shall be located through the Urban Room and on Atlantic Avenue and Dean Street.

Permitted Uses
i. Arena: Arena (including support areas), entertainment, and retail (which term shall include eating and drinking establishments.

f. Materials
iv. Arena. The street walls of the Arena along Flatbush Avenue and Atlantic Avenue shall include glass elements, including a continuous glazed area with a minimum width of 125 feet and a minimum surface area of 7500 square feet, such glazed area to commence at the height of the Arena concourse level. The street walls of ground floor retail uses located along and opening on to the street shall be glazed for a minimum of 70% of such street wall to a height of twelve feet, provided that no glazing shall be required for the sidewalk market along Atlantic Avenue described in Clause (g)(i) below.

It addresses streetscape:
Ground Floor Uses; Streetscape
i. The Atlantic Avenue and Flatbush Avenue ground floor street frontages of the Arena Block shall incorporate a variety of retail and pedestrian based activities, including retail space accessible to the street and pedestrian seating areas. Not less than 40% of the Atlantic Avenue, 15% of the Flatbush Avenue street frontages, shall be devoted to retail uses, which may include eating and drinking establishments. The Atlantic Avenue retail requirement shall include retail use in front of the Arena volume which may include a sidewalk market opening on the street, provided that the market shall not occupy more than 180 linear feet of the Atlantic Avenue frontage. The Flatbush Avenue Street frontage shall incorporate a sitting area with a minimum length of 150 feet of which 40% may be in conjunction with an adjoining retail use.

It also deals with signage:
C. Arena. Signage shall be permitted on the Arena street wall consistent with the following controls:
1. Maximum Surface Area: 100% of the Arena Signage Zone
2. Maximum Height: 40 feet
3. Transparent Signage: Signage in the Arena Signage Zone shall be constructed so that it is sufficiently transparent to make activity within the building and the interior architecture visible to passersby, and the surrounding exterior architecture and activity is visible to people on the interior.
Ground Floor Retail. In addition and notwithstanding the above controls, signage for ground floor retail shall be permitted as follows:
a. Surface Area. Signage for each ground floor establishment shall be limited to the lesser of (x) 150 square feet and (y) 3 times the linear frontage of the street wall of such retail establishment.
b. Illumination. Fixed illumination shall be permitted for such signage.
c. Height. Signage for ground floor retail establishments shall be limited to a maximum height of 25 feet above the adjoining grade.

The guidelines also discuss height:
V. Arena Block
Height, Setback, Envelope, and Architectural Controls – Individual Buildings
a. Arena
i. Maximum Building Height: 150 feet
ii. Setbacks: The Arena may rise without setback to the maximum building height.
iii. Architectural Controls: The Arena façade shall include transparent elements in the Atlantic Avenue and Flatbush Avenue street walls allowing for views into the arena concourse from the adjoining sidewalks.

DCP comments in 2006

A 9/27/06 letter from the City Planning Commission stated:
Under the Design Guidelines, the arena block, located between Atlantic Avenue, Flatbush Avenue and Sixth Avenue, will be designed with a new, state-of-the-art arena as its centerpiece, surrounded by four towers. Building 1’s distinctive architectural profile will contain an exterior clad in sculptural panels of glass and metal, and provide a distinct visual relationship with the Williamsburgh Savings Bank to the west. Height limits are established for each tower as well as detailed envelope controls. The arena’s design will include maximum glazing to allow views into the arena’s circulation space and the “arena bowl”, emphasizing the importance of its location. The Urban Room will be located at the apex of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, enhancing the project’s iconic status and providing direct links to the mass transit hub below ground. The Design Guidelines for the arena block also include provisions governing the streetscape that will enhance the pedestrian environment by providing widened sidewalks, specifying the locations of ground-floor retail and encouraging the maximum amount of retail and glazing possible. The Design Guidelines also provide for arena event-related signage which will activate the Arena block facades in specified zones along Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues with illuminated non-advertising signs. Signage along Dean Street and Sixth Avenue will be limited to local neighborhood retail signage.

The Commission notes that the ESDC and the developers, in consultation with DCP staff, continue to refine the streetscape provisions of the Design Guidelines to better ensure that the ground floors of the Project would be active and vibrant. On the Arena Block, these changes have ensured that a maximum amount of retail will be provided. They include a 180-foot “sidewalk market” along Atlantic Avenue, and requirements that 70 percent of the ground floor along the Sixth Avenue frontage, and 30 percent of the Dean Street frontage be devoted to retail. In addition, a minimum of 70 percent glazing requirement up to a height of 12 feet would apply to all of the ground floor retail uses, except the sidewalk retail market. Increased glazing will also be required for the area of the Arena above the concourse level.
(Emphases added)

So DCP mentioned windows and retail. That doesn't give us much to work with.

Would Building 1 still be 620 feet? ESDC documents: yes (max.), Barclays Center site: no; also, Gilmartin whiffs on Building 3 height

I'm still trying to figure out the statement at last Wednesday's informational meeting by Forest City Ratner VP MaryAnne Gilmartin (video below) that the office tower known as Building 1 (B1) would be 620 feet tall. It just doesn't compute. Nor does her statement that one residential building would be 428 feet.

[Updated] And I wasn't able yesterday to get FCR or the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) to clarify their expectations of the building heights--though this morning an ESDC spokesman says, "The GPP accurately states the maximum allowed height of each tower."

Gilmartin was reading from a document, apparently (as noted below) one issued in July 2006 rather than December 2006. Both, which claim the building would be 620 feet, are in some ways out of date.

Notably, Forest City Ratner, in a December 2006 statement (left) accompanying project approval by the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB), agreed to "a reduction to the height of the proposed 'Ms. Brooklyn' building, ensuring that no building at the site will be taller than the 512-foot Williamsburg [sic] Savings Bank."

As I wrote in May 2008, new renderings by Frank Gehry were reported as showing the tower at 511 feet.

That change, however, was not and has not been memorialized in project documents issued by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC).

Also, one of the residential buildings was chopped nearly in half. That was memorialized in project documents, though Gilmartin spoke as if that never happened.

(Click on graphics to enlarge)



(Video shot by Jonathan Barkey; edited by Norman Oder)

Convenient fiction

I think Gilmartin was most likely simply reading from the wrong document. Had she been correct about the height of the residential building, I might have said she was maintaining a convenient fiction, one in which the 2006 Modified General Project Plan (GPP) remains essentially unchanged, except for amendments regarding the acquisition of the project site in stages; a deferral of payments for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) site; and a revision of the deal to upgrade the MTA's Vanderbilt Yard.

After all, on page 51 of the 2009 Modified GPP, a document titled Atlantic Yards Building Heights and Square Footage (revised) indicates that B1 would be 620 feet. It's the same document that appeared in 2006.

Then again, maybe 620 feet is the ESDC's maximum height, while 511 feet is simply Forest City Ratner's maximum height. Perhaps the document, even if misleading, passes legal and administrative muster. [Update] That's my reading of the spokesman's statement this morning.

BarclaysCenter.com: 511 feet

Even the official Barclays Center site uses copy from the old AtlanticYards.com web site:
The height of the buildings will range from approximately 190 feet to 511 feet. Building 1 (B1), the building proposed for the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, will not be taller than the nearby Williamsburg Savings Bank, which stands at 512 feet. Separate from the Atlantic Yards development, building heights as high as 600 feet have been approved by the City Council as part of the Downtown Brooklyn Plan.

Heights of residential buildings

"The first residential building is 34 stories. The second residential building is comparable to that," Gilmartin said last Wednesday, adding, "Building 2, which is the first residential building, is 322 feet. Building 3, which is the second residential building, is 428, and Building 4, which is the third residential building, is 511 feet."

Hold on. As the first document on building heights indicates, Building 2 would be 219 feet tall, not 428 feet.

Gilmartin was apparently consulting a July 2006 document (right) accompanying the General Project Plan, which was revised into the Modified General Project Plan before ESDC approval in December 2006.

What the City Planning Commission said

Shouldn't Gilmartin, more than anyone else, know the heights of the buildings planned for Atlantic Yards?

She seemed unaware of a 9/27/06 letter from the City Planning Commission, which presaged the changes announced (though it reflected cutbacks that had been in the cards):
Building 3, located on the Arena Block at the corner of Dean Street and Sixth Avenue, is proposed to rise to a height of 428 feet and contain approximately 530,000 zoning square feet. The composition of the Arena Block’s four buildings was carefully analyzed, and the Commission believes that Building 3 creates an excessive building wall which diminishes the prominence of the arena’s location. The Commission therefore recommends that the height of Building 3 be reduced to approximately 220 feet and approximately 275,000 zoning square feet, to provide a stronger composition of buildings surrounding the arena, and to better reflect the existing built context of nearby buildings.
(Emphases added)

The ESDC's economic impact (not cost-benefit) analysis won't be subject to any public scrutiny because it doesn't yet exist

Just as information about the Atlantic Yards site plan and renderings of the arena won't emerge in time for the public hearing Wednesday and Thursday, nor will the Empire State Development Corporation's (ESDC) economic impact analysis.

That number--not a real cost-benefit analysis, despite use of that term at the informational meeting last Wednesday--may emerge when the board of the ESDC votes to approve the plan in September. There just won't be an opportunity to comment on it or examine the methodology behind it.

During the meeting, moderator Craig Hammerman, District Manager of Community Board 6, asked how the ESDC’s economic impact analysis was conducted.

The answer from ESDC Senior Counsel Steve Matlin (in video, below, with Forest City Ratner's MaryAnne Gilmartin) was vague. Expected construction costs and tax benefits were plugged into a model, and calculations were reflected in the 2006 Modified General Project Plan (MGPP).

“We’re constantly looking at that analysis and updating that analysis,” he asserted, a statement belied by the absence of any new numbers in the 2009 MGPP. He suggested that, since the the cost of the project has increased, “I’d expect that fiscal benefits will probably increase.”



“Will the cost-benefit analysis be available on the ESDC web site?” Hammerman asked later.

Matlin looked slightly quizzical, then offered a bland answer: “The summary of the cost-benefit analysis was in the 2006 [Modified] GPP and carried forward in the 2009 [Modified] GPP. To the extent those numbers are updated, we will reflect them at our next board approval, which we expect will be in September of 2009.”

Later, the issue came up again.



"How can the Empire State Development Corporation properly evaluate the appropriateness of subsidies for the project without producing an independent cost-benefit analysis?" Hammerman read.

"Well, ESDC does do a cost-benefit analysis," Matlin replied. "We have folks that look at the benefits of the project and the costs of the project. That''s an ongoing analysis, and we perform that internally."

"How come it's never been released?" asked project opponent Scott Turner from the crowd.

I'd add that the ESDC analysis is premised on the impacts of a ten-year buildout, and that seems very unlikely--given that the project, should it be built, more likely would take "decades," as former ESDC CEO Marisa Lago said in April.

What about the IBO report?



Hammerman read a question about a New York City Independent Budget Office (IBO) report that concluded the arena would be a net money-loser for the city.

“We have heard that report,” Matlin replied phlegmatically. “We do our own analysis. We basically do an analysis of the entire project. We don’t do a separate analysis just of the arena component. What we bargained for was the entire project. We bargained for the benefits generated from the entire project. Our calculations determined that there would be a significant benefit to both the city and the state from the buildout of the project. I believe the city--the Mayor’s office and the EDC [New York City Economic Development Corporation] also reached a similar conclusion.”

However, they use different methodologies and the IBO has been more scrupulous about trying to assess public costs and subsidies.

Later, asked if ESDC or FCR disputed the IBO report, watch how Gilmartin handed the microphone to Matlin with a slight scowl. Matlin then said, "We have not looked closely at that report. We do our own number-crunching. We looked at the project as a whole as opposed to the arena specifically."

Later, Hammerman read a question asserting that the costs to create jobs and affordable housing are two to four times the city average--so how do ESDC and FCR justify spending public money this way.

“Stupid question,” offered a heckler.

“Y’know, I’m not sure what that question is premised on,” Matlin responded. “What we do is, on a project-by-project basis, we evaluate the investment that the state is making, that the public sector is making. We look at the potential benefits that we expect to be generated from the project. And we make an evaluation as to whether the project is worthwhile or not. That’s basically what we did in this project. I don’t know how it compares to other projects.”

"Because it is shovel-ready construction": FCR's lame explanation for seeking federal stimulus funds for an essentially private arena

It was one of the more astonishing exchanges at the informational meeting last Wednesday--Forest City Ratner's MaryAnne Gilmartin's explanation for why the developer has sought stimulus funds to boost its essentially private project.

Remember, the developer has lobbied for federal stimulus funds, and is almost certainly still lobbying for such help, even though former Empire State Development Corporation CEO Marisa Lago said at a May 29 state Senate oversight hearing that the ESDC hadn't sought such funds.

Why not? Because, as I note below--it's not a public project.


(Video shot by Jonathan Barkey; edited by Norman Oder)

“Can Forest City Ratner comment on why there have been public requests for federal stimulus funds to help with the construction of the arena?” asked moderator Craig Hammerman.

“It’s shovel-ready construction,” shouted Marie Louis of BUILD (Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development), a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) signatory.

Gilmartin at first looked a little uncomfortable with the question--perhaps because there's no good answer--but quickly recovered: “Because it is shovel-ready construction, and the fact of the matter is that the project, like other projects around the country, have suffered, based on the economic downturn, and it’s our responsibility to try to do what we can to make the project happen and to maintain its viability.”

Whose responsibility?

It's our responsibility, but who's "us"? "Us" is Forest City Ratner, parent company Forest City Enterprises, and its shareholders.

It's the government's responsibility to direct subsidies and aid to public projects, not private ones. There's a lot of private shovel-ready construction that doesn't deserve stimulus funds. And, at the least, should the project get more taxpayer money, the public should own an ever-increasing piece.

A private project

As I pointed out, how much of the shovel-ready construction put forth for stimulus funds consists of public works and how many are private developers' projects? See state list from ProPublica, and New York's list--and, further below, see the categories in which New York actually has spent money.

The arena, despite the fig leaf of public ownership to allow for the issuance of tax-free bonds, would be an essentially private project, given that Forest City Ratner gets to sell naming rights and keep profits.

At the oversight hearing

At the oversight hearing, state Senator Marty Golden, a project supporter, asked if there was any stimulus money for the project.

ESDC “has not asked for stimulus dollars,” Lago said.

Golden asked why not.

“In looking at the project and the amount of public subsidy and the right way of getting it forward, we have not determined that stimulus funds are part of that package,” Lago responded carefully.

Golden asked if there was enough money as designated in the original agreement.

“As we’re looking at the project now, as all of us are engaged in the sensitive negotiation, they have not entailed a request for stimulus money,” Lago said.

“If that request were made, would you be willing to make that request?” Golden asked.

“That would be something that we would consider,” Lago said. “We would of course look at the overall project plan.”

Golden said he’d make a request.

New York's list

In the list below of categories eligible for stimulus funds, I've cut the individual category figures out, but they're visible at this link:
Medicaid - FMAP Increase
State Fiscal Stabilization - Education Restoration
State Fiscal Stabilization - Other Government Services
State Fiscal Stabilization - Education Incentive Grants
Sub-total $140,317,000 $14,118,000

Infrastructure and Energy
Transportation: Mass Transit
Transportation: Highways & Bridges
Transportation: Rail
Transportation: Air
Transportation: Discretionary Surface Transportation
Clean Water State Revolving Fund
Drinking Water State Revolving Fund
Weatherization
Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant
State Energy Program
Broadband Access & Expansion
Science Facilities, Research, Instrumentation
Science - Brookhaven Laboratory
Environmental/Nuclear Waste Cleanup
Diesel Emission Reduction
Environmental Programs
Sub-total $91,700,000 $4,162,000

Health and Human Services
Health Information Technology
Public Health Programs
IDEA for Infants & Families
Food Stamp Benefit Increase
Food Stamp Administration
WIC Program Administration
Senior Nutrition Program
Homeless Assistance
Child Care Block Grant
Child Support Administration
Title IV-E Programs (Foster Care/Adoption Assistance)
Community Service Block Grant (CSBG)
SSI - One-time Payment
Workforce Investment Act (WIA)
UI Benefit Extension & Administration
UI Modernization
UI Weekly Benefit Increase
Employment Services
Trade Adjustment Assistance
Vocational Rehabilitation (Title I)
Rehabilitation Services & Disability Research
Neighborhood Stabilization Program
HOME Investment Partnerships-Tax Credit Assistance
Community Development Block Grant (CDBG)
Public Housing Capital Fund
Public Housing Retrofits
Project Based Rental Assistance (Section 8)
Lead Hazard Reduction
Native American Housing Grants
Community Health Centers
Commodity Assistance Program
TANF Block Grant - Emergency Fund
Sub-total $113,666,000 $5,981,672

Education
Title I
IDEA/Special Education
Head Start & Early Head Start
Pell Grant Increase
Federal Work Study
Enhancing Education Technology
Education for Homeless Children & Youth
Teacher Incentive Fund
Impact Aid Construction
National Endowment for the Arts
National School Lunch Program Equipment Assistance
Sub-total $43,770,000 $2,360,521

Public Safety
Byrne/JAG
Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS)
Homeland Security - Fire Station Construction
Violence Against Women Prevention
Crime Victims Compensation and Assistance
Internet Crimes Against Children
Other Public Safety Programs
Sub-total $4,200,000 $124,200

Grand Total* $393,653,000 $26,746,393

* Does not include certain federal spending items included in the Act which do not impact New York or cannot be quantified.

An (imaginary) Open Letter from Forest City Ratner's Gilmartin: We apologize for the disgraceful conduct at hearing, meeting

This letter has not been written by Forest City Ratner’s point person on Atlantic Yards, MaryAnne Gilmartin (at left, with Steve Matlin and Rachel Shatz of the Empire State Development Corporation, in photo by Adrian Kinloch). But I like to think it could have been.

To the Brooklyn community:

On behalf of Forest City Ratner (FCR) and our parent company, Forest City Enterprises (FCE), I want to apologize for the disgraceful conduct of some Atlantic Yards supporters at the state Senate oversight hearing on May 29 and the Atlantic Yards informational meeting last Wednesday, July 22.

It was wrong to disrupt the hearing with whistles and heckling, and it was wrong to disrupt the meeting with chanting and heckling. I felt very uncomfortable at times during the meeting last week.

Please note: these activities were not directed by FCR; the disruptions were the work of unions who expect work on the Atlantic Yards project; representatives of some of our Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) signatories (part of our “team,” as I said on Wednesday); and groups that may or may not have any connection to the project.

Looking at the video

Also note: just because my colleague Scott Cantone walked into the hall at about 1:10 of the video below and, less than a half a minute later, a bunch of men interrupted by chanting “Go home,” there is no indication of any direct connection.



(Video shot by Jonathan Barkey; edited by Norman Oder)

For the record, I must point out, project opponents are hardly angels. Some of them were quite rude on Wednesday night and they have periodically taken nasty potshots at us and, especially, CEO Bruce Ratner. (It’s unfortunate that his name so easily lends itself to derision.) During the August 2006 hearing on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement both sides heckled and were somewhat disruptive.

Our team’s fault

However, the fault at the last two governmental meetings has been that of our supporters. None of our representatives were on the panel during the disruptions on May 29. However, I was sitting at the table last week.

And I believe we at Forest City Ratner have a higher obligation. Sure, I want the Atlantic Yards project to move forward. But I want us to win fair and square. After all, if it is in fact “a relentless campaign of a few to deny benefits to the many,” as I said Wednesday night (thank you to the two p.r. firms we had in the room for wordsmithing), we should be able to win fairly.

It was inappropriate for James Caldwell, the president of our CBA signatory BUILD (Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development), to claim, “The fact of the matter is, in the community that you just came to here, that we’ve been here for years.”

His sentiments are sincere, but he has, to say the least, an awkward way of expressing them.

Similarly, it was inappropriate for the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, head of our CBA signatory DBNA (Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Alliance) to regularly heckle during the state Senate hearing. 

However much we would rather not have had the hearing, we recognize that Senator Bill Perkins was pursuing his right and duty as head of the Senate’s committee overseeing corporations and authorities. A Senate hearing is like a court hearing; no one should ever heckle.

Rev. Daughtry, another member of our “team,” is sincere, but he too has an awkward way of expressing his enthusiasm for Atlantic Yards.

Our Core Values

I take seriously the Core Values that guide how Forest City’s business is conducted.

I believe in Integrity and Opennness:
In all our dealings with all stakeholders, we will uphold the highest possible standards of ethical behavior. Our interactions will be characterized by an attitude of openness, candor and honesty.

I believe in Community Involvement:
We are committed to the general welfare of the communities in which we live and work. We will develop and maintain excellent relationships throughout our communities and always work to balance our business interests with the needs of our communities.

To uphold the highest standards of ethical behavior, and to balance our business interests with the needs of our communities requires a higher standard than was displayed on Wednesday. People chanted “Go Home” and “Jobs,” while the moderator of the event asked fruitlessly for order and could not--or would not--call in security guards or law enforcement.

Those disrupting the meeting did not listen to the Community Board representatives. They probably would not have listened to the representatives of the Empire State Development Corporation (who, on May 29, also remained silent). 

They might have listened to Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who believes in "Respect." But they probably would have listened to me. I should have done more.

It’s not about individuals

I also want to put to rest the personalization of the conflict that has unfortunately persisted. Some on our side have specifically targeted Daniel Goldstein, the most prominent of the opponents, the spokesman for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn and the lead plaintiff in the eminent domain suits.

Goldstein may seem to be a media hound, and thus an easy target, but the Atlantic Yards debate cannot be reduced to a conflict with him.

May I remind you of some wise lyrics:
It’s not about you.
It’s not about me.
It’s about what we do collectively.

I too appreciate musician John Pinamonti's "The Burrow"; yes, his song opposes Atlantic Yards, but we can embrace some of the same sentiments and be stronger for it.

This week’s hearing

So on Wednesday and Thursday, during the official public hearing, I ask you to uphold the highest possible standards. Yes, we urge you to support the project, vocally when appropriate, but there’s a time and place for that, and it doesn’t involve interrupting others. (The other side will protest outside the hearing.)

Do keep in mind that the ESDC has pledged to cut off the microphone after three minutes and to remove people who are disruptive. That makes sense. The behavior exhibited last Wednesday and on May 29 would never fly in Westchester, where I live.

It shouldn’t be tolerated in Brooklyn, either. It diminishes Forest City Ratner and all of us who believe in community.

Best regards,
MaryAnne Gilmartin

Forest City Ratner Executive VP

The Newark solution? Optimism from Star-Ledger columnist seems a bit overblown

Star-Ledger sports columnist Steve Politi published two pieces on Friday about the possibility of a Nets move to Newark, not Brooklyn.

However, that move, while it makes sense logistically from a regional perspective--the Prudential Center in Newark is already built, and underutilized, while the Atlantic Yards arena is yet unbuilt--remains a stretch until and unless the plans for AY are further undermined.

The Newark move also makes sense from a federal perspective; Forest City Ratner would save well over $100 million, mostly from federal taxpayers, thanks to the issuance of tax-exempt bonds. But the Treasury Department grandfathered in the plan for bonds.

Booker's take

In an article headlined Newark mayor Cory Booker not surprised by reports that NJ Nets are for sale, Politi wrote:
Newark mayor Cory Booker wasn't the least bit surprised at reports that the Nets are for sale -- he predicted that would happen months ago. What did surprise and disappoint him was hearing that the team was only looking at potential investors interested in moving it to Brooklyn.

"I have said from the beginning of this that the endeavor in Brooklyn is under a lot of challenges now, and I've said for months that the team is going to go up for sale," Booker said Friday at a musical festival in Newark.

"I'm discouraged a little bit that they're saying they're only going to sell to people who are going to stay in Brooklyn, but the reality is, we're going to do everything we possibly can to make sure that team stays in New Jersey. We need the revenue, we need the business opportunities. It really can become an economic engine for our state at a time when we need it."

Booker has said that he was putting together a team of investors who could purchase the Nets and move them to the Prudential Center in Newark, but he has not had direct talks with team owner Bruce Ratner.

Booker shouldn't be surprised that Ratner wants investors to join the Brooklyn plan. If Ratner simply sells the team to Newark-bound owners, he loses much of the benefit of his investment in the AY plan.

I'll point out, for the record, that the issue of a potential move to Newark did not come up Thursday night during the monthly WBGO radio show Newark Today with Cory Booker. Then again, the show, which included Newark's police director, focused on law enforcement issues.

The interview in Brooklyn

In a commentary headlined Politi: NJ Nets owner Bruce Ratner knows damage, not damage control, Politi wrote:
Bruce Ratner inherited a championship team and gutted it. He stumbled into a growing fan base and alienated it. Now, for his final act, he is seeking anyone rich and dumb enough to help him rip the Nets from this community.

Congratulations, Bruce. You make the Secaucus Seven look like the Rooney family.

The real estate magnate, as first reported in The Star-Ledger, is desperately trying to sell his crumbling vision for Brooklyn to a reclusive billionaire, a Russian businessman and his co-investors. But at some point, don't you think they'll ask what, exactly, that vision is?

There is no blueprint for his arena. There is no world-class architect designing the complex. There is no financing in place for the project, and there is still the messy matter of the Court of Appeals hearing that, if lost, would sabotage the entire Atlantic Yards deal once and for all.

Other than that, it's a great investment.

Yes, but many of things can change.

Chances of defeat

Politi went to visit Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn's Daniel Goldstein who gave a contradictory quote:
"I think we have an excellent shot of defeating the project," he said. "Am I confident? It changes day to day."

I'm not so sure Ratner's seeming desperate search for investors in a down economy is reason for Atlantic Yards opponents to feel confidence, as Politi suggests. 

Yes, Ratner is dismantling the Nets, from roster to front-office, and has lost the confidence of many fans. But I think he's just stretching as far as possible, and aims to regroup if and when the Nets move to Brooklyn.

And I don't know if I'd call opponents chances "excellent"? They're not insubstantial and there are a lot of question marks, but the city and state remain firmly behind the plan.

Newark solution?

Politi writes:
It has never made more sense than now to move the Nets to the Prudential Center. If Ratner really needs relief from his mounting debt, he should look down Route 21.

It just doesn't work that way. If Ratner were merely an ill-fated team owner, yes, a sale and a move to Newark would be a no-brainer. But he and his parent company have invested a lot of money--they claim $500 million--in AY, and they're not going to give that up easily.

The move to Brooklyn, even with a lowered market for luxury boxes and a decimated team, has much more upside for Ratner. And if there's no team, there's no Atlantic Yards project.

The only way the Nets will move to Newark is if the project called Atlantic Yards dies.

Lupica: Ratner should have just built an arena; AYR: there wouldn't have been as much profit

New York Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica writes, in some way echoing Steve Politi of the Star-Ledger:

You wonder how this all would have worked out for Bruce Ratner if he'd tried to bring the Nets to Brooklyn the right way.
Not using them to make a real estate score.
Not looking to turn the part of Brooklyn that the city and state handed to him into Ratner World.
Not with some Frank Gehry/Star Wars arena.
Just a basketball arena for a basketball team that would have brought professional sports back to the borough of Brooklyn.
But that wasn't enough for Ratner, and soon he'll be out of the Nets business and somebody else will own the team that can't get any better because there's no money.
Ratner will blame this on the economy, or Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, or Danny Goldstein, who led the resistance.
The person Ratner ought to blame is himself.

Just an arena?

"Just a basketball arena for a basketball team" would never have been enough for Ratner, because Ratner is real estate developer, not a sports team owner. He never would've tried to bring the Nets to Brooklyn "the right way."

Also, a standalone arena would not have generated the seemingly-impressive but highly dubious economic projections Forest City Ratner distributed.

In fact, given the increases in city subsidies, the arena, taken by itself, now would be a money-loser for the city, according to the New York City Independent Budget Office. The Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), which evaluates and approves the project, has not looked closely at the IBO but stands by its economic projections, which are premised on an unlikely ten-year buildout.

Below are excerpts from my article Thursday on the informational meeting Wednesday.

Economic impact

How was the ESDC’s economic impact analysis conducted?

ESDC Senior Counsel Steve Matlin’s answer was vague. Expected construction costs and tax benefits were plugged into a model, and calculations were reflected in the 2006 Modified General Project Plan (MGPP).

“We’re constantly looking at that analysis and updating that analysis,” he asserted, a statement belied by the absence of any new numbers in the 2009 MGPP. He suggested that, since the the cost of the project has increased, “I’d expect that fiscal benefits will probably increase.”



“Will the cost-benefit analysis be available on the ESDC web site?” moderator Craig Hammerman, District Manager of Community Board 6, asked later.

Matlin looked slightly quizzical, then offered a bland answer: “The summary of the cost-benefit analysis was in the 2006 [Modified] GPP and carried forward in the 2009 [Modified] GPP. To the extent those numbers are updated, we will reflect them at our next board approval, which we expect will be in September of 2009.”

In other words, the public won’t get an opportunity to comment.

Later, the issue came up again.



"How can the Empire State Development Corporation properly evaluate the appropriateness of subsidies for the project without producing an independent cost-benefit analysis?" Hammerman read.

"Well, ESDC does do a cost-benefit analysis," Matlin replied. "We have folks that look at the benefits of the project and the costs of the project. That''s an ongoing analysis, and we perform that internally."

"How come it's never been released?" asked Scott Turner (for Fans for Fair Play) from the crowd.

I'd add that the cost-benefit analysis is premised on the impacts of a ten-year buildout, and that seems very unlikely.

What about the IBO report?



Hammerman read a question about a New York City Independent Budget Office report that concluded the arena would be a net money-loser for the city.

“We have heard that report,” Matlin replied phlegmatically. “We do our own analysis. We basically do an analysis of the entire project. We don’t do a separate analysis just of the arena component. What we bargained for was the entire project. We bargained for the benefits generated from the entire project. Our calculations determined that there would be a significant benefit to both the city and the state from the buildout of the project. I believe the city--the Mayor’s office and the EDC [New York City Economic Development Corporation] also reached a similar conclusion.”

However, they use different methodologies and the IBO has been more scrupulous about trying to assess public costs and subsidies.

Later, asked if ESDC or FCR disputed the IBO report, watch how Forest City Ratner's MaryAnne Gilmartin handed the microphone to Matlin with a slight scowl. Matlin then said, "We have not looked closely at that report. We do our own number-crunching. We looked at the project as a whole as opposed to the arena specifically."

Later, Hammerman read a question asserting that the costs to create jobs and affordable housing are two to four times the city average--so how do ESDC and FCR justify spending public money this way.

“Stupid question,” offered a heckler.

“Y’know, I’m not sure what that question is premised on,” Matlin responded. “What we do is, on a project-by-project basis, we evaluate the investment that the state is making, that the public sector is making. We look at the potential benefits that we expect to be generated from the project. And we make an evaluation as to whether the project is worthwhile or not. That’s basically what we did in this project. I don’t know how it compares to other projects.”

The big news was the informational meeting, but the media mostly missed it

While the official required Atlantic Yards public hearing takes place over two days, Wednesday and Thursday, that, I think, will be something of a sideshow, an opportunity for both opponents and proponents to face off and to posture--though some substantive criticism surely will be lodged.

The bigger news, I believe, already happened on Wednesday at the informational meeting before three Community Boards, given the unprecedented presence of both Empire State Development and Forest City Ratner representatives and their responses--both answers and evasions--to tough questions.

And it got relatively little press coverage. None of the three dailies sent a reporter, nor did any TV stations, including NY 1 or local Brooklyn cable.

Focus on conflict

Beyond AYR, which referred in the headline to both disruption and tough questions, two reports chose the conflict as the main frame. Both the Brooklyn Paper and New York Times blog The Local produced reports with a reasonable amount of range, but the respective headlines were Atlantic antics! Yards hearing goes haywire! and Atlantic Yards Meeting Erupts.

Neither followed up, as I did, to show the orchestration of the disruption.

The meeting ended too late to make the print deadlines for the Brooklyn Paper and the Courier-Life chain; the former did put up a prominent web story the next morning, while the latter does not typically post web stories promptly. Expect coverage of some sort next week in the Courier-Life as well as the Brooklyn Downtown Star.

Difficulty of public review

The New York Observer's online piece was headlined Public Review of Atlantic Yards, Without the 'View' Part--which deftly sketched the contradiction between having a public hearing without any site plan or images:
This isn’t to say that developers intended to do a bait and switch from the start—Forest City did pay Mr. Gehry to do advanced designs—but when project economics change, developers look to alter things they have the power to change, and there is no mechanism to ensure a project looks like its rendering.

Worthy observations, but there was much more to analyze.

"Be the Journalist"

The Times enlisted a citizen journalist--in this case, a pro, former Brooklyn Paper reporter Jessica Wisloski, working for free--recruited under the rubric Be the Journalist: Atlantic Yards Update.

Could you imagine "Be the Journalist--National Health Insurance Update"?

I shouldn't be so hard on The Local--at least they covered it. 

But the dailies, as well as the Village Voice and others who've paid attention to Atlantic Yards, missed an important story about governmental responsibility and public review of major development projects--a story with a number of potential mini-headlines, such as the unavailability of a cost-benefit analysis or arena renderings, or the ESDC's unwillingness to comment on a New York City Independent Budget Office analysis that the arena would be a money-loser for the city.

It's a story not merely of neighborhood and borough interest, but given the city and state subsidies involved, of interest to the city and state, and--given the heat and complexity of the controversy, as well as the controversy over building sports facilities--of national interest. 

Atlantic Yards opponents, who generally alert the media ahead of public hearings and meetings, could have done a better job of soliciting coverage. But the media should be able to figure things out themselves, as well.

Updates re Wednesday's meeting: the evasion of public responsibility, the orchestrated disruption, and more

I've updated and reorganized somewhat my post yesterday about the three-hour Atlantic Yards informational meeting held by Community Boards 2, 6, and 8.

Most importantly, a look back shows clearly how the public, which is supposed to comment next Wednesday and Thursday at the official public hearing, is not provided with essential information and will not get it during the comment period that ends at the end of August.

Notably, we weren't told--and won't be told--the total amount of subsidies required. We were told that the Empire State Development Corporation "constantly" updates its cost-benefit analysis--actually just an analysis of new revenue, without accounting for full costs--but that the analysis was not included in the 2009 Modified General Project Plan (GPP) issued last month.

We were told that new numbers may be provided to the ESDC board when it votes to approve the project in September. Whether or not that analysis emerges, if it updates the previous analysis, it will assume that the project will be built within a ten-year timetable (which is, of course, very unlikely).

No site plan or arena renderings will emerge before the project is approved.

New video

Included are several new videos, including one (below) that indicates clearly that one disruption, in which a group of men chanted "Go Home," was orchestrated, as they were not present in the room earlier but were escorted in by a man in an orange shirt.



Other new videos show ESDC Senior Counsel Steve Matlin defending the project timetable and the lack of a cost-benefit analysis, as well as describing the ESDC's (non)-response to the Independent Budget Office report on the Atlantic Yards arena and the question of why Forest City Ratner was allowed to market naming rights.

(Videos shot by Jonathan Barkey; edited by Norman Oder.)

More information

Among the notable additions: Forest City Ratner VP MaryAnne Gilmartin's unwillingness to reveal the names of any other architects on the project (though surely they are working on it).

It's all about cash flow: Ratner, according to report, pushing harder to sell part of Nets

On Wednesday night, at the informational meeting on Atlantic Yards sponsored by three community boards, Forest City Ratner's MaryAnne Gilmartin was asked about reports that principal owner Bruce Ratner was selling the Nets to minority owner (and Brooklynite) Vinny Viola.

"That's not true," Gilmartin said.

Maybe so, but it was a narrow answer to a narrow question.

Nets for sale

As to whether Ratner may be selling the Nets to someone else, the headline on an article by Dave D'Alessandro of the Star-Ledger is New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner on verge of enlisting investors willing to move team to Brooklyn.

D'Alessandro reports:
But according to numerous officials throughout the organization, Ratner may soon find someone to help alleviate the team's crushing debt load and facilitate the construction of the Atlantic Yards project, and the candidates range from the former CEO of Yahoo to a billionaire industrialist from Russia -- each of whom would still move the team from New Jersey.

"I would be surprised if it doesn't happen fairly soon," said a high-ranking Nets official, who requested anonymity so as not to jeopardize Ratner's plans. "Bruce has looked into several options. He's had offers, he's made counteroffers, and at some point in time -- probably by the time the season gets under way -- something will transpire."

To what degree Ratner needs help is uncertain, even to some of the team's own investors. One who is admittedly skittish over the team's annual losses and the dubious plans for Brooklyn said earlier this week that Ratner needs "significant" financial assistance to keep the team afloat.

The plans for Brooklyn may be in question, but they are certainly part of the deal. Ratner wants only investors who'll support the Brooklyn move, which does have significant potential upside, given a new building in a major media market. But as the market for luxury boxes slows, and the Nets alienate fans with cost-cutting and weak teams, the upside faces some constraints.

Oh, and D'Alessandro reports that Viola remains a candidate to buy the team, though the most viable one is former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel.

Yormark's spin

D'Alessandro gets some happy talk from Nets CEO Brett Yormark and contrasts it with what's he's heard from others associated with the team:
Ratner's highest officials, for their part, haven't denied that he's shopping for help. As recently as last week, Nets CEO Brett Yormark issued this statement after an interview request.

"As we have said before, we have received interest from potential investors in the team," Yormark said through a publicist. "That interest is growing, as it is clear that we are moving to Brooklyn. Our ownership group is as committed as ever to the success of the Nets and to the Barclays Center."

But employees and investors alike are getting wary over Ratner's stewardship, and there has been a significant drop in morale within the basketball and business sides of the operation.

ESDC, FCR face, answer, evade tough questions (subsidies, cost-benefit analysis, etc.); meeting marred by heckling and chaos

Despite the heckling, chanting, and chaos that marred last night’s informational meeting on Atlantic Yards, the session may have been the most enlightening—in terms of questions asked, answered, and evaded—of any in the history of the Atlantic Yards project.

(Photos at left by Tracy Collins; photos at right by Adrian Kinloch.)

Representatives of Forest City Ratner (FCR) and the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) got thrown some hard questions—about the total amount of subsidies, the details of a cost-benefit analysis, and the absence of any site plan or arena renderings--and managed to evade or deflect many of them. In essence, they said the project--now $4.9 billion, previously $4 billion--could be approved by the ESDC board in September without such information being made subject to public scrutiny or comment.

(Noticing New York's Michael D.D. White also comments on how the ESDC board will approve the project on a "sight-unseen basis.")

Other answers were telling: FCR’s MaryAnne Gilmartin gave a long and convoluted answer to a question about affordable housing rents while avoiding the opportunity to state the monthly rent for an apartment. ESDC Senior Counsel Steve Matlin (at right, with Gilmartin) asserted--for the first time, I believe--that the arena naming rights bestowed on the developer were considered part of the financing of the project, a statement not part of any fiscal analysis of AY. ESDC dismissed but did not dispute a New York City Independent Budget Office (IBO) report saying the arena would be a net money-loser for the city.

And Gilmartin said FCR "expected" not to seek more city or state subsidies--a pledge put into question by her acknowledgment of and justification for the developer’s pursuit of federal stimulus funds.

She also acknowledged, for the first time, that Forest City Ratner has funding commitments for all of its Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) partners. Several of those groups, such as Brooklyn Endeavor Experience and Public Housing Communities, and the Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Alliance, have resisted answering questions about their funding.

Gilmartin, who took over in June 2007 after original point man Jim Stuckey departed mysteriously, was confident and resolute in her delivery, but, in her first true public appearance regarding AY, did show some lack of familiarity with the project, at one point reading a document that said the tallest building would be 620 feet--no, that was the original plan; it now would be 511 feet--and suggesting that only 80/20 bonds--for 80% market-rate housing and 20% low-income housing--would be used for the project, rather than the 50/30/20 (market/middle-moderate/low-income) program previously announced.

Out of control

The meeting, cosponsored by Community Boards 2, 6, and 8 and held at Long Island University’s Zeckendorf Health Sciences Center, was a dispiriting reminder of the difficulty in achieving an Atlantic Yards event without conflict and chaos. Some project opponents, dismayed by evasive responses or the lack of follow-up to required written questions, heckled the representatives on stage. (At left, former Green Party candidate for Brooklyn Borough President Gloria Mattera.)

As the meeting continued, project supporters, union members, other job-seekers, and representatives of Community Benefits Agreements signatories, sowed more disorder by regularly heckling, claiming they were the real Brooklyites, and, stalling the meeting, chanting “Go home.” (At right, below) In fact, as the video (well below) shows, that latter disruption was orchestrated, as the chanters, who had not previously been at the meeting, were escorted into the room for that purpose.

And, at one point, James Caldwell, president of CBA signatory BUILD (Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development), suggested that project opponents had just come to the community but "we've been here for years," and, engaging in some race- and class-baiting, warned, "Maybe you don't want to hear it, but black folks are not working in our community." (See video near bottom.)

There was limited security at the space, with audience members essentially disregarding the remonstrations of moderator Craig Hammerman, the CB 6 District Manager. The disorder pointed to the potential for even more chaos at the official ESDC public hearing next Wednesday and Thursday at the Klitgord Auditorium of New York City Technical College.

Indeed, the opportunity for individuals to make public comment points to increased opportunity for partisanship, chanting, and heckling; then again, surely the ESDC learned from last night’s example.

(Indeed, the Brooklyn Paper points to a new protocol posted on the ESDC web site, in which speakers exceeding three minutes will find their microphones cut off and those disrupting the proceedings will be escorted out. Here's coverage in The Local, from citizen journalist and former Brooklyn Paper reporter Jessica Wisloski. The Observer focused on the absence of any site plans for review.)

At the peak of last night's meeting, perhaps more than 200 people were in attendance, in a room that could seat 250 and accommodate 300. It seemed that project supporters, many from groups with relationships with FCR, outnumbered opponents, critics, and neutrals.

CBs and officials

At the outset, Richard Bashner, chairman of CB 6, explained that the reason for written questions was not to avoid questions or follow-up—though that in fact occurred—but to “collate the questions in a sensible way.”

Behind the table were Bashner, CB 8 Chairperson Nizjoni Granville, and CB 2 Chairperson John Dew. Next to them were Darren Bloch, ESDC Executive VP; MaryAnne Gilmartin, FCR Executive VP; Steve Matlin, ESDC Senior Counsel; Rachel Shatz, ESDC VP of planning and environmental review; and Joe Petillo, ESDC counsel.

(Bashner and Block are in the photo above; Bloch, Gilmartin, Matlin, Shatz, and Petillo are in the photo at top.)

The claps for Gilmartin upon her introduction were a hint of a raucous night ahead.

Gilmartin, a resident of Westchester, and Matlin, a resident of Union County, NJ, took the lead for their respective entities; they were regularly applauded by project supporters who at times denounced opponents and critics as newcomers and illegitmate Brooklynites.

Summary of project

Matlin began with a brief summary of the 2009 Modified General Project Plan (MGPP) before the ESDC board and the subject of the hearing next week. Given that implementation has been delayed by both litigation and a “more challenging economic climate,” ESDC has agreed to have the project site be acquired in two or more stages, with construction to come.

“Over the past few weeks, some of the project opponents have asked why we're considering changes to the project that might be perceived as being beneficial to the developer,” Matlin declared. “The answer, quite simply, is without these changes, the project cannot move forward, and we believe that the project will be a great benefit to the city and state... It’s going to create jobs, affordable housing, new revenues for the state and city, and will result in a great entertainment venue for Brooklyn.”

Subject to any further modifications, he said, “we expect to present the project plan in early September, and start site assemblage later this year.”

He was applauded.

Gilmartin on stage


(Videos by Jonathan Barkey; edited by Norman Oder)

Gilmartin, whom I erroneously predicted wouldn’t show up, then spoke with a determined edge in her voice. “It is approaching half a decade since Forest City embarked on the Atlantic Yards project” she said, and after committing “hundreds of millions in equity invested and not a single new building built”—and, as we learned, gaining an unspecified amount of subsidies—“our resolve is stronger than ever to build the project we committed to build early on: a world-class arena, thousands of new housing units, 2250 of which will be affordable, a new transit entrance, open space, a new railyard for the Long Island Rail Road.”

(Wait—wasn’t the project they committed to early on supposed to be designed by Frank Gehry, offer space for 10,000 office jobs, and include an upgraded railyard that would accommodate more trains rather than fewer?)

“While the world has changed dramatically since we first started, the project’s scope and its benefits have not,” Gilmartin asserted, stating that delays and the economic crisis require value engineering and deferment of certain costs.

“Today, undeterred by an anemic economy and a relentless campaign of a few to delay the benefits to many,” she continued—in a bit of a hedge-- “Forest City stands committed to building the project as quickly as the market will allow.”

Gilmartin said a master closing is planned for later this year, in which all agreements are signed and arena financing is secured, leading construction to begin.

She said FCR had spent over $500 million on land acquisition, construction, demolition, and soft costs. (In October 2007, FCR told investors that the developer had spent $250 million.)

The construction schedule has not changed in terms of duration, she asserted. “It has simply been pushed out three years.”

The arena, she said, will be open for the 2011-12 basketball season—which may mean early 2012 or simply may be a stretch, given that government officials have been saying 2012.

“Some have said that the housing won’t get built,” she said. “I assure you that it will… We are motivated by our required return hurdles to build, and build expeditiously.” Then, acknowledging an excess of luxury housing, she said that “affordable housing represents a viable, almost recession proof opportunity.”

That depends, of course, on the amount of affordable housing subsidies. It also raises questions about the 1930 condos and 2250 market-rate rentals to go with the 2250 affordable rentals.

Arena design after approval

The arena design will be unveiled publicly in early fall, September or October, Gilmartin said, not explaining that that would be after the ESDC board approves the project. “The images that were in the public domain were not intended for release,” she asserted. “They were placeholders.”

“A good building is designed from the inside out,” she said, asserting that the images that have emerged were preliminary. Later she was asked explicitly why, if the images were not intended for release, they appeared in ESDC documents. Her answer:"we were asked to provide illustrative examples."

Why no renderings?

Why are no renderings being made available before the hearing?

Matlin said that the design of the arena is evolving, but guidelines are in place, and the new design will comply with the guidelines. Bloch said that the “fairly rigorous design guidelines”--which, for example, involve views in from the street to the arena--allow “us to go forward with a certain degree of confidence.”

Gilmartin said the Urban Room--the long-touted entrance building--will be built when the office building is built, but until then there would be interim open space. “Forest City is confident this is going to be a serious architectural statement.”

Timetable



If the project is supposed to take ten years, why do the funding agreements give Forest City 12 years to build Phase 1 and new documents put a 25-year deadline on Phase 2?

“I think there’s been a lot of confusion about this,” Matlin responded. “There is a timetable that all the collective parties are striving to achieve... However, there are no guarantees.”

A dispute in the crowd halted Matlin’s response.

“Let them build the thing, we need jobs,” another person shouted. Hammerman requested quiet.

“There is a ten-year timetable,” Matlin said. “However, we need the capital markets, we need the residential markets to cooperate, so there is the possibility that the project will be delayed, beyond ten years.

(In photo at left, a union worker heckles. At right in photo is lobbyist and p.r. person Joyce Baumgarten of Geto & de Milly and, in the center, Sonya Covington of Forest City Ratner.) 

Security issues

Does ESDC stand by earlier promises not to restrict or re-route traffic because of security concerns? (This relates to concerns in Newark, where streets are closed next to the arena.”)

Shatz said that the EIS looked at traffic, taking into account whatever security measures: “So there’s no anticipation on our part that any additional streets would have to be closed when the arena opens.”

Later, asked if the police department had reviewed the new arena plans with the same level of detail as previously and whether there were any details to share, Gilmartin said, "As the design is not complete yet, that review will take place obviously before the closing, but we're in constant contact with the city and expect to see the police depatment about the changes in design in the fall." (Unmentioned: that's after the scheduled time for Atlantic Yards to be approved by the ESDC board.)

Phase 2 guaranteed?

Is there a guarantee that Phase 2 will be built at all? For Forest City to receive a return, “the only way to do that is to build out the project plan,” Matlin responded.

“So profit is the only incentive,” heckled Scott Turner of Fans for Fair Play, beginning a long night of audience heckling.

Hammerman (right) asked Turner to quiet down. Someone asked for respect.

“I don’t have any respect for them,” Turner shot back. A construction worker in the audience began chiding Turner loudly.

“There’s no cross-conversation or we’ll shut this meeting down,” Hammerman said, in a threat that was not enforced.

Why do penalties not kick in until 12 years for Phase 1 and, 25 years for Phase 2? The reason, responded Matlin in his bland and unruffled tones, is that development of the project is “somewhat subject to economic conditions.”

Forest City Enterprises’ viability?

Given that the parent Forest City Enterprises (FCE) has lost 90% of its value in the past two years, has the ESDC developed contingency plans?

“We’re confident with where they are,” the ESDC’s Bloch said.

Gilmartin said that FCE had been hit like many other companies, and cited examples of the corporation’s health, notably “an equity raise of $345 million” in May by issuing new stock. By slowing development and making other changes, “we have shaved 70 to 80 million of annualized costs off the operations of the company.”

(In other words, Forest City saved even more--some $100 million--by renegotiating a cheaper new Vanderbilt Yard with the MTA.)

Gilmartin also pointed to loan extensions on Atlantic Yards and the Ridge Hill project in Westchester, saying that lenders want to be affiliated only with developers that can make good on their promises.

Offering a bit of a stock tip, she said that “we have assets that are, in our opinion, worth many times more” than the current stock price.

Economic impact

How was the ESDC’s economic impact analysis conducted?

Matlin’s answer was vague. Expected construction costs and tax benefits were plugged into a model, and calculations were reflected in the 2006 MGPP.

“We’re constantly looking at that analysis and updating that analysis,” he asserted, a statement belied by the absence of any new numbers in the 2009 MGPP. He suggested that, since the the cost of the project has increased, “I’d expect that fiscal benefits will probably increase.”



“Will the cost-benefit analysis be available on the ESDC web site?” Hammerman asked later.

Matlin looked slightly quizzical, then offered a bland answer: “The summary of the cost-benefit analysis was in the 2006 [Modified] GPP and carried forward in the 2009 [Modified] GPP. To the extent those numbers are updated, we will reflect them at our next board approval, which we expect will be in September of 2009.”

In other words, the public won’t get an opportunity to comment.

Later, the issue came up again.



"How can the Empire State Development Corporation properly evaluate the appropriateness of subsidies for the project without producing an independent cost-benefit analysis?" Hammerman read.

"Well, ESDC does do a cost-benefit analysis," Matlin replied. "We have folks that look at the benefits of the project and the costs of the project. That''s an ongoing analysis, and we perform that internally."

"How come it's never been released?" asked Turner from the crowd.

I'd add that the cost-benefit analysis is premised on the impacts of a ten-year buildout, and that seems very unlikely.

What about the IBO report?



Hammerman read a question about a New York City Independent Budget Office report that concluded the arena would be a net money-loser for the city.

“We have heard that report,” Matlin replied phlegmatically. “We do our own analysis. We basically do an analysis of the entire project. We don’t do a separate analysis just of the arena component. What we bargained for was the entire project. We bargained for the benefits generated from the entire project. Our calculations determined that there would be a significant benefit to both the city and the state from the buildout of the project. I believe the city--the Mayor’s office and the EDC [New York City Economic Development Corporation] also reached a similar conclusion.”

However, they use different methodologies and the IBO has been more scrupulous about trying to assess public costs and subsidies.

Later, asked if ESDC or FCR disputed the IBO report, watch how Gilmartin handed the microphone to Matlin with a slight scowl. Matlin then said, "We have not looked closely at that report. We do our own number-crunching. We looked at the project as a whole as opposed to the arena specifically."

Later, Hammerman read a question asserting that the costs to create jobs and affordable housing are two to four times the city average--so how do ESDC and FCR justify spending public money this way.

“Stupid question,” offered a heckler.

“Y’know, I’m not sure what that question is premised on,” Matlin responded. “What we do is, on a project-by-project basis, we evaluate the investment that the state is making, that the public sector is making. We look at the potential benefits that we expect to be generated from the project. And we make an evaluation as to whether the project is worthwhile or not. That’s basically what we did in this project. I don’t know how it compares to other projects.”

Penalties

What are the penalties for delay and who imposes them?

Matlin said the multi-party negotiation includes the city, the state, and the MTA. “There will be remedies in place that relate to the failure to construct the first three residential buildings on the arena block,” he said, in a reference to the already-concluded City Funding Agreement and State Funding Agreement.

Additional remedies, he said, are under negotiation, but “until those negotiations are completed, we’re not going to speak to those issues.”

Bashner followed up by asking about remedies for other phases.

Matlin said there’d be a penalty if the entire project is not completed in 25 years. “However, it is in everyone’s interest to have this project built out and completed as soon as possible,” he said, drawing claps, hisses, and heckles.

(White notes that his follow-up question, which asked about assurances that ESDC will enforce its remedies against Forest City Ratner, was presented to the people sorting questions but was never asked. )

Given the depressed office market, and stalled condo market, can AY be built on the announced 10-year schedule and, if not, how does it change the financial projections?

“Nobody has a crystal ball about the real estate market,” Gilmartin responded, noting that Forest City believes the office market and the economy will recover.

(At right, Forest City Ratner's Jane Marshall, in the front row, occasionally passed information to Gilmartin. In the distance along the same front row are Forrest Taylor and Warner Johnston, the ESDC's AY ombudsman and spokesman, respectively._

Total subsidies

Another question concerned the total amount of government subsidies, direct and indirect, for affordable housing and job creation, and how it compared to other projects.

Matlin evaded the question, saying he could only speak to the $100 million the state invested, and other benefits, such as the tax exemption on the arena parcel. Gilmartin cited $100 million from the city’s capital budget and additional infrastructure subsidies (which, she did not say, total $105 million).

“In addition, working hand in hand with our partners at ACORN,” she said, “...the city will make available its off-the-shelf” housing subsidies. She didn’t offer a figure, but said that the first building would have a significant amount of affordable housing.

The question recurred. “Why does the GPP exclude the costs for housing subsidies, the additional $105 million in city subsidies, and schools and sanitation, and so on,” Hammerman read a question. “Isn’t this misleading?”

“It certainly wasn’t intended to be misleading,” Matlin responded. “I think there was always the expectation, I think it’s pretty clear, that with affordable housing comes affordable housing subsidies. We were not able to quantify exactly what those subsidies were at the time we generated the original GPP, so those numbers were not in there. That was always the expectation and I think it was pretty well understood.”

Additional subsidies



Has Forest City Ratner asked the city and/or state for additional subsidies, including “extraordinary infrastructure costs,” (a fuzzy category that DDDB calls a “blank check.”) If so, how much and, to FCR, do you anticipate asking for more subsidies.

Matlin responded, “I think on every project that ESDC has been involved in, the developer always asks for more, and there’s always a dialogue and always a negotiation. The level of state commitment has remained the same; it’s a hundred million dollars.”

He did not answer whether FCR has asked the city for additional subsidies; indeed, it’s the city, not state, which has already more than doubled its commitment.

Hammerman followed up: “Does Forest City Ratner anticipate asking for more?” (This left out the question as to whether FCR has already asked the city for more.)

A union member in the audience heckled, “If these guys keep holding the project up, up, they’ll need more.”

Gilmartin said, “Forest City does not expect to ask for more subsidy.”

(Then again, Forest City has said it expected or anticipated opening the arena in 2006, 2007, and so on.)

No subsidies?

Hammerman presented a yes or no question: “Would Forest City Ratner be willing to build the project without any subsidies?”

“No,” responded Gilmartin without hesitation.

“Honest answer,” Koteen shot out.

Indeed, any developer building over a railyard would be requesting some subsidies, and the alternative--requiring up-front public money--would have been for government entitites to first build a deck and/or new railyard, then seek bids.

The eminent domain process

What happens to people if they refuse to leave their homes? Petillo, speaking carefully and appearing slightly sheepish, said that “we’re very sensitive” to impacting people’s lives.

A few people jeered.

“We try to minimize the impact of our projects on folks who are displaced,” he said. “We have very little experience having to deal with people who refuse to leave. We have a good track record of assisting displaced businesses and residents… with what is a disruptive process.”

He went on to explain that, once a condemnation is approved, the ESDC would ask the condemnation judge in Kings County to issue a writ of assistance, comparable to an eviction notice. (Some of the others with Petillo looked somber.)

If they refused to leave, the sheriff would remove them and their possessions. “We don’t anticipate that happening,” he said.

A loss in court?

What if the Court of Appeals rules against the use of eminent domain after the hearing in October?

Petillo said that the ESDC was confident that, as in the past, the courts would sustain the use of eminent domain.

That’s not the question, someone heckled. Others followed up.

“I think in not answering the question, they’ve answered it,” Bashner commented. “They do not have a plan which does not rely on eminent domain.”

The Rev. Herbert Daughtry, sitting in the front row, got up to speak. Bashner asked for no crosstalk.

Hammerman asked for calm.

How many jobs?

A questioner asked how many jobs would be provided in the project, including the arena.

Someone in the crowd yelled, “Leave Forest City Ratner alone.”

Hammerman threatened to have disruptive people removed.

Matlin responded without granular information, quoting the GPP, noting that construction would lead to 12,500 new direct job-years and almost 22,000 total job-years, plus an average of 4500 new jobs in the city, direct and indirect, and an average of 5000 jobs in the state.

MTA railyard


How does allowing FCR to build a 56-car railyard as opposed to one that was supposed to accommodate 72 cars constitute an upgrade?

Matlin said that ESDC didn’t speak for the MTA, but the latter had approved the upgrade.

Jobs

In one example of the relatively few softball questions, the panelists were asked about the job recruitment method.

“Unions,” shouted a heckler.

“It’s union construction, and we don’t expect there will be any problem finding laborers,” Gilmartin said with a smile.

Rate of return

What rate of return (IRR, or internal rate of return), does Forest City Ratner expect on the residential properties in Phase 1?

(FCR has never answered this question in a public forum. The rate of return had been calculated for ESDC in a report by consultant KPMG, and Forest City’s earlier economic projections, provided to ESDC and later released after a request by Assemblyman Jim Brennan, did contain IRR.)

“I’m not going to go into details on Forest City’s return,” Gilmartin responded, then, in a bit of a non sequitur, added, “I can only say that it’s a transparent process’’--derisive laughter came from some in the crowd-- “where the government has looked at our models--”

“You’re not going to go into details in a transparent process?” heckled Turner.

Rev. Daughtry got up and started defending the company. Hammerman asked him to sit down.

Affordable housing

The first building, B2, would have 400 units of housing, Gilmartin said. While FCR is obligated to provide at least 30% affordability on the arena block, given the market, it’s “quite possible” more would be built on the arena block. The next building, B3, would have 350 units. The other, B4, would be 800 units. “The expectation is that every six months a building would be launched, completing the arena block by 2014,” she said.

What is the rent range for the affordable housing?



Gilmartin gave much background context but did not answer the question. The rent ranges, she said, are set by government agencies involved in affordable housing, HPD (Department of Housing Preservation and Development) and HDC (New York City Housing Development Corporation), based on AMI, or Area Median Income, which includes not just the five boroughs but also suburban counties.

By way of example, she said that 100% of AMI is now $75,000 for a family of four, and rents are based on percentages, no more than 30% of income.

Eligibility for affordable housing, she said, goes to households earning as low as 40% of AMI. “So again, depending on what a family is earning, a family of four, there are rent levels that are set by the agencies and, again, it’s a moving target, because it’s reflective of when the project comes online and what the government allows.”

“Answer the question,” heckled Candace Carponter, legal chair for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. Project supporters shouted back at her to shut up.

Hammerman tried to rephrase the question: “We asked for rent ranges, and I believe they were providing us with income levels. Do you know what the actual rent ranges will be?”

“I can and will--go on to the next question--I’ll give you a range of the rents, based on the program of a particular building,” Gilmartin said, apparently indicating she’d consult her notes.

A bit later, Gilmartin, consulting a document, began explaining, “Rent ranges for low, all the way up through middle-income units--again, these are ranges, are twelve dollars and fifty cents a foot, and again, it depends on the size of the unit, these units can be 600 square feet to 1200 square feet, it depends on the size of the unit, so you’re talking about twelve dollars and fifty cents a foot for the low-income units, and it’s 22 dollars a foot for lowest band of middle income, and it goes up to 30 dollars a foot, again, for the highest level of middle income. Again, these are all pegged off what the income levels are of the people who qualify for the units.”

She was not pressed for an actual number.

Actually, the affordable housing units would be a minimum of 400 sf to 950 sf.

She didn’t offer any monthly rents. A 950 sf three-bedroom apartment at $30/sf would be $2375 a month--and a rather small three-bedroom apartment at that. Keep in mind that a not-insignificant slice of the affordable housing would appear to track or exceed the market.

Later, when the question came back up, she said that a rent of $12/sf on a thousand-foot apartment would be $12,000 a year, or $1000 a month. However, it's possible that no affordable units would be that large.

Bond financing

What analysis has ESDC conducted that indicates bond financing will be available for the affordable housing subsidies the project will require over its life cycle?

Gilmartin responded by deflecting the question; “There are bonds being issued for the construction of the arena, and there are programs that are being accessed for construction housing, and there are two different things. 80/20 bonds, which are the bonds used to build market-rate housing with 20 percent low-income, are volume cap bonds, which are readily available in this state, because there’s an absence of construction, nothing, frankly, is being built right now, so there is not a concern about the availability of that financing for housing. The financing on the arena, which is a different form of financing, will take place by the end of 2009, as we indicated. Again, we’re optimistic we can sell the bonds necessary to commence constuction on the arena.

She did not mention that the buildings with 50 percent affordable housing are supposed to be financed through a separate program known as 50/30/20, involving 30 percent middle- and moderate-income units, and 20 percent low-income units.

Back to affordable housing

A questioner asked why, if the AMI in Prospect Heights is $28,000 and all of Brooklyn $35,000, what is the AMI Forest City Ratner is using and how many people at those levels would be eligible for housing. (Actually, that is likely not be AMI for a family of four but average household income, and it's not clear whether the number is current.) Bashner followed up to clarify.

“The point is that the AMIs are published and they’re not subject to interpretation, and the rents are set based on those AMIs, ” Gilmartin said, not unreasonably. A schedule shows the AMI.

“We can circulate the published AMI schedule,” Gilmartin said. “I can assure you it’s not Forest City’s schedule.”

Bashner asked, if there are 200 affordable units in a building, what the range would be? “Twenty percent of the bands were intended to be in the low-income range,” Gilmartin said, “which, again, are 60 percent of AMI or lower.”

“Thirty percent are set in the middle-income range, with middle-income being defined as the range of 60-160%.” (Quick: 160% of $75,000 is $120,000, with 30% of that as rent being $36,000, or $3000 a month.)

What’s the FAR?

Subtracting out the streets and the area devoted to green space, what’s the calculated Floor Area Ratio (FAR) and how does that compare to what would normally be permissible for residential development?

ESDC said they couldn’t provide a specific number. Shatz said, “As was mentioned before, this project did benefit from a zoning override. Although we did create design guidelines with input from City Planning, people have to undersand that this project was not subject to New York City zoning.”

White calls that "a non-response, except to the extent that it hints at an acknowledgment that the state’s override of local laws will cause the megadevelopment to exceed the density New York City zoning would legally permit."

Need for condos?

“With thousands of empty luxury condos, why would we need an additional 1900 [condos] and 2800 high-rent rentals; I guess this is speaking to market need; maybe Forest City can address that,” Hammerman said.

(Note that there would be 2250 market-rate rentals, but arguably a good slice of the upper-affordable apartments would be close to market rate.)

“Again, we’re not building into this market particularly, we’re building into market cycles, which is what a developer does,” Gilmartin said. “It’s our expectation that the market will recover. New York City has historically had a supply of rental housing that’s insufficient to meet the demand. It’s the flip flop of the rest of the country, where 70 percent of the people have home ownership and 30 percent rent. In New York City, the majority of the people rent, and 30 percent of the people own. We believe strongly that the rental market will come back, and it will recover. And, as I said, the focus on the affordable component seems ever more appropriate, given the economy, and we’re not anticipating condo development in the early stages, on the arena block, in recognition of the fact that there is an oversupply of condominiums presently in Brooklyn.”

She didn't address the question about market-rate rentals.

ULURP

Several questions returned to issues addressed in the original round of governmental approval. Why was this project not allowed to go through normal city planning process, that involves the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. (All three CBs did adopt resolutions requesting that.)

Matlin responded, “When UDC [Urban Development Corporation, the ESDC’s official name] was created many years ago, one of the reasons it was created was to help get big complicated broad projects developed in a quick fashion. I know folks in the local communities are comfortable with ULURP; we have an alternative review procedure. It’s something that’s been used with great success on other projects. It’s something we do with the consent of the city, and, in this case, the city did approve of the project under the UDC Act.”

“It did not,” a few people in the crowd responded, recognizing there was no vote by any city entity.

“We have been working collaboratively with the city from the very beginning of this project," Matlin continued in his calm, bureaucratic way. "The mayor’s office has certainly consented to this project… The planning folks have been involved in the design guidelines of this project to a very great degree.”

(Actually, the UDC was set up, in the wake of Martin Luther King's assassination, to build subsidized housing in communities resistant to it. Its role has since expanded to "New York Loves Business.")

Role of community boards

What are the chairs of the community boards doing to stop the plan and study the community’s UNITY plan. Bashner noted that there’s no formal role for the CBs, and that CB 6 had in two motions voted overwhelmingly against the project. (The other two CBs did not formally oppose the project, but raised significant critical questions.)

CB 2’s Dew noted that the CB “did react very strenuously to the EIS [environmental impact statement].” CB 8’s Granville added, “I would just like to comment that I am a little disappointed that even though the project plan was changed, that there was not a new environmental impact statement, so at this point, we have as much to go on as you do.”

Earlier, ESDC staff had said that no new EIS was necessary.

Hammerman said several people passed up notes about how to find jobs. Gilmartin said those seeking jobs and housing should contact the CLO [community liaison officer].

As Hammerman asked Gilmartin to “remind us what a CLO is,” in the back, Darnell Canada, who had notably interrupted the November 2004 meeting of three CBs featuring Stuckey, began shouting, “We need the jobs, we need to start working. Same old questions. Same old questions. Same old questions--when’s it going to change?”

Hammerman remonstrated with him.

“Every time, same stuff,” Canada bellowed. “Taking time, you’re taking time--and doing nothing--holding up the project.”

Funding of CBA partners

How much has Forest City Ratner provided to its CBA partners?

“I don’t have those numbers,” Gilmartin responded.

Hammerman asked for an estimate.

“Forest City has funding obligations and commitments to each of the organizations, and they’re reviewed on an annual basis,” Gilmartin said. “We’re happy to provide an accounting, generally, of that, but I don’t have that information with me. Again, it depends on what they’re doing, presently, and what the expectations they’re going to be doing in the going-forward year, and it’s done on a very regular basis, in close consultation with each of the CBA members.”

Luxury boxes

Bashner asked about the extent to which luxury boxes are necessary to revenues for the arena and whether inexpensive tickets would be available.

The latter, Gilmartin said, has always been promised by FCR. Gilmartin said arenas are financed heavily via sponsorship revenue “and what we call contractually-obligated income,” a combination of sponsorship and the sale of suites and tickets. “We have, in a sense, pre-leased a large portion of the arena in terms of sponsorship. We view the suite revenue as a value-play, still,” she added, saying it was more favorable than a box at Yankee Stadium or Giants Stadium.

“We’re pricing at a point where we can take advantage of lessons learned," she said. "Part of our value-engineering effort was to produce a price point for those suites that’s more manageable in the current times we find ourselves in. All that gets proved out in the financing process, because the rating agencies and the bond purchasers are going to validate those assumptions because they’ll buy the bonds.”

Jay-Z's role

How involved is rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z in the project? (He owns a small piece of the Nets and has appeared at several press conferences to back AY.)

“I can tell you, up until now, he’s a passive investor," Gilmartin responded, "and I can’t speak to how he’ll be involved in the future.”

Impact of lawsuits

What has been the impact of the lawsuits on the timetable? Hammerman read a question.

“We quantify it as a three-year delay,” Gilmartin said, putting aside her company's financial difficulties.

“So the jobs which this economy and borough need now, which would get a great boost from the project--what needs to happen in order for the project to reactivate?” Hammerman asked, reading a question.

Gilmartin explained that FCR was completing the temporary railyard essential to commence arena construction. She repeated that documents are being prepared for the master closing, “which will occur before the end of 2009. The condemnation process will be under way. Title will pass, the bonds will be sold, and the arena will go into construction. And that will trigger the commencement of the project.”

Several people clapped.

B1 and the Urban Room

What conditions must be met before the office tower B1 and the associated Urban Room will be built--"and isn’t it true you won’t build it unless you have an anchor tenant?" Hammerman read.

“Because it is an office building,” Gilmartin responded, “and the way office buildings are built, ground up, they require a certain level of pre-leasing so they can be financed. So that building will be built when we can secure the financing and therefore, when we have enough pre-leasing... yes, indeed, it’s an office building, and it requires pre-leasing in order to get financed.”

“So no Urban Room,” muttered anti-AY activist Lucy Koteen from the crowd.

Other CBAs

ESDC was asked if any other developer has entered into CBA.

“To our knowledge, Columbia University,” Shatz said.

From the back, Carpenters Local 926 President Sal Zarzana began shouting about non-union projects: “They build with out-of-towners, and illegals.”

(In photo at right, AY opponent Robert Puca, at right, has a colloquy with Zarzana, center, and Carpenters Union rep Anthony Pugliese.) 

Stimulus funds

“Can Forest City Ratner comment on why there have been pubic requests for federal stimulus funds to help with the construction of the arena?” Hammerman asked.

“It’s shovel-ready construction,” shouted Marie Louis of BUILD (Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development), a CBA-signatory.

Gilmartin nodded: “Because it is shovel-ready construction, and the fact of the matter is that the project, like other projects around the country, has suffered, based on the economic downturn, and it’s our responsibility to try to do what we can to make the project happen and to maintain its viability.”

Then again, how much of the shovel-ready construction put forth for stimulus funds consists of public works and how many are private developers' projects? (See state list from ProPublica, and New York's list.)

Blight, and chaos

“Before Forest City Ratner developed its plans for the site, how long was the area blighted?” asked Hammerman.

The question was likely meant to pinpoint just why Forest City Ratner chose its peculiar 22-acre footprint, and why the ESDC studied just that area, but the question was never answered.

“Fifty years,” shouted one man in the audience.

“Decades,” shouted Louis. “Anyone who’s lived here knows...”

Bashner asked people to quiet down, engaging in an extended request to get one loud man to quiet down. “Threatening me personally is not helping,” Bashner said.

More shouting ensued. Gilmartin and Matlin maintained poker faces. “Read our questions,” Louis shouted.

Bashner asked people to calm down.


Several people shouted that they wanted their (presumably pro-project) questions heard.

“Build It Now,” began a chant.

At one point, Carpenters Union rep Anthony Pugliese began shouting from the back. “Fifty-five years old, I could walk there. I’ve seen nothing.”

“You’re a community board member," Bashner responded, “you know better.”

Pugliese said he was supporting a heckler: “He knows what it’s like to have nothing."

(At right, a regularly heckler; I'm told he owns property just adjacent to the site and supports the project. Just to the left of him in the photo is Daniel Goldstein of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, with his finger on his lips.)

With the episode lasting more than six minutes, Hammerman decided to move on to a new question.

The CBA organizations, and more chaos


The meeting truly spiraled out of control early in the third hour, after Hammerman read a question asking about the CBA organizations and their interests and roles in the project.

Gilmartin asked FCR’s Sonya Covington to describe the organizations. Then Gilmartin pointed to Daughtry.

“Is he part of your team?” Hammerman asked.

“Yes,” responded Gilmartin, though the CBA is not part of any official state or city documents.

Daughtry got up and began a familiar spiel about the role of his group regarding the arena, “a state of the art health facility,” and an intergenerational complex. And he again questioned why no other developer had signed a CBA.

“Mr. Caldwell’s here,” Gilmartin said of James Caldwell, the president of BUILD, who began walking up to the front of the room.

(Caldwell is in right in photo taken earlier in the meeting, talking with FCR VP Scott Cantone.)

Mattera got up to protest, saying that only groups that supported the project got to speak.

“Let’s let Forest City Ratner’s team answer the question,” Hammerman responded.

Mattera said Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn should be able to speak, as well. “They’re all paid by Forest City Ratner,” added Turner.

Then Caldwell began with another description of his history and BUILD’s role in providing job training. “I’m not ashamed to say that Forest City Ratner has given our organization money,” he said.

“I’ve been in the community for 40 years,” Caldwell said. “My mother migrated here, she came here.”

“Please,” shouted Carponter, asking to be spared his personal history.

“You just need to come to our office,” Caldwell said.

“Answer some questions and cut the p.r.,” shouted Michael D.D. White of Noticing New York.

“We’re not going to speak about no bullshit here, we’re going to be straight up with you,” Caldwell said, upping the ante with some race- and class-baiting. “The fact of the matter is, in the community that you just came to here, that we’ve been here for years.”

“Bullshit,” shouted Koteen, a longtime Fort Greene resident.

All you need to do, Caldwell said, “is to come to our office and see the people coming to look for jobs.” (He also mentioned that he’s invited me. I’ve been to the office but not a job-training meeting or session.)

“Maybe you don’t want to hear it, but black folks are not working in our community. If they’re not working, what happens? They need to work in our community. Thanks to Forest City Ratner and ESDC--”

Hammerman interrupted, saying Caldwell wasn’t helping.

“We all live here,” shouted Koteen.

The orchestrated disruption

Hammerman continued, asking FCR's Sonya Covington about the role of the CBA partners. The video shows several people in the back, including FCR ally Thomas (Ziggy) Sicignano, a Brooklyn basketball booster with a colorful past; FCR VP Scott Cantone (in white shirt, with glasses); Carpenters Union leaders Sal Zarzana and Anthony Pugliese, both heckling; Darnell Canada (in the "I [heart] Black People" shirt), no longer heckling; and, notably, a group of men being escorted into the room by a man with an orange shirt.

"Go home, go home," they shouted. They had not been in the room previously. It seems quite clear this was an orchestrated disruption.



Naming rights



"Why will Forest City Ratner get to keep the naming rights revenues for what the ESDC claims will be a publicly-owned arena?" Hammerman asked.

“It’s part of the financing for the project,” Matlin responded.

"What?" someone in the audience asked quizzically. Indeed.

While it certainly is counted on by Forest City Ratner, it was never, as far as I know, suggested to be part of the benefits or part of the sources and uses for the project.

Closing Fifth Avenue?


If the arena is re-oriented (to a north-south direction, as images so far indicate) and the Urban Room eliminated--actually, FCR says it’s delayed--shouldn’t Fifth Avenue not be closed?

Gilmartin responded that, while the arena bowl got smaller, “it doesn’t change the general footprint for the arena itself… and the Urban Room has not been eliminated.”

Still, we haven’t seen the new site plan and may not until after approval.

Closing Pacific Street?

Given the potential delay in Phase 2 of the project, why not delay closing Pacific Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues?

Shatz said that the southeastern block of the project, Block 1129 between Carlton, Vanderbilt, and Dean and Pacific streets, is needed for parking, construction staging, and logistics.

Architects

Can you describe the architects associated with the project?" Hammerman read.

"I think I answered the question already," Gilmartin responded, apparently referencing arena architect Ellerbe Becket, a firm that replaced Frank Gehry.

Bashner followed up:" You answered the question as to the arena. Is there anything you want to share with us about the architects on the residential buildings or any other aspect, the landscape archicture, anything like that?"

"No," said Gilmartin.

Note that the distinguished landscape architecture firm Field Operations does appear in an ESDC document and is apparently working on interim open space.

However, if Gilmartin answered that question, she might have had to explain whether or not Laurie Olin was still working on the landscape architecture plan. However, if Forest City Ratner is planning residential buildings, surely architects have been engaged.

Arena bonds hearing

Will there be a hearing on the arena bond financing?

Matlin said no. The only hearing is the one next week.

Compensation to displaced tenants

How much will Forest City Ratner compensate displaced tenants who do not want to take the offer to move into the project.

Petillo said the relocation program--actually, a small payment and assistance from a relocation firm--is spelled out in the GPP.

Final question

Will the project go back to the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB), the three-men-in-a-room who must review major state capital projects?

Matlin said no further approval is needed, given that the PACB approved the project, and the financing, in 2006.

White comments:
We do not believe that the answer is correct because the mega-project and its financing have changed dramatically from what received PACB approval in 2006, tilting ever more strongly towards a very substantial likelihood that the financing will fail and an increasing need for it to be propped up with more subsidy just as it in fact was by the most recent actions of ESDC and the MTA. To say that the PACB does not need to approve substantial revisions of projects careening off toward failure is to deny the PACB its purpose and veer away from past precedent. To suggest that there is an effort underway to have the PACB not approve the substantial rewrite of the project’s financing that has occurred since 2006 says something about the fear that politicians have of taking responsibility for this project.

A test for the informational meeting tonight: will Forest City Ratner fulfill its pledge to share information?

So why is the Atlantic Yards informational meeting, from 6 to 9 pm tonight at Long Island University, important? It's not just that the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) is sending representatives to discuss changes in the Modified General Project Plan, the subject of a two-day official ESDC public hearing next week.

Because Forest City Ratner didn't show up at the state Senate oversight hearing May 29 (and claimed they weren't invited).

Because Forest City Ratner didn't bother to send someone to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority meetings June 22 and June 24.

Because Forest City Ratner hasn't appeared in public to answer AY-related questions for some two-and-a-half years.

Because MaryAnne Gilmartin, the project's current point person, has never answered questions in public (and, I'll bet, won't show up tonight, even though only written questions will be allowed).

Flashback to 2006-07

When was Forest City Ratner much more transparent? Well, never.

But representatives of the developer did occasionally appear in public to answer limited questions, or answered a few questions at a press conference or from a reporter. But they haven't been pressed very hard, or forced to engage their antagonists.

Let's look back to the July 2006 Affordable Housing Information Session, where then-FCR point man Jim Stuckey answered some questions from the public, at least about housing. A week later, he answered some press questions after the Draft Environmental Impact Statement. Then Stuckey was interviewed by radio host Brian Lehrer, but would not debate antagonist Jeff Baker, attorney for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn.

Then there were the August 2006 meetings before three community boards, where Stuckey made a statement (and answered a few questions afterward). And yes, Stuckey did go on WFAN in January 2007, just after the big press conference (with very limited opportunity to ask questions) about the Barclays Center naming rights deal.

Since then, the new AY designs and announcements about, say, the fate of Frank Gehry, have typically emerged via written statements, even affidavits, or even the not-so-reliable (but often effective) mouthpiece Joe DePlasco. Questions posed last year by Community Board 8 were answered in writing by Scott Cantone.

The only person connected with the project who's regularly answered questions, albeit from the oft-cheerleading business press (and sometimes skeptical, if underinformed, sports radio hosts), is Nets President and CEO Brett Yormark.

Forest City Ratner's pledge

As Develop Don't Destroy so gleefully reminds us, most recently in Atlantic Yards: Information Sharing Recordkeeping, Parts 19 and 20, in the February 26, 2008 New York Observer, then-FCR spokesman Loren Reigelhaupt said:
“When it comes to sharing information with the public and governmental bodies, there’s no such thing as too much, as far as we are concerned."

But FCR, as DDDB notes, routinely declines comment when contacted by the press.

Tonight, will there be bland answers and genteel evasion, at least if tough questions are raised?

Orwellian, almost

Oh, and remember Stuckey's famous statement published in the 11/6/05 Times:
"Here we are opening ourselves up - tremendous transparency, for two years. Yet the criticism is, Wait a second, they didn't tell us something about the evolution of their planning process before the public process began'? Just think about what that means."

Actually, FCR had withdrawn from a potentially challenging February 2005 forum sponsored by the Fort Greene Association.

Stuckey's statement to the Times stands, though not the way he meant it: "It's Orwellian, almost."

More from Gehry at Aspen: On meeting budgets, taking more responsibility, and engaging the client

Beyond Frank Gehry's dust-up with Fred Kent of the Project for Public Spaces , some other passages in Gehry's Aspen Ideas Festival interview earlier this month have resonance for Atlantic Yards watchers, notably the architect's insistence, as he has said before, that he works "close to the bone."

In other words, I think it buttresses my argument that dropping Gehry from the Atlantic Yards project was not simply because the cost of the arena had risen significantly. Rather, it would be impossible to design an arena wrapped within four towers if developer Forest City Ratner could stretch its original four-year timetable for the towers to 12 years; only after that would a penalty kick in (and the developer could get away with building only three towers).



Meeting the budget

At about 27:50, interviewer Thomas Pritzker asked, "I have a very close friend in the audience who’s a developer. And I know there’s a series of questions he’d like to ask you, and I’m going to ask on his behalf. Can you design a building to a budget, and can you meet that budget?

Some in the crowd laughed.

Gehry took it in good-natured stride: "See, they don’t think I can."

"We’ll take a vote before and after you answer the question," Pritzker responded.

"Well, I pride myself on meeting budgets and some of the toughest developers in the world that I work with will attest to that," Gehry continued, in a thoughtful tone. "Architects can’t control the markets, the commodities, the labor force, and all of that. So you’re not really as in charge of budgets as clients might think you are. And the construction people aren’t either."

He went on to enumerate issues: "It’s political. It’s the recession now, prices have come down. If there’s inflation, who knows. No architect can be held responsible for that kind of stuff. What we do is manage the process so that there’s not a lot of fat in the design, so that if the shit hits the fan, there’s not much you can take out. So if you want that kind of building, and it comes in too high, you either decide not to build it or bite the bullet. But there isn’t much you can do to change it. And I try my damnedest to stay in that realm. There is no--I call it working close to the bone, so there isn’t a lot of stuff."

(Emphases added)

Gehry does have a record of coming in at budget, but also one of cost overruns. The increase in the announced arena price tag, from $637.2 million in December 2006 to $950 million in March 2008 vastly exceeded inflation, and apparently was based in part on the cost of security glass.

The new arena, by Ellerbe Becket, is projected to cost $772 million. Why hasn't the price come down any more?

Curves versus right angles

Pritzker followed up: "It’s counterintuitive, because your designs have lots of curves and are sculpture, that’s what they read. If you look at some of the other great architects, if I use Renzo [Piano], his is lines, it's rectilinear. Is it more challenging to bring yours in onto a budget than someone who uses what I’ll call more conventional drawing, more conventional lines?"

"If you look at [the Guggenheim Museum in] Bilbao," Gehry said, "[People] assume it was a very expensive building compared to a rectilinear program of the same program. In ‘97, the building was built for 300 dollars a square foot, pretty cheap. Shortly after, I think, I did a building in Berlin that was all rectilinear, Pariser Platz, and it’s elegantly detailed, and it cost 600 dollars a square foot. So I think what happens is that I don’t fuss the details. I sort of go with the flow on what the construction is--I do bring my cheapskate architecture experience into play there... I let the forms be the thing."

"And the reason to do it--the reason to do those kind of forms, in my mind," Gehry explained, "was to replace decoration, to get passion and feeling into the building without resorting to 19th century models. I thought about movement, because certainly we live in an age of movement. My precedents for movement go back to Phidias and the Parthenon, who was able to convey a sense of movement with the shields of warriors pushing into the stone. When you see, at the British museum, you feel the pressure, and it’s an amazing thing he was able to do. And then the Shiva, the dancing figures... you look at the them and you look back and you’re sure they move, right? So that was my inspiration..."

"And there are some fish stories that go along with it," he said with a smile. "When the postmodern stuff happened, when my colleagues started going back to Greek temples, I got pissed off and I said, if you’re going to go back, why not go back 300 million years before man, to fish? And I started drawing fish, and it started to have a life of its own, and it became fish lamps and other things... I started looking at the fish drawings by Hiroshige, and I started... watching the carp and the koi fish in the ponds.

"They’re very architectural, and I started to explore those shapes. And I made a terrible one--a 35-foot-long wooden fish, for a fashion company, at the Pitti Palace in Florence. And it was very, very kitsch, I mean really, superkitsch, but it had that sense of movement. I looked at it--and everybody got it. And I tried to cut off the tail, cut off the head, cut off the fins, started to abstract it, and see how far I could go before I lost it. And I did a room for the Walker Art Museum for a show, and I did a thing for Jay Chiat. From that, I learned to build with those kind of forms and capture that kind of feeling. So that was the evolution.

Designing on the computer

At about 34:30, Pritzker delved into Gehry's methods; "You use that Catia system... I've watched Frank work, and have listened to the way he thinks. Of the various architects that we know, he is the most economically oriented, the most budget-oriented, and sort of views that as a major part of the challenge and the exercise. Talk about the computer system you use and what role that's played, in freeing you up to both do designs and to address the budget issues."

"Well, the reason I got into it," Gehry explained, "I was doing a building in Switzerland and I couldn't, with normal descriptive geometry that I'd learned in school, could not articulate this curve, so the contractor could build it. That led us to the aircraft industry and Dassault, and their software, which we started using some thirty years ago. The culture of architecture is: Architect's hired; client likes architect. Architect, client love each other, do a building, they love the building. It goes out to bid. It’s too expensive. Always."

Gehry laughed, as did the crowd.

"Client can’t afford expensive building. They need the damn thing. They get the contractor in. Architect is marginalized. Infantilized." He paused. "That’s the normal thing. I mean, I’ve managed to do stuff in that system and try to get on top of it, but... the culture of architecture, the AIA [American Institute of Architects], creates a overprotective world for the architect, with its documents, with its processes. And so I’ve always believed the only way to become the master builder, like the old days, where you really carried your role parentally through the end of the project... is to take more responsibility. That involves insurance companies and lawyers and all kinds of stuff, and really changing the culture of how these things are done."

Changing the culture

Gehry then describe a process of control that, it seems, eluded him with the Atlantic Yards project: "And so, when I started with the computer, I realized that having, in more control, more information than anybody in the game, I could remain in charge. The contractor loved it, when you gave him--I remember showing the contractor in L.A. the model of Disney Hall, he said, 'Oh, you can't build that.' When I showed him the mock-up... already built... he was able to understand it and price it in real time, without a premium... Bilbao--the steel bids came in one percent spread on six contractors, that means the documents are really clear and it was eighteen percent under budget... when you get subcontractors eighteen percent under budget... you won’t take the low bidder... in this case a one percent spread, you could take any one of them."

"It's that kind of experience that I've had that eggs me on," he continued. "The ideal, what I’m shooting for, is a paperless process, and I think it's inevitable. Dassault did the 777 airplane paperless... If they can do that, we can build a building, paperless. What that means is the construction guys in the field have a laptop, instead of 600 pages of drawings... It means that the building department can be connected online, and the approval process can be shorter."

"This is a hard one because of the bureaucracies of the cities. Bloomberg was willing to try it," he said, personalizing New York into the office of the mayor. "L.A. is willing to try it. But we haven’t had an opportunity yet to do it, to really do it, but we’re going to continue."

Gehry's wish list

At about 45:10, Pritzker asked, "Now you’ve had a long career. Is there a building you haven’t done that you’d like to do?"

"A Hyatt hotel," Gehry quipped, referencing Pritzker's family business. The crowd laughed.

"There are things I’d like to do," Gehry continued, "but I don’t-- I’m very superstitious, so I don’t yearn after things, I know I’ll get all hung up.... So I take stuff as it comes, more, and it’s a better place to be, because people come to you, they want you, you’re in a better relationship to do better work, I think, and create a partnership."

Actually, the Atlantic Yards arena was to be his first arena, thus engaging him. And Gehry said at the first press conference, on 12/10/03, that Atlantic Yards was an "extraordinary opportunity... to build a neighborhood practically from scratch."

The perfect client

Pritzker continued to ask about the role of the client, referencing a meeting with architect Philip Johnson, who had a client who gave him an unlimited budget and complete freedom.

"No. That’s the worst client, I think," Gehry observed. "It’s like the sound of one hand clapping. If I were to just keep doing it, I’d just repeat myself. What makes the fun is to engage a client, engage in a process. I see it partly I’m a teacher to them and partly they’re a teacher to me. If you’re open to that, it evolves, so that the building then feels like something they want, they're part of it, they're in it, they understand the choice-- they’ve had the opportunity to make choices along the way, as my ideas are put on the table, they can steer it."

"The only scary thing to a client, I think, from me, is that I don’t have a preconceived thing,"  he said. "So I like to work intuitively, so I'm responding to them, space, time, and everything, intuitively, and that must seem mysterious and a little bit scary, from the other side. They don’t know exactly how this is going to come out. If they can get over that fear, and play, they're going come out better, because they're going to be more in control than they realized and more part of it. And it leads to a better and newer ideas, and better buildings."

Or, in the case of Atlantic Yards, a severed relationship.

Paterson on Ground Zero towers: Public money just as important as private money

Developer Larry Silverstein wants the Port Authority to guarantee loans, in the absence of private financing, for him to build two towers at the World Trade Center site. But Gov. David Paterson isn't buying it.

From WNYC:
PATERSON: Where private money is eschewing the opportunity, public money should not be used either because the public's money is just as important and that is why.

From the Daily News:
Paterson's charm offensive was backed up with tough talk as he told Silverstein that taxpayers would not plow billions of public dollars into funding speculative private-sector office towers that cannot lure private financing.
"The public's dollars are just as important as anyone else's - and that is why I insist we cannot finance anyone else's project," the governor told reporters. "The state is not going to be the only entity that has risk in the project."

Now the government hasn't been asked to invest in the speculative office tower planned for Atlantic Yards, but the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (controlled by Paterson and Mayor Mike Bloomberg) moved to lower Forest City Ratner's risk in AY, allowing a delayed payment schedule and a railyard worth $100 million less, without asking for any concessions in return.

As informational meeting approaches, echoes of November 2004, and some pending questions

More than four-and-a-half-years after their first informational meeting on Atlantic Yards, Community Boards 2, 6, and 8 tomorrow will sponsor another informational meeting, at Long Island University from 6 to 9 pm, under similar conditions, but with a different lineup.

The 11/29/04 meeting, held at the Klitgord Auditorium of New York City Technical College, was essentially The Plucky Jim Show,"to quote the Brooklyn Downtown Star, which reported on the polished answers of Forest City Ratner's now-departed Atlantic Yards point man, Jim Stuckey.

Stuckey at that point maintained the partly line that "We are not trying to divert funds that are in play today... [Any funds] will be based on incremental revenues that will be brought in by the project.” However, the direct subsidies are up to $305 million, and indirect subsidies and tax breaks are worth at least several hundred million dollars more.

Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn complained that groups that supported the project got ushered in ahead of ordinary citizens.

The Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) did not send an official representative., saying its presence was premature. This time both the ESDC and Forest City Ratner are expected to send representatives.

The rules

According to the rules of the 2004 session:

• Audience members must be courteous to all speakers;
  
• Signage or other visual obstructions are not permitted in the auditorium
  
• Questions will be submitted on index cards (provided at sign-in)
  
• The moderator reserves the right to edit questions for clarity
  

While I haven't seen the rules for Wednesday, CB 6 District Manager Craig Hammerman, who had the unenviable role of moderating in 2004, said that the meeting will run in much the same manner. Project representatives will make a presentation, then attendees will be able to submit questions on index cards.

"The community is going to have an unlmited amount of time at the public hearings," Hammerman said, referencing the two-day public hearing to be held on July 29 and July 30. Rather than an opportunity to make statements, the meeting is an effort to make sure that facts get out about changes in the Modified General Project Plan (GPP) that will be subject of the hearing, so people can be prepared to testify.

Questions should be "closely tethered to the subject," he said, though, I suspect that the subject of the Modified GPP still points to a lot of potential questions.

Some questions

Below are a few questions I hope get asked--I'll be trying to ask a few others.

1) Why won't a site plan be released before the public hearing next week?

2) Why haven't any new renderings of the arena been released? The renderings released last month--example above--are said to be preliminary.

3) Why aren't there any renderings with the massive signage--150 feet wide and 75 feet high--allowed? Will any of the renderings show the street-level perspective on the signage, rather than a helicopter-level perspective (right), as in 2006?

4) I already questioned how, given the downturn in the economy, the depressed office market in the city, and the numerous unsold and stalled condos in places like Williamsburg, can the expected office tower and 1930 condos (along with 4500 rental units, half of them at subsidized rents) be built on the projected ten-year schedule? And, if not, how does that change the projections for tax revenues from Atlantic Yards, which the ESDC said last month would be higher than initially projected?

5) Given that recent reports indicate that new construction as well as other first-class apartments will rent at figures lower than the rates projected (in 2006) for the highest tier of "affordable housing" (141-160% of AMI), how confident are you that the affordable housing would be less costly than market rate? What percentage of the affordable housing would be at or above market rate?

6) The Modified General Project Plan (GPP) says that, on a present value basis, the Project will generate $652.3 million of City tax revenues and $745.3 million of State tax revenues. Thus the project will generate $944.2 million in net tax revenues in excess of the public contribution to the Project. This maintains numbers from 2006.

Why does the number exclude costs for schools, sanitation, and public safety, as have been included in reports by the Independent Budget Office and even Andrew Zimbalist? Why does it not include affordable housing subsidies? Brownfield tax credits? Green building tax credits? Why does it not include the additional $105 million in subsidies from New York City? Why, if one decline in the projected revenues in 2006 was based on a decrease in expected office space, has the number not been adjusted to account for delayed or nonexistent office space? Do outside economists consider the ESDC's methodology legitimate?

Leaked rendering? Barclays Center image also appears in the latest ESDC documents

According to an article in Sports Business Journal (subscription only) Barclays won’t look like leaked rendering, Ellerbe Becket says:
The New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff can rest easy. The exterior of Barclays Center, the New Jersey Nets’ proposed Brooklyn arena, will look nothing like the image the Times published last month, according to James Poulson, Ellerbe Becket’s design director...

NetsDaily adds some more quotes: the design will be “less barnlike…something totally unexpected” and the design will evoke Brooklyn’s working class industrial history. (DDDB has full text.)

Well, the image below wasn't simply leaked to Ouroussoff. It also appeared in a document two weeks later from the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC).

From the 6/9/09 Times



From the ESDC's 6/23/09 Technical Memorandum

The real value of the station naming rights (far less than $4M, or even $2M), and the MTA's stonewalling about setting the price

[Corrected July 21]

So, was the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's (MTA) sale of naming rights to the Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street station for $200,000 a year over 20 years "a goodly sum," as the New York Times described it in an editorial last month?

No, since, as I describe below, the present value cost to developer Forest City Ratner to slap "Barclays Center" on the stations would be far less than the $4 million sum casually used by the press, and likely well less than $2 million.

After all, the MTA describes the deal to buy the railyard as still worth $100 million, in present value, though the developer would put $20 million down, then over 22 years would write checks that, cumulatively, would be about $173.5 million, at a very attractive interest rate of 6.5%. Total = $193.5 million.

How calculation was made

Michael D.D. White, in his Noticing New York blog, was the first to argue that the naming rights were undersold, though the WNYC piece linked to suggests it's a very inexact process.

So I queried the MTA via a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request:
During or after the 6/22/09 MTA Finance Committee meeting, CFO Gary Dellaverson said MTA staff, in an effort to set a price for the naming rights agreement considered for the Atlantic Ave./Pacific St. station, looked at naming rights deals set by other transit systems. I would like a copy of any memo or report that MTA relied on to analyze the price of such naming rights deals.

To be precise, if you go to the audio of the press conference, at about the 11-minute mark, Dellaverson said, "We've never successfully completed a naming rights before.... I don't have a nifty little spreadsheet to show you how we came up with $200,000. Our real estate division did review some naming rights that had been done by transportation and other entities. But y'know, we kinda felt our way into it."

MTA rejects FOIL

The MTA's response:

Pursuant to N.Y. Public Officers Law Section 87(2)(g), an agency may withhold records which "are inter-agency or intra-agency materials which are not: (i) statistical or factual tabulations or data; (ii) instructions to staff that affect the public; (iii) final agency policy or determinations......". In accordance with this provision, certain intra-agency documents are being withheld from disclosure and therefore your request is denied.

So they may not withhold documents that are statistical or factual tabulations. It seems to me that, at the very least, they could provide a redacted document.

After all, the trend nationally is toward more openness. A March memo from Attorney General Eric Holder, regarding the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) states:
As President Obama instructed in his January 21 FOIA Memorandum, "The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails." This presumption has two important implications.

First, an agency should not withhold information simply because it may do so legally. I strongly encourage agencies to make discretionary disclosures of information. An agency should not withhold records merely because it can demonstrate, as a technical matter, that the records fall within the scope of a FOIA exemption.

Second, whenever an agency determines that it cannot make full disclosure of a requested record, it must consider whether it can make partial disclosure. Agencies should always be mindful that the FOIA requires them to take reasonable steps to segregate and release nonexempt information. Even if some parts of a record must be withheld, other parts either may not be covered by a statutory exemption, or may be covered only in a technical sense unrelated to the actual impact of disclosure.

Calculating the value

So, how much is the "$4 million" deal really worth?

[Corrected] I've revised these figures based on an email from a reader.

With an interest rate of 6.5% (which the Manhattan Institute's Nicole Gelinas called "laughable"), the same for the railyard deal, the present value would be $2,203,701. 

With a super-attractive (and unlikely) interest rate of 4%, the present value would be $2,718,065.

But with a more realistic interest rate of 10%, given the cost of corporate borrowing, well, the deal would be worth just $1,702,713 (not $594,575, as I wrote earlier). 

Given that Forest City Ratner would save more than $100 million on building the promised railyard, the naming rights deal, whether calculated at 4% or at 10%, is chump change, not a "goodly sum."

Catching up on pictures of utility and railyard work

As noted, work on a sewer chamber has resumed at the corner of Pacific Street and Sixth Avenue. Photo by Tracy Collins.

The photos below are from a photographer who wishes to remain anonymous.




Work on the railyard

These photos (1, 2) are by Collins. As I and NLG have pointed out, this work stopped last fall ostensibly because of lawsuits, but far more likely because of cash flow difficulties faced by developer Forest City Ratner.

A video about the Prospect Heights Historic District, and a politic omission

A video from the Municipal Art Society (MAS) offers an effective sketch of the efforts--prompted by teardowns of historic buildings and the looming Atlantic Yards project--to create the Prospect Heights Historic District, which has been approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) and is expected to be approved by the City Council. 

Prospect Heights: The Making of a Historic District from MAS on Vimeo.

Among those quoted is City Council Member Letitia James, who points to the results of investors who have come in and built out-of-scale buildings, which in this case is about six stories.

Tour guide and lecturer Francis Morrone offers his distinctive voice: "Prospect Heights is part of the vast Brownstone Belt of Brooklyn... What's remarkable about this is that there is this intact 19th century scale. There are very few places in cities anywhere in the world where this exists."

LPC Chairman Robert Tierney: "Prospect Heights is a natural historic district. There's no question that the quality of the streetscapes speak to a district that cries out for saving."

Gib Veconi of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council (PHNDC): "When we first moved to Prospect Heights, no one could possibly conceive of the demolition of historic buildings to build new, cookie-cutter apartment buildings. But, as the market changed, we saw that there actually was the potential to lose these historic buildings... The second issue was the potential impact of the Atlantic Yards project. There was a great deal of concern that the size and scale of the Atlantic Yards project would potentially lead to additional out of character development."

That led the PHNDC, with the help of MAS, to survey the neighborhood, and to create the city's largest historic district since 1990. 

The AY omission

While the potential impact of Atlantic Yards certain gets a mention, omitted is the effort to save the now-demolished Ward Bakery, in the southeast block of the AY site.

And, as Tracy Collins's map below points out, the district will wrap neatly around that southeast block, designated for interim surface parking--a fate, I suspect, highly unlikely for the borders of other historic districts. And, of course, that block could have been preserved, as Forest City Enterprises has done in other cities.

Brooklyn Tomorrow 2009: unlike previous two issues, no mention of Atlantic Yards (and it comes with the Brooklyn Paper now)

The first two issues of the annual Brooklyn Tomorrow supplement--essentially advertorial--highlighted the Atlantic Yards project on the cover and in advertising, but the 2009 version omits any mention of the project.

Brooklyn Tomorrow is published by the News Corporation's Community Newspapers Group (CNG) and was included in yesterday's New York Post and this weekend's Courier-Life --and, for the first time, the Brooklyn Paper, which entered the CNG fold in March. All the articles were written by Courier-Life staffers.

(The screenshots below come from the front pages of the Brooklyn Paper and the Courier-Life, respectively.)

Why omit Atlantic Yards? Surely it remains part of the CNG vision of Brooklyn Tomorrow. Perhaps Forest City Ratner didn't want to share images of the project, either because they're not ready, or the "hangar" of a new arena is too embarrassing.

Maybe it's that there are no advertisements from Forest City Ratner, the Nets, or Barclays this time. Or maybe it's both.

Williamsburg waterfront

On the cover is a rendering of Northside Piers in Williamsburg, billed as the "latest in posh waterfront housing."

Inside, a letter from Editor-in-Chief Kenneth Brown asserts that Brooklyn has "certainly shown an uncommon resilience." Indeed, the next paragraph is worth quoting in full, given its cliches, curious syntax, and sunny optimism:
The exponential pace of growth Brooklyn has enjoyed for the past several years may have slowed a tad, but it still whizzes by, and the future still seems bolder and brighter than anyone could have imagined, particularly in today's uncertain times.

The lead news article suggests:
Buying into the borough's future never looked so good.

Cost-cutting and an array of incentives at some of Brooklyn's toniest waterfront buildings oculd make luxe living the new black.

Then again, New York magazine has a different view of The Billyburg Bust.

As ESDC public hearing approaches, a planned protest and an opportunity to submit comments

The public hearing on July 29 and July 30 will be in four parts, but it's a good bet the first part, on July 29 from 2 pm to 5 pm, will get the most media attention--or, at least, the most electronic media attention.

Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) plans a Protest Against Ratner's Rip-Off starting at 1 pm on July 29 outside the Klitgord Auditorium of New York City Technical College.

And, I'd bet, an even larger force of project supporters, notably construction union members and those associated with Community Benefits Agreements signatories, will show up as well.

The ostensible purpose of the hearing is to comment on the 2009 Modified General Project Plan (even though we don't have an updated site plan or official renderings).

But DDDB [corrected] isn't emphasizing efforts to comment on the plan, because it's a done deal. (I had written that they weren't encouraging people to comment; actually, they are also asking people to comment, as well.) The protest, and the project supporters, will all be playing to the cameras.

Written comments

DDDB noticed the ESDC's announcement:

Written comments will receive equal consideration to testimony received at the hearing, and can be submitted via email or U.S. mail.

Email: atlanticyards@empire.state.ny.us
If submitting via email, please indicate in subject line: "Public Comment for Atlantic Yards MGPP."

Mailing address:
ESDC
Attention: Steve Matlin, Senior Counsel
633 Third Avenue, 37th Floor
New York, NY 10017

Deadline for all submission for comments is August 31, 2009 at 5:30pm.

"It's About Bringing NBA Stars to Newark" (well, for preseason games)

From the New Jersey Nets' web site, an advertisement for the two preseason games (of three total) that will be played at the Prudential Center in Newark.

And, of course, should the Brooklyn arena plan fall through, there might be a lot more NBA stars coming to Newark.

Courier-Life's Witt responds to letter, misses the point completely

I wrote a letter June 15 to the Courier-Life chain complaining about unfounded criticism of me; rather than publishing it in the first issue possible, the newspaper has waited until the fifth issue, with a similarly unfounded response from reporter Stephen Witt.

The letter:
Stephen Witt's article, "Daughtry slams Yards critics," giving Atlantic Yards supporter the Rev. Herbert Daughtry a platform to argue unrebutted, is sloppy, irresponsible, and unfair.

While Rev. Daughtry claims elected officials like City Council Member Letitia James and State Senator Velmanette Montgomery are "captured" by a small minority of anti-Atlantic Yards constituents, he ignores the fact that his longtime ally, City Council Member Charles Barron, has long opposed the project.

Witt quotes Daughtry as touting benefits from the project, including a health center and an intergenerational center. Neither acknowledge that developer Forest City Ratner has 12 years to build Phase 1, which would include the health center, and there's no timetable for Phase 2, which would include the intergenerational center.

Witt quotes Daughtry as saying, to the best of his knowledge, I never contacted him to learn "his side." Witt neither contacted me nor checked my blog to see if that was accurate. I've had ample opportunity to learn Daughtry's "side," and queried Daughtry in person after a forum in 2006; he wouldn't answer a question about the source of funding for his Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Alliance.

Witt disparages me by writing that "many media outlets utilize [my blog] for information without checking his facts," but offers no evidence of errors in my work. Witt should be more careful about fact-checking himself.

For more of my response, go to bit.ly/10dTwS.

Witt's response

Stephen Witt responds:
Mr. Oder,
Rev. Daughtry deserves his say. The fact that many longtime community people support the project has been largely ignored by all the media, including your highly speculative brand of "citizen journalism." I do note that since my article came out you and a few other media outlets that push the public agenda are beginning to include these views. I also don't agree with journalists that buy into your view that Rev. Daughtry and other groups who signed the CBA are somehow tainted as sources because Ratner helped fund their non-profits. These groups represent thousands of people of all income levels. They are respected in the community and their points of view are just as valid as those who oppose the project. I suggested you take your "brutally weird" self down to the BUILD office and speak to those in the waiting room looking for work.

My rebuttal

It's not a question of whether Rev. Daughtry deserves his say; surely he has been having his say, especially while heckling at the May 29 state Senate oversight hearing.

It's just that, as I wrote, Daughtry's arguments are debatable, and Witt ignores countervailing evidence, such as my citation of Daughtry's longtime ally Charles Barron, an Atlantic Yards opponent, and the long delays in delivering the benefits Daughtry seeks.

Witt ignores the evidence I provide regarding whether I have contacted Daughtry or learned "his side."

Witt initially disparaged me by writing that "many media outlets utilize [my blog] for information without checking his facts," but offered no evidence of errors in my work. He continues to do so in his response, citing my "highly speculative brand of 'citizen journalism.'"

Highly speculative and "brutally weird"? I think that applies to the "real land-grabbers" quote Witt dutifully published.

Yes, I've been to the BUILD office. I recognize that large construction projects create jobs and that people involved in groups and unions that train people or organize workers have an interest in seeing those projects go forward. But that doesn't obviate the responsibility to examine the project.

Witt suggests that it's simply "my view" that groups that signed the CBA are tainted as sources. I direct him to experts on CBAs like Good Jobs New York, Good Jobs First, and the Partnership for Working Families.

Would 40% of AY affordable units be above market? Market-rate studios in Brooklyn's tallest building offer evidence

Three years ago, in July 2006, Forest City Ratner projected that "affordable" studios for the highest "band" (141%-160% of Area Median Income, or AMI) of those gaining access to subsidized units would cost $1861 a month. Given that AMI has gone up since then, the rent would be higher now, and likely would rise when and if units are built.

However, reports the New York Observer, when the 51-story Brooklyner opens next year, studios are expected to start at about $1550 per month. The studios will be small, 350 to 400 square feet. The affordable Atlantic Yards studios would average 400 square feet.

(At right, Forest City Ratner's July 2006 chart of projected rents.)

In 2006, the rent for AY studios among the second-highest affordable "band" (101%-140% of AMI) was to average $1488. With the adjustment to AMI, it's likely those rents also would be above $1550.

Exceeding the market

In other words, a significant slice of the subsidized housing--perhaps 900 of the 2250 units, as I wrote in April--would track or exceed market prices.

Also, note that rents on the upper-tier affordable units could be even higher, since, according to testimony at the May 29 state Senate oversight hearing, the AMI could go up to 165%. In other words, ACORN, whose constituency couldn't afford the upper-tier units anyhow, seems willing to compromise to ensure cash flow to partner Forest City Ratner.

The money primary, updated; James nudges ahead; Simon's rivals have cash on hand; Lander leads, Skaller also ready to spend

The latest fundraising reports to the New York City Campaign Finance Board are out.

In a contrast to the reports from May, City Council Member Letitia James has raised more than $8000 more than rival Delia Hunley-Adossa in the race for the 35th District, though the totals raised by each would put them well behind candidates in the nearby 33rd and 39th Districts, where there are vigorous contests for open seats to succeed David Yassky and Bill de Blasio, respectively. In terms of cash on hand, the race is closer; James has about $3000 more.

In the 33rd District, Jo Anne Simon remains the fundraising leader, but Steve Levin and Evan Thies have more cash on hand. (Here's more from the Observer, about Thies's role challenging Levin.)

In the 39th District, Brad Lander remains the fundraising leader, though three other candidates have outspent him so far, with John Heyer the only one to run a significant deficit; Josh Skaller, second in fundraising, has about $28,000 cash on hand, but Lander has nearly $40,000 left.

Matching funds and a changing landscape

While there's no reason to expect the fundraising to stop, those with more cash can spend it more strategically on advertising, mailings, and phone calls as the September 15 primary election approaches.

Below, a few more details. Keep in mind that money is only one factor, along with endorsements, geography, and even gender, depending on the race. Also key: if Council candidates raise at least $5000 from 75 district residents, they qualify for matching funds on a six-to-one basis, with a maximum match of $1050 for each person's $175 and a maximum in public funds of $88,550.

So someone like Heyer running a deficit likely expects either matching funds and/or additional fundraising.

Also, this week the candidates turned in petitions to get on the ballot, as Gotham Gazette explains; expect them to challenge their rivals before the Board of Elections.

The 35th District

James has raised $31,030 and has spent $27,713, including $8500 on office rent, $4410 on her fundraising treasurer, and $2000 on the Rosa Parks Democratic Club for petitioning.

James's largest contributor, giving $1000 is Trevor Wilson of Prestige Management, which manages the three Mitchell-Lama towers of Atlantic Terminal II. She also got $500 each from Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union and Local 702 of the Board of Education employees. She gave $500 herself.

Hunley-Adossa has raised $22,585 and spent $23,392, including $7000 to election lawyer and former state Senator Martin Connor.

After in-kind contribution of $2300 from Idris Abdullah for office expenses, Hunley-Adossa's next-largest donor, at $1135, is herself. Also, giving $1000 each are the New York City Council of Carpenters, Willard Hawkins, and Dorothy Bembry-Guet.

Also giving $1000 is Alan Weisberg of One Stop Promotions, an Atlantic Yards supporter (and, perhaps, the same Alan Weisberg associated with the Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club in south Brooklyn that spawned Forest City Ratner public affairs VP Bruce Bender).

The Hunley-Adossa contribution is by far the largest of Weisberg's three contributions. He lives in the 11230 zip code, in the Midwood area, well outside the 35th District. 

Hunley-Adossa, who chairs the committee of the signatories of the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement (CBA), has also received contributions from construction unions that support AY, but not specifically from Forest City Ratner or its employees.

Third candidate Medhanie Estiphanos has raised $3,517 and spent $1,187.

The 33rd District

Jo Anne Simon has raised $103,383 and spent $83,992, including more than $21,000 on mailings, pamphlets, and postage.

Steve Levin has raised $90,738 (though the last reported contribution is June 30) and spent $58,003, including more than $16,000 on postage and a mailing.

Evan Thies has raised $64,345 and spent $35,291, including $7500 for election lawyer Jerry Goldfeder.

Ken Diamondstone has raised $51,424 and spent $46,251, including $12,500 to campaign consultant Morgan Pehme, another critic of the entrenched leadership of the Brooklyn Democratic Party.

Isaac Abraham has raised $45,466 and spent $43,258, most significantly on campaign consultants, compliance, and petitioning.

Ken Baer has raised $23,511 and spent $33,080, including more than $9500 on printing and postage.

Doug Biviano has raised $20,785 and spent $16,376, including $6000 for rent.

The 39th District

Brad Lander has raised $115,486 and spent $65,607, including nearly $12,000 on the firm Berlin Rosen, which represents, among others, the Pratt Center for Community Development (Lander's professional home), ACORN, Service Workers United, and the Working Families Party. (See NLG for some criticism of over-the-top blogging regarding Lander.)

Josh Skaller has raised $101,089 and spent $72,806, including more than $16,000 on fundraising. Skaller has caught up a little on Lander, closing about one-third of the fundraising gap from May.

Bob Zuckerman has raised $80,695 and spent $74,848, including $11,000 on political consultant Hank Sheinkopf.

John Heyer: has raised $57,305 and spent $84,592, including $18,311 for campaign manager Jesse Adelman and $17,500 on Branford Communications, a firm which has done a lot of work for the Democratic Party.

Gary Reilly has raised $26,330 and spent $33,351, including nearly $20,000 on a campaign consultant.

Green Party Candidate David Pechefsky has raised $13,749 and spent $9,887. 

A question for the Informational Meeting next Wednesday: how does the economic downturn affect tax projections?

There are a lot of issues to raise at the Informational Meeting next Wednesday, in which Forest City Ratner and Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) will answer only written questions.

How, given the downturn in the economy, the depressed office market in the city, and the numerous unsold and stalled condos in places like Williamsburg, can the expected office tower and 1930 condos (along with 4500 rental units, half of them at subsidized rents) be built on the projected ten-year schedule?

And, if not, how does that change the projections for tax revenues from Atlantic Yards, which the ESDC said last month would be higher than initially projected?

Brodsky: "it seems... provable" that MTA did not fulfill fiduciary duty with Atlantic Yards deal (but he won't look further)

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, who in early June criticized the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's (MTA) expected acceptance of a lowered initial cash offer for the Vanderbilt Yard from Forest City Ratner as a violation of its fiduciary duty but then remained quiet as the deal proceeded, has returned to his criticism, saying "it seems to me provable" that the MTA did not fulfill that duty with Atlantic Yards and two other deals.

However, he indicated that the Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, which he chairs and which has looked closely at the Yankee Stadium deal, would not look into the Atlantic Yards deal. (As noted below, I think there's room for an inquiry.)

At panel on MTA

Brodsky spoke last night on a panel on the future of the MTA, sponsored by New York Civic and held at the Museum of the City of New York. The panel was held just after Gov. David Paterson nominated Jay Walder to be chairman and CEO.

Early on, he offered some familiar criticisms:
The MTA is a state authority. State authorities are generally Soviet-style bureaucracies that are accountability to nobody. They are not part of the executive branch under the state constitution. They were created for two reasons: to excuse elected officials from the political responsibility for doing unpopular things like raising fares and to borrow money without the full faith and credit of the state behind them. We can discuss whether those are worthy outcomes.

For the last 20 years, whatever virtues they've had have essentially been lost to visible notice, as we've seen them be the vehicles for a set of bad decisions, corruption, and then strange decisions. The decision to put $4 billion in public money into Yankee Stadium was made by a state authority under the direction of the mayor. Now you can can like that or not like but the power of state authorities is enormous.

There's considerable debate on whether Yankee Stadium is $2 billion in public money, much less $4 billion.

Brodsky continued:
We took a stab at reform in 2006, when Governor Pataki signed a bill I authored, which made several reforms... But we made a mistake in that bill. We severed the board of the MTA from the CEO function. That was a mistake which we've now repaired. One of the things I think we need to consider, as the new CEO of the MTA apparently takes his position, is what are the fiduciary obligations--that is, the duty to the system--of the leadership of the MTA, as opposed to their duty to the people who appointed them, the mayor and the governor. That is a matter that I believe will be considered at some length in the confirmation process.

He said in early June, regarding Atlantic Yards, that the board had a fiduciary duty.

Regarding Atlantic Yards

A little later in his remarks, Brodsky brought up AY:
The fundamental reform we adopted in the fiscal package two months ago was to restore to the chairman of the board and the CEO a fiduciary duty to the system, rather than a political allegiance to the mayor and the governor. And that independence will be at the heart of whether Mr. Walder is able to succeed in bringing reform to the MTA.

Take the Seven line extension, take the West Side Yards, take Atlantic Yards. In all those cases, it seems to be me provable that, whether you like the projects or you don't--I'm not taking a position on the projects--that the MTA's fiduciary responsibility to the system and the riders was to maximize the value of the assets it was putting out. It could not do that in many of those cases.

That struck me as a violation of the fiduciary duty. But because I passed a law in 2006 that had a mistake in it, we had a CEO of the MTA who was not bound by the fiduciary duty. Now we can fix that. The law gives Mr. Walder a clear defense that, when the next time the Mayor says, "Go build me a subway line to nowhere." Whether he will use that will become, I think, the chief measure of his success or his failure.

What is to be done?

After the panel, I asked Brodsky if there was anything for his committee to do regarding the deal for the MTA's Vanderbilt Yard. He said he didn't think there was, but that Walder could look into it.

I didn't say so, but I suspect that Brodsky's counterpart on the Senate side, Bill Perkins, wouldn't mind some help in getting questions answered. 

Beyond that, Brodsky, who has examined the curious assessments for the Yankee Stadium site, produced to generate PILOTs (payments-in-lieu-of-taxes) needed to pay off construction bonds, could look into the same issue regarding the Atlantic Yards arena site.

Mayoral candidate Thompson tepid on Atlantic Yards: "I plan to sit down to talk and evaluate"

Comptroller Bill Thompson is the current front-runner (in fundraising, at least) among Democratic candidates for mayor but of course has an uphill battle in his effort to unseat Mayor Mike Bloomberg's effort to get a third term, made possible by the overturning and extension of term limits.

While Thompson has hammered away on term limits, he's not exactly challenging Bloomberg on Atlantic Yards.

From an interview with Democratic mayoral candidate , by Louise Crawford of Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn:

Atlantic Yards?

" I did initially support it. I have real concerns now. I will continue to re-evaluate it, meet with individuals, have a conversation. I plan to sit down to talk and evaluate," he said.

[Crawford's] reaction: You lived in Prospect Heights and initially supported the Atlantic Yards???? Yikes. And why aren't you more outraged now? Many Brooklyn Democrats are.

My reaction: Thompson has had ample time to evaluate. In May 2008, he was pretty vague about AY. 

For example, Thompson is supposed to be a watchdog over city funds, and it was Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) appointees of Mayor Mike Bloomberg who led the defense of the MTA's sweetheart deal last month with Forest City Ratner. Thompson said nothing.

Expect long-shot candidates Democrat Tony Avella and the Green Party's Reverend Billy Talen to make a lot more noise about AY.

No renderings or site plan for Atlantic Yards (until September?), but the ESDC suggests a reoriented arena is just a "minor change"

When the board of the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) met June 23 to "adopt"--the first state of the approval process--the 2009 Modified General Project Plan (MGPP) for Atlantic Yards, it was notable that there were no renderings of the project, given that the boardroom was chock full of renderings when the project was first passed in December 2006.

The rendering at right, which leaked to the press, is unofficial (though, as a reader points out, similar renderings--here and here--were released last month).

No Site Plan

Even more disconcertingly, there's no new Site Plan for the project--yet, and thus no opportunity to discuss whether a reoriented arena could lead to other changes, such as rescinding the planned closure of Fifth Avenue.

Page 46 of the new GPP promises
Exhibit A-1
Project Site Plan
(attached)

But there's no attachment. "The Site Map you’re inquiring about is located on page 48," ESDC spokeswoman Elizabeth Mitchell responded.

She's right, but it's confusing. Page 47 of the new GPP promises a Project Block and Lot Map but on the next page there is indeed a Site Plan (right)--in fact, it's the same Site Plan that appeared in the 2006 GPP.

Minor change?

As the rendering at the top suggests, the Site Plan has changed. "My understanding is that the arena is now configured more on a north-south basis and Building 1 is not placed in the same way (among other things)," I responded, asking for clarification.

(The plan from Frank Gehry placed the arena at an angle, but preliminary renderings by new arena architect Ellerbe Becket point the arena directly at Atlantic Avenue.)

Not until September?

Mitchell replied, "There has been a minor change to the Site Plan since the MGPP. However we don’t have a rendering of the latest map yet from the developer. We will make it public as soon as we have one, surely before the September Board meeting."

That suggests that the new map of the site will not be made available before the July 29 public hearing or before the comment period on the MGPP closes some 30 days after the hearing, not to mention the July 22 meeting in which Forest City Ratner representatives will answer written questions.

Isn't that a little backwards? Isn't a reorientation of the arena more than a "minor change"? And wouldn't the towers be significantly less integrated into the arena? 

As I wrote last month, the Municipal Art Society (MAS), in its testimony on the project (graphic at right),  suggested that, with a north-south re-orientation of the arena, Fifth Avenue could be kept open. Shouldn't that be part of the discussion?

The arena has, in fact, been reoriented, as the graphic at top suggests, but there's been no evidence that the ESDC is reconsidering the closure of Fifth Avenue.

The Block and Lot Map

The Block and Lot Map, which is promised on p. 47 of the MGGP, appears in the current MGPP on p. 57-58 (Attachment B). It is the same as the Block and Lot Map that appeared in 2006.

Why talky Public Advocate candidate Bill de Blasio became quiet about Atlantic Yards (and will rival Siegel press the issue?)

Any reporter or blogger on Bill de Blasio's mailing list gets a daily stream of announcements and statements, in which the Council Member and Public Advocate candidate weighs in on local and citywide issues--but not Atlantic Yards.

Today, in fact, he plans to attend a press conference in the Bronx, along with Council Member Annabel Palma and Assemblymember Marcos Crespo, to demand that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) "guarantee riders a basic level of service and accountability."

And he plans to announce an endorsement from the Rev. Al Sharpton, an Atlantic Yards supporter and longtime ally of the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a signatory of the AY CBA (and noted heckler).

AY criticism recedes

When it came to crossing some of his union supporters (and, for that matter, Sharpton) by questioning the MTA's willingness to cut a sweetheart deal with Forest City Ratner, however, de Blasio and the "independent leadership" he promises was nowhere to be found. 

(For example, de Blasio has been endorsed by the Service Employees International Union's Local 32BJ and has received $4950 from SEIU's Political Action Committee and $2000 from Local 32BJ. He received $3950 from the New York City District Council of Carpenters and $2950 from the Mason Tenders District Council, among others. He received $2000 from the campaign of Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. He's raised $1.28 million so far.)

While de Blasio last year ramped up some criticism of Atlantic Yards, he muted that criticism, apparently when he recognized that the overturning of term limits meant that he could no longer run for Borough President but instead would pursue citywide office. (He long lacked due diligence on AY.)

In June, the only elected officials to testify critically at the MTA Finance Committee meeting and board meeting were Assemblyman Jim Brennan, City Council Members Letitia James and David Yassky, and, via representatives, state Senators Velmanette Montgomery and Bill Perkins. (Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz sent his cheerleading chief of staff.)

While Brennan and five other elected officials signed a letter asking the Independent Budget Office to look closely at Atlantic Yards, de Blasio did not joint them. Nor did de Blasio join Brennan and several other officials in a letter asking the MTA to delay its June 24 vote.

The Siegel candidacy

Perhaps de Blasio has concluded that anyone critical of Atlantic Yards will vote for rival candidate Norman Siegel, the longtime civil rights attorney who in 2005 challenged incumbent Betsy Gotbaum on her support for Atlantic Yards. (The Times coverage was lousy.)

Siegel's' current bio cites his role representing a property owner challenging Columbia University's pursuit of eminent domain (via the Empire State Development Corporation) as well as his past role representing Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn.

The landscape and the issues

The other candidates for Public Advocate are Council Member Eric Gioia., who has opposed eminent domain for AY but has not been vocal, and former Public Advocate Mark Green, who's pretty much sat out the AY debate.

Gioia has raised $2.1 million, with a significant slice from developers; Green has raised $414,000; and Siegel has raised $286,000. According to the Times, de Blasio led in fundraising among citywide candidates over the past reporting period; while Siegel collected enough small donations to qualify for matching funds, Green has not done so. 

City Limits assesses the race:

The question is whether Gioia's money and energy—one observer likened him to an "Energizer Bunny"—will be enough to defeat de Blasio's growing list of endorsements, Green's name recognition and Siegel's dedicated following among progressives.

There are obviously many issues in the race, but, as far as I can tell, neither Siegel nor the other candidates in debates have challenged de Blasio on AY.

From CBID questionnaires, positions on AY

The candidates were asked about Atlantic Yards by the Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats, which has endorsed Siegel. Candidates filled out lengthy questionnaires (here and here) on numerous issues.

Siegel on AY:
The use of eminent domain in the Atlantic Yards project is unconstitutional, illegal, and absolutely inappropriate. I have always opposed it, dating back to 2004 and 2005 when I was counsel to Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. Unfortunately, this attitude towards development is not an isolated incident, but has been a troubling pattern of the Bloomberg administration – which I know firsthand as I am also counsel to Tuck It Away Storage in their fight against the use of eminent domain in Columbia University’s expansion plan.

Here's a City Limits profile on Siegel.

de Blasio on AY:
I became a supporter of the project because of the groundbreaking affordable housing program, jobs and other community benefits, and felt it to be an appropriate use of eminent domain. I have said publicly that no further public subsidies should be granted or demolitions allowed until there is evidence that the Community Benefits Agreement will be adhered to. It is also essential that surrounding neighborhoods have a larger, ongoing role in the project.

That's what he told City Limits, too. Note that, when the MTA expanded subsidies to Forest City Ratner, de Blasio was silent.

Green on AY:
Being out of office, I had no public role or say on the Atlantic Yards development. My views now are that the City and Borough economy obviously need smart growth, which must include a good chunk of any residential housing in Atlantic Yards be affordable. Eminent domain turns on the extent of the public purpose, which I haven’t yet examined in this case. Obviously, given what’s happened to the City in general and that project in particular, the economics and scale of Atlantic Yards now needs to be reexamined if not reimagined.

Here's a City Limits profile on Green, whose brother is a real estate mogul.

Gioia on AY:
My position today is the same as it was in 2005 – I am opposed to the use of eminent domain for purely economic reasons. I did not vote in favor of the Columbia University project for similar reasons. If you respect property rights, you have to respect property rights for the little guy as well as for the big shots.

Here's a City Limits profile on Gioia.

Gehry vs. Kent, the "lame excuses" to Fallows, and the unmentioned example of Gehry and Atlantic Yards

In the past ten days or so, the outline of a curious episode involving Frank Gehry at the Aspen Ideas Festival has emerged in the blogosphere, but now that the video has surfaced, we can all judge for ourselves.

My summary: Gehry was obnoxiously imperial in dismissing some legitimate questions by Fred Kent of the Project for Public Spaces (PPS); Gehry should know Kent by reputation but apparently does not; Kent was longwinded but not “pompous” as Gehry dismissed him; and, yes, Gehry is quite thin-skinned, as we’ve learned from his role in the Atlantic Yards saga.

(Photo compilation via Curbed LA)

Thus, I think that James Fallows, the distinguished Atlantic magazine national correspondent who chronicled the July 3 episode in his blog--and, until the video emerged, essentially owned the story--went somewhat too easy on Gehry.

Why? If Fallows (who's been based in China) had the opportunity to follow Gehry’s performance regarding Atlantic Yards, notably the architect's January 2006 appearance at a Times Talk (where he also cut off questions) or his May 2006 dismissal of Atlantic Yards opponents as "picketing Henry Ford," the writer might not have accepted Gehry's note of apology as “classy in the extreme” or allowed himself to “feel better in many ways.”

And if he had seen the documentary “Sketches of Frank Gehry,” he might have recalled the architect’s admission that “I’m competitive as hell” and Thomas Krens’s observation that “Frank’s got the biggest ego in the business.” (Also note Gehry's cold-bloodedness regarding the shedding of staff or spouse.)

Keep in mind that, while Kent’s well-regarded organization has not worked on projects to repair the public spaces around Gehry’s buildings, PPS has taken distinct aim at the spaces created by two of Gehry’s most iconic creations, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and Disney Hall in Los Angeles for, among other things, ignoring the riverfront and featuring blank walls, respectively. (The photo from PPS shows the lack of human scale at the exterior of the Guggenheim.)

PPS is also a member of the mend-it-don't-end-it coalition BrooklynSpeaks, criticizing the design of Atlantic Yards though not joining Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn and others bringing legal challenges.

(Thanks to reader Benjamin Hemric for bringing this controversy to my attention.)

The video and the contex

Here’s the video. The sequence at issue begins at about 54:17, but the entire interview is worth watching.



Consider that the Aspen Ideas Festival is apparently a convivial gathering of the elite, and this was a friendly interviewer and friendly crowd. Interviewer Thomas J. Pritzker is chairman and CEO of the Pritzker Organization, a family merchant bank, and also chairs Global Hyatt Corporation, which sponsors the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the profession’s highest honor, which Gehry won in 1989, eight years before Bilbao. The two are personal friends.

At the beginning of the interview, Pritzer said a bit playfully, “Towards the end we’ll have a question and answer. Please make your questions very difficult so Frank has a hard time. That’s part of our job.”

Enter Kent

After a couple of friendly questions, Kent stepped up to the microphone and spoke in a professional tone: “My name is Fred Kent. I run a group called Project for Public Spaces. We’re known as the department of corrections, we have to go into cities to retrofit public buildings, public spaces all over the world. I think I travel as much as you do. What we’re finding is that there’s something that’s changing--that needs to change in the world of architecture, which is: the iconic building needs to become a place--”

“What?” asked Gehry.

“A place, and create a sense of place,” Kent continued, gesturing with his right hand. “A lot of the iconic buildings aren’t getting much visitation, so they’re not holding their own in terms of the economics. There’s very little to do around them. People come and look at them, they admire them, they may like them, I like a lot of your buildings, but people have more reasons to go to a city than to just to look at a building, they have to do many, many things.”

At this point, rather than ask a specific question about Gehry’s work, Kent offered an example: “I was just in Norway last week, and the new opera house is a building where people can become engaged in many many ways in that building, from an economic point of view, from just walking up and down, it’s just an amazing building, but it’s not part of the larger city yet, and it will become that.”

“So my question is, how do we take the marvelous iconic architecture that we’ve had, give more reasons for people to be there”--by this point Kent was gesturing with both hands--”become an iconic place as well as a piece of iconic architecture? How do you put those two together because I--”

Gehry interrupted, in a playful manner: “So which one of my so-called--”

Thus began several exchanges in which they talked over each other.

Kent: “Well, I think that you could--”

Gehry: “Don’t do it.”

(His tone was playful, as if not wanting to learn bad news about his buildings.)

Kent: “Well, and I think you see--”

Gehry: “Tell me which one?”

Kent: “See, I don’t think you’re there yet.”

(It’s not clear to me what he meant: Not “there” because Gehry’s work didn’t need such placemaking yet, or because his work in general automatically needs it?)

Gehry: “Ah.”

Kent: “What I’m trying to do is challenge you, because I think you can do better.”

Gehry: “The figures don’t support your position--”

Kent: “I think they do--”

Gehry: “on my buildings.” He chuckled a little nervously.

(Of course, “figures” mean different things. Many of Gehry’s buildings have proved enormously successful as destinations, but Kent argues that the spaces around them need work.)

I think they do,” Kent continued. “But I’m trying to challenge you to be able to do that, because it’s much more exciting than just a piece of architecture to also have this iconic place.”

“But your question is very insulting to me,” Gehry said, maintaining a slight smile.

“I’m sorry, I but I have to go and fix the places up around the world,” Kent responded.

“Not my place you ain’t fixed,” Gehry said, adding an edge to his playfulness.

“I would have to say I would,” Kent responded, though he didn’t give an example, which surely would have helped his cause. (See below for his acknowledgment that he hasn't worked on spaces around Gehry's buildings, but has worked on buildings that "grew out of the ideology that Gehry started with Bilbao.")

Kent: “Anyway you asked to ask hard que--”

Gehry cut him off. “No, no, it’s a very pompous--you’re a very pompous guy here.”

The camera quickly back to Kent, who maintained his composure, with a small wave of his hand, the equivalent of a shrug.

Gehry then waved his arm in a gesture of imperial dismissal: “Leave, leave.”

Many in the crowd clapped.

“You asked--” Kent tried to continue.

“Thank you,” Gehry continued, cutting him off. “You’re in a self-promotion, stop it.”

Pritzker, the moderator, intervened, putting his hand on Gehry’s arm: “We’ve got to keep going.”
And that was it.

The aftermath

That night, Fallows wrote a post headlined Fifty-nine and a half minutes of brilliance, thirty seconds of hauteur:
Until nearly the end, it was entirely captivating. Gehry was funny, illuminating, vivid, unpretentious-seeming....

Then the questions from the audience began. The second or third was from a fairly insistent character whose premise was that great "iconic" buildings nonetheless fell short as fully attractive and effective "public places," where people were drawn to congregate and spend time. He said he was challenging Gehry to do even more to make his buildings attractive by this measure too.

(Though Kent identified himself at the beginning of his question, Fallows, diminishing Kent’s credibility somewhat, simply described him as “a fairly insistent character,” a term that could apply to anyone just off the street.)

Fallows thought it was fair that Gehry felt the question was insulting, but wrote that Gehry’s dismissive gesture was incredible and unforgettable... I was sorry that I witnessed those thirty seconds. They are impossible to forget and entirely change my impression of the man. I was more amazed when part of the audience, maybe by reflex, applauded. When the video of this episode goes up on the Ideas Festival site, judge for yourself.

I wasn’t so amazed. Gehry is a famous world figure and the crowd was on his side too in January 2006.

"Lame excuses"

Four days later, Fallows reported on Gehry’s email, in which the architect acknowledged
a few lame excuses. One is that I'm eighty and I get freaked out with petty annoyances more than I ever did when I was younger. Two, I didn't really want to be there - I got caught in it by friends. And three - I do get questions like that and this guy seemed intent on getting himself a pulpit. I think I gave him an opportunity to be specific about his critique. Turns out that he followed Tommy Pritzker [the moderator of Gehry's session] around the next day and badgered him about the same issues. His arguments, according to Tommy, didn't hold much water. I think what annoyed me most was that he was marketing himself at everyone's expense. I apologize for offending you. Thanks for telling me.

Fallows commented:
To state the obvious, this reply is classy in the extreme and makes me feel better in many ways.

Well, maybe not. Look at the video: Gehry seemed in good spirits until he got hit with a tough question and, as with the Atlantic Yards questions in January 2006, he immediately got defensive and prickly. (Actually, he was defensive even before the questions came, saying, "We’re trying, I am trying, and you’ll still hate what I do, anyway.")

As for trusting Pritzker on Kent’s work, Gehry should do his own research--and, by extension, so should Fallows.

Urban designer David Sucher, on his City Comforts blog, then suggested that Gehry’s “‘apology’ was a veiled attack on a perspective which he wouldn't name and with which he wouldn't deal.”

Sucher observed:
My own view is that one can thread the needle — it is in fact possible for starchitecture to be good urbanism if it is done with urbanism in mind. No time for the explanation right now but the solution is extremely simple. Why won't Gehry take up the issue? He must be able to see how profoundly un-urban a building Disney Hall is. And he's gotta be able to see the extremely simple solution. Why the silence? Let it rip Mr. Gehry. Come down off your throne.

(PPS image of one of Disney Hall’s three blank walls at right.)

Hemric offered a long and interesting comment influenced by his interpretation of Jane Jacobs, noting that, while some buildings beautiful as sculpture may be anti-urban, not every building /structure in a city must be urbane for a city or city district to be healthy.

Sucher then noted that he’d learned that Gehry’s questioner was Kent, and wrote, “It is absurd that Gehry would decline to engage him.”

The controversy grows, Kent responds

Then, on July 9, Fallows followed up, acknowledging:
I am interested in this question and hope to return to the general topic, in talking about urban design as expressed in many of the new mega-cities I have seen across China. But frankly I don't know enough about the argument as it involves Gehry's buildings to have a view right now.

He also offered links to Sucher’s blog. The next day, Fallows posted a response from Kent, who commented:
That Gehry was dismissive of the subject itself and so self important in his response shows just how far removed he and other proponents of "iconic-for-iconic-sake" architecture are from the reality of urban life today... For them to accuse me of using their fame to get attention for myself and my organization speaks to their insecurity and isolation from the larger world around them.

Yesterday, I asked Kent to elaborate on his statement “I have to say I would” fix a Gehry place. He responded:
I don’t think any of his places have been “fixed up”, but many need it. We have worked on many “iconic” buildings including libraries, campuses, museums, and federal buildings. Many grew out of the ideology that Gehry started with Bilbao. They have done some programming around Bilbao which has helped to some degree.

More comments, and an AY reference

Fallows then presented a note “from an architecture professor in Rome who also happens to be my brother-in-law,” who observed that “Adulation, deference and pompousness are indeed traits frequently found in great architects."

Fallows also offered three comments from readers who both defended and criticized Gehry.

Sucher then expressed surprise at Fallows’s surprise at the international interest in the controversy:
There's a very simple explanation: the work of guys like Gehry (of course all architects, to be fair) impacts enormously and directly in our daily lives. Politics at the local level is almost entirely land-use politics. It is only global journalists like Fallows who seem to ignore the great interest in what can best be called urban design— and usually very crudely expressed — which people at the neighborhood level have in what is built in their neighborhood.

...I was also trying to allude to a vast gap in the general intellectual media — one akin to C.P. Snow's Two Cultures of "science" versus "humanities' — in which there is very little awareness among general intellectual media of the critical issues surrounding the built environment. Atlantic Yards and Chelsea Barracks are huge and rich arenas for discussion and ones critical to the future of our world. Yet does anyone report on them besides the narrowly-focussed "architectural critics" such as Nicolai Ourossoff? I would venture "no." They appear to be local arts-craftsy sideshows instead of disputes central to our global future.
(Emphasis added by AYR)

Actually, there’s a good deal of reporting and commentary on Atlantic Yards beyond Ouroussoff. (Gehry was recently removed from the project, though he won't comment and Forest City Ratner continues to spin.) And I don't think it's fair to say Fallows is not interested in urban design; it's one of the issues he addresses in his thoughtful reports from China.

Here’s a good summary of the Gehry-Kent controversy on the Discovering Urbanism blog. And here’s Sucher’s suggestion for a public discussion of the larger issues and his take on the video:
I have never ever seen a man — especially a famous man at the top of his game— embarrass himself in public as did Gehry at Aspen.

I think Gehry's performance was pretty much par for the course--exposing the defensive and prickly personality just below the surface of a genius architect used to adulation and softball questions.

ESDC says it hopes to sell $650 million (not $531 million) in arena bonds even while Atlantic Yards appeal is pending

So, the projected amount of tax-exempt arena bonds would be larger than initially announced, indicating more savings for developer Forest City Ratner.

A New York Times article on July 1 stated:
The Court of Appeals' involvement, announced on Monday, is the latest hurdle to Mr. Ratner's plans to build a $772 million basketball arena, the centerpiece of the project. The developer and his bankers intend to sell about $650 million in bonds for the arena in late September.

That $650 million number was surprising, because, at the June 23 meeting of the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) board, a memo stated that tax-exempt arena financing was $531.1 million. (Right; click to enlarge)

The explanation

"The sizing of the tax-exempt and taxable financings is still in flux," ESDC spokesman Warner Johnston responded. "The $531 [million] number in our Board materials was a net number--exclusive of cost of issuance, capitalized interest, debt service reserve and bond insurance. In particular, the latter three are very big numbers. $650 [million] is a good ball park number for the tax exempt bond financing. The taxable piece will be relatively small (maybe $30-$50 million)."

Precise information will be released, he added, when the bond issue is finalized. Indeed, Footnote 1 attached to the board memo (above) states that the arena funding source is, in fact, net of cost of issuance, debt service reserve, and capitalized interest.

The only missing element among the four Johnston mentioned was bond insurance.

Was the board informed?

Was the ESDC informed that the total amount of tax-exempt bonds would be significantly more than $531.1 million. The board was presented only with the documents excerpted here, ESDC spokeswoman Elizabeth Mitchell confirmed: "If necessary, we will update the numbers for the Board at the next meeting, likely to be in September."

The issuer of the bonds would be the Brooklyn Arena Local Development Corporation (BALDC), and the BALDC board would authorize the bond sale.

"The LDC Board will be requested to authorize the bond issue, at which time numbers will be available," Mitchell said. "Neither ESDC nor the State will be liable on LDC bonds."

Would bonds be sold in September?

While the bond issue might be authorized in September, would bonds really be sold, as the Times article indicated, later that month, given that oral arguments in the eminent domain appeal wouldn't be held until mid-October?

Johnston wouldn't give a specific date: "We expect the bond sale to occur in 2009 and we hope to be able to sell bonds while the appeal is pending."

That could be dicey. I suspect that means that, should the questions and demeanor of the judges at the oral argument indicate they'd likely uphold the dismissal of the case, the bonds would then be marketed. I'd be surprised if the bonds would be sold before oral argument.

Another potential snag might come from the expected lawsuit against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for its willingness to renegotiate the deal for the Vanderbilt Yard with Forest City Ratner. While such a lawsuit might not pose a legal roadblock to the bond sale, it could make investors pause--or add a risk premium to the sale.

Sale process

Before bonds can be issued, they must be authorized by the BALDC board and the bankers underwriting the deal must arrange for bond insurance and a rating for the bonds.

Forest City Ratner to answer (written) questions at "informational meeting" July 22; when will new arena design be released?

One week before the official two-day public hearing (July 29 and 30) on Atlantic Yards to be held by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), Brooklyn Community Boards 2, 6 & 8 on July 22 will hold "an Informational Meeting to hear an updated presentation on proposed modifications to the Atlantic Yards Development General Project Plan."

The notice states: "At this meeting proposed modifications to the plan will be presented by representatives for the New York State Empire Development Corporation and Forest City Ratner Companies. Following the presentation there will be an opportunity for questions (to be submitted in writing) and answers."

In other words, don't expect Forest City Ratner representatives to be pressed to answer questions. Remember, they refused to attend the May 29 state Senate oversight hearing at Pratt Institute.

The meeting will be held from 6 to 9 pm on July 22 at Long Island University's Zeckendorf Health Sciences Center, Room 107 (enter Dekalb Avenue, off Flatbush Avenue).

Should we expect the Rev. Herbert Daughtry to continue to heckle?

New arena designs

Forest City Ratner has promised that the renderings of the arena that have emerged are preliminary, and that new designs will be released.

The question: will the new designs be released just on the eve of the informational meeting, or just on the eve of the public hearing?

NYPD's new warnings about high-risk buildings bolster argument for additional look at Atlantic Yards security

So, how close would the revised Atlantic Yards arena be from the street?

We don't know, nor do we know whether buffer zones are being designed into the facility. Nor do we know what the facility would look like, since Forest City Ratner says that designs that have emerged from new architects Ellerbe Becket are not final. (The rendering at right certainly puts the arena close to the street.)

But these questions have grown in importance, especially because the New York Police Department (NYPD) on July 1 released a new guide to security for high-risk buildings, a category that likely includes the arena and could include the flagship officer tower (Building 1) still planned.

As Alan Rosner, co-author of July 2005 White Paper (PDF) on terrorism and security issues regarding Atlantic Yards, commented, "They have done more with this single publication than the five-year community and local elected officials' effort to get the ESDC [Empire State Development Corporation] to take this issue seriously. The timing couldn't be better."

(DDDB says that the NYPD study shows AY is high-risk; note that the NYPD has not made any official statement.)

The example in Newark

Since news broke in October 2007 that streets around the Prudential Center in Newark would be closed (right) when major events are held, Atlantic Yards opponents and critics redoubled calls for a security study. It took weeks to learn that the arena, at least under the previous Frank Gehry design, would be the same distance from the street as the facility in Newark.

City and state officials have pledged that streets bordering the AY arena, notably busy Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, would not be closed.

Security in environmental review?

The ESDC, in its environmental review, said that state law does not consider a terrorist incident a "reasonable worst-case scenario." Indeed, in a January 2008 ruling on that lawsuit, state Supreme Court Justice Joan Madden agreed that, while the argument that the ESDC should have considered the threat of terrorism "raises genuine issues of public concern," the law does not require that level of detail.

(Yes, Forest City Ratner and NYPD have met on security issues; the issue just wasn't considered an opportunity for any public input. The ESDC told local elected officials that the arena, like Madison Square Garden, would operate without street closures. I pointed out that the Gehry design, at least, differed from MSG.)

Madden noted that the SEQRA (State Environmental Review Quality Act) regulations cite "facilities with some degree of dangerousness such as an oil supertanker port, a gas storage facility or a hazardous waste facility, and explicitly exclude 'shopping malls, residential subdivisions, or office facilities.' The instant Project is more akin to the latter category of excluded facilities."

Her decision was backed up by an appellate court, which observed in February “that the project at issue does not pose extraordinary inherent risks,” unlike, for example, the siting of a nuclear storage facility or a biological weapons laboratory. (A request for an appeal remains pending.)

Well, yes, and no. The addition of an arena, and the history of a planned terrorist attack at the adjacent subway station--not mentioned in the decisions--add a layer of concern. And the new NYPD report ups the ante.

Rosner observed, "The ESDC needs to authorize a Supplemental EIS [environmental impact statement] to address issues raised by constructing two high risk buildings next to an existing high risk transportation hub. Previous safety assurances offered by the developer from three years ago are no longer sufficient to warrant the modified project's automatic approval."

However, the ESDC, in a Technical Memorandum issued last month to accompany a revision of the Modified General Project Plan (GPP), indicated that neither the proposed modifications nor a delay in the plan would result in "any significant adverse environmental impacts" not addressed in the Final EIS. Security and terrorism were not mentioned.

The Modified GPP is set for a hearing July 29-30 and, presumably, approval by the ESDC board in early September.

Need for hard perimeters

The NYPD report states:
As a first step toward enhancing perimeter security, the NYPD recommends that owners of High Tier buildings conduct vehicle threat vector analyses and incorporate hard perimeters into their design plans.

Rosner observed that the transit and Long Island Rail Road hub is high risk by definition, and the arena likely would be high risk too. The adjacent office tower, in combination with the glass Urban Room, along with linkage to the transit hub, would be at least medium risk and likely high risk under his interpretation of NYPD's scoring system.

"That's a lot of concentrated Phase I associated risk," he commented. "The Modified GPP declares the approval is for an unchanged project and timeline. On that basis, the whole package requires the ESDC to take a hard look and accept authorizing a Supplemental EIS using an explosive event as a reasonable worse case scenario. That was not their position in '06, but now that six of the seven chapters in the [new security handbook] address just such scenarios, it's a much tougher position to justify."

While FCR cited cost as the main factor in dropping Gehry for the firm Ellerbe Becket, veteran designers of sports facilities, cost may have been intertwined with both design and security.

For one thing, Gehry's design was impossible, I'd contend, unless all four towers wrapping it could be completed roughly in sequence. Also, the New York Daily News reported that the high cost of safety glass had contributed to the astounding 50% increase in the announced price tag, from December 2006 to March 2008.

As I point out below, veteran sports facility designers Ellerbe Becket have stressed the importance of having "wider restricted zones" to improve security. Either the new arena design has such zones, or other adjustments are being made.

NYPD guidance

The NYPD on July 1 released a 100-page report, Engineering Security Protective Design for High Risk Building, to assist the New York City building community in preventing and mitigating the effects of a terrorist attack on a building.

The study also creates a three-tier system designed to categorize buildings based on risk. Below, I go through the numbers, relying in part on Rosner's input, to suggest that the arena would likely qualify as high-risk under the NYPD scoring system.

(Shouldn't the NYPD let us know its general assessment of the arena under the new system? Is it High Risk or not?)

The need for more than 20 feet of standoff

One key security issue for the arena, as exemplified in Newark, is the concept of "standoff"--the distance from the street. As the graphic below shows, a person or vehicle with 100 pounds of TNT--the middle line--could easily cause fatalities if it got within 20 feet of a building, and maybe even within 30 feet.

The report (p. 31) notes:
Generally, owners of Medium and High Tier buildings should seek to maximize the amount of protected standoff surrounding a structure. However, available standoff in dense urban areas generally does not exceed the width of a sidewalk; moreover, this distance is only guaranteed if the building is protected with a hard anti-ram perimeter. In New York City, zoning resolutions setting street-to-wall requirements significantly limit the amount of standoff available to certain buildings. In such circumstances, the NYPD recommends that building owners consult with professionals about the possibility of applying for waivers, variances, or exemptions to allow appropriate protective design measures. When such exceptions are unavailable, or when protected standoff is insufficient, protective security design methods are crucial for achieving blast protection for key structural and facade elements.
(Emphasis added)

Should we expect "a hard anti-ram perimeter"?

As noted in the graphic below, a car is not needed to transport 100 pounds of TNT; someone could theoretically do so with a duffel bag or luggage. (You can bet there would be security cameras and personnel keeping watch, but whether they could deter, as opposed to assist in the investigation, is another question.)

The report (p. 16) indicates that standoff is crucial:
Design basis threat (DBT) is the magnitude of the blast from an explosive device that a building or particular building element should be designed to withstand at a specified distance. The magnitude of this threat is expressed in TNT-equivalent charge weight, and the distance in feet. For example, a building’s DBT may be stated as a 500-pound TNT-equivalent explosive charge at 20 feet of standoff, meaning the building, or the particular building element to which the DBT is assigned, must be able to withstand the loading associated with a 500-pound TNT-equivalent explosive charge, from 20 feet away. Increasing standoff and using building design techniques to harden structures may allow buildings and particular building elements to resist explosive threats that present abnormal loading.

The load a specific building element must withstand varies with both the distance and magnitude of the threat from an explosive device. The distance component of DBT takes into account the most probable scenario: that attackers will get as close to their targets as possible. For this reason, the distance component of DBT tends to be no more than the standoff afforded the building or the particular building element under consideration.
(Emphases added)

A High Tier building?

There's good reason to expect that the Atlantic Yards arena would be among the relatively few buildings that fall into the Medium or High Tier. Generally, High Tier buildings present exceptional threat, vulnerability, and impact characteristics because they exhibit many of the following features:

• they are the targets of one or more credible specific threats
  their architectural design is nationally recognizable


• they are located adjacent to other High Tier buildings


• the movement of people within them is not controlled nor are vehicles obstructed or screened before approaching or entering


• their primary structural elements and individual columns do not satisfy load-bearing standards designed to enable buildings and structural elements to withstand specific blast pressures at certain distances


• they have maximum occupancy levels of more than 10,000 people or they are taller than 800 feet


• a successful attack on them would severely impact the local or regional economy, or affect the national economy for an appreciable period of time


• they sit atop five or more sets of rail lines or a vehicular tunnel, or they are located adjacent to the footprint of a significant transportation hub servicing five or more sets of rail lines or the entrance to a bridge


• they are located so close to critical infrastructure that a successful attack would severely disrupt service.

Calculating the rating

Appendix A explains how to determine a rating for each factor--threat, vulnerability, and impact--suggesting that a score of 1, 2, or 3 be assigned to each sub-factor. The language describing each rating comes directly from the report. Following is my AYR comment, in some cases developed after consultation with Rosner.

Threat

A building’s threat rating is the sum of the scores of two sub-factors: threat profile and target attractiveness. Because threat consists of only two sub-factors, the threat rating should be a total from 2 to 6.

Threat Profile
2: Moderate – the building falls into a category that is the subject of a past or present general threat but is not and has not been the target of a credible specific threat.

AYR: Given that the adjacent Atlantic Terminal station was the subject of a terror plot in 1997, this should be at least a 2. Without a direct threat, it's probably not a 3.

Target Attractiveness
3: Significant – the building’s architectural design is nationally recognizable.

AYR: Well, the Frank Gehry design would have been nationally famous. Even a more pedestrian design would be nationally recognizable because of significant publicity.

Total: 5

Vulnerability

A building’s vulnerability rating is the sum of the scores of three sub-factors: adjacency, accessibility, and structural performance. Because vulnerability consists of three sub-factors, the vulnerability rating should range from 3 to 9.

Note that the ratings should be 1, 2, or 3, but in each of these cases I've split the difference, given the lack of information.

Adjacency

2: Moderate – the building has at least one High Tier building located less than 300 feet, but more than 150 feet from it.
3. Significant - the building has at least one High Tier building located within 150 feet of it
Rating 2.5

AYR: This is iffy, but there would be a flagship office tower next to it should Building 1 get built. That's closer than 150 feet, Building 1 may or may not qualify as High Tier. Then again, Rosner points out that the arena would be over the drill track that is crucial the railyard's operation. So, I'm splitting the difference.

Accessibility

2: Moderate – the movement of people in the building is controlled; or vehicles are screened or otherwise obstructed before approaching. If vehicles are able to enter the building (e.g., through an internal parking garage or, in a handful of cases, on a street that cuts through the building), vehicles are screened prior to entry.
3. Significant - the movement of people in the building is not controlled, or is controlled only to a limited degree, and vehicles are neither obstructed nor screened before approaching or entering.
Rating 2.5

AYR: While there would be controlled movement and screened vehicles, Rosner notes that the arena would need permanent anti-vehicle barriers. Perhaps the arena has been redesigned to allow for such perimeters. Again, I'm splitting the difference.

Structural Performance
2. Moderate - for threats from the true perimeter, the building's primary structural elements satisfy M3 standards; or for threats from a contact charge, the building’s columns satisfy M1 standards.
3. Significant - for threats from the true perimeter, the building's primary structural elements do not satisfy M3 standards; and for threats from a contact charge, the building's columns do not satisfy M1 standards.
Rating: 2.5

AYR: Rosner suggests that, if there's the zero protection at the arena's "true perimeter," the building's columns should be required to meet M3 standards, because the structure of the building itself that becomes the true perimeter. Again, I'm splitting the difference.

Total: 7.5

Impact

A building’s impact rating is the sum of the scores of four sub-factors: maximum occupancy or height, economic criticality, transportation criticality and proximity, and critical infrastructure proximity. Because impact consists of four sub-factors, the impact rating should range from 4 to 12.

Maximum Occupancy or Height

3: Significant – the building has a maximum occupancy level of more than 10,000 people or is taller than 800 feet.

AYR: The arena would hold 18,000 people for basketball, more for concerts.

Economic Criticality

2: Moderate – a successful attack on the building could considerably impact the local or regional economy, or affect the national economy in the immediate aftermath of the attack (total economic losses ranging from $1 billion to $10 billion).

AYR: This is an estimate, of course, but an attack on the arena could affect the adjacent Atlantic Terminal station and thus have ripple effects.

Transportation Criticality and Proximity

3: Significant – the building sits atop five or more sets of transit lines, or is located adjacent to the footprint of a transportation hub or transfer point servicing as many lines; or, the building sits atop a vehicular tunnel or is adjacent to the entrance to a bridge.

AYR: The building would be adjacent to the Atlantic Terminal transportation hub.

Critical Infrastructure Proximity

3: Significant – the building is located so close to critical infrastructure that a successful attack against the building would severely disrupt service beyond the building itself.

AYR: Yes, the station could be compromised, notably because of the drill track under the arena.

Total: 11

Calculating the risk score

To determine the final risk score, the impact, vulnerability, and threat ratings are multiplied. So, 5 x 7.5 x 11 = 412.5, which is well within the High Tier, which starts at 288.

Even if we didn't split the difference and calculated scores of 2 for the three sub-factors under Vulnerability, the sum of 5 x 6 x 11 = 330, still well within the High Tier.

Indeed, whatever the number, I suspect that any large sports facility, given the size of the crowds, must be considered High Tier.

Stadiums and Arenas

Indeed, the report warns (p. 40) about particular dangers in sports facilities:
Seating bowls in stadiums and arenas present unique blast mitigation challenges because the pressure of a blast can cause seats to dislodge, leading to blunt injuries or death. Accordingly, the NYPD recommends that owners of major stadiums and arenas install primary structural elements and seating tie-down elements that achieve DBT levels in the M3 range from the true perimeter. The NYPD recommends that stadium and arena owners consult with blast engineers and the NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau to determine site-specific DBT standards within the M3 range. The determination is based on analysis of expected casualty levels given variations in occupancy, charge weight, standoff, geometry, and structural hardening.

Safety of windows

The report notes that windows are particularly challenging--which hearkens back to the issue of glass raised by the earlier Gehry design:
Windows present the most difficult challenge for building owners attempting to mitigate the hazards associated with debris impact, because glass is brittle and inflexible, making it particularly susceptible to failure.
Treated window glazing can incrementally increase the blast resistance capability of glass. Although no commercially available glazing can fully mitigate the effects of a close-range blast event, certain glazing systems may substantially reduce blast
impact at greater distances.

Ellerbe Becket's take

The designer of the Atlantic Yards arena, in discussion post-9/11 design of sports facilities, counted having a secure perimeter--a challenging task given the AY arena site--as a crucial component of security. In Brooklyn, however, Ellerbe Becket didn't help the developer choose the site--it's helping mop up.

The Spring 2002 issue of the Ellerbe Becket Quarterly magazine included an article headlined No Weak Links: Designing secure sports facilities has renewed focus.

The article cited four core issues sports-facilities designers keep in mind:
• spectator monitoring
• operations control
• vehicle barriers
• ventilation systems access

Regarding the second and third listed issues, the authors state:
Restricting how close vehicles unrelated to operations can get to a sports facility also is important, but not always easily addressed. “Many facility owners use concrete barriers or fences to increase the auto perimeter around stadiums and arenas during events to prevent incidents such as car bombings,” says [architect Gordon] Wood. “The distance allowed varies since streets tightly border many facilities in urban settings.” Outside the United States, roads surrounding a venue often are shut down on event day. “This creates a safety zone but also impedes traffic flow which can inconvenience fans and nearby residents,” says [architect Jim] Pieper.
(Emphasis added)

The safety emphasis, the authors acknowledge, must be balanced against fan inconvenience and labor costs.

The article concludes:
Wood and Pieper predict security will involve greater consideration given to site selection to allow for wider restricted zones around the facility. Both expect designs with out-of-reach air vents, increased use of and more space allotted to metal-detectors, technical advances in surveillance equipment and larger entry plazas that improve traffic flow for a smoother multipoint check-in process. “Our goal is to create designs and security systems that not only protect lives but also preserve sports facilities as entertainment destinations,” says Wood.
(Emphasis added)

One example, at right, is the National Car Rental Center in Sunrise, FL, home of the NHL Panthers (headed by Michael Yormark, twin brother Nets CEO Brett Yormark).

The caption says that the facility "restricts vehicular access in creative ways," given that the arena and its plaza "actually rest on a berm overlooking the parking lot."

That wouldn't be possible in Brooklyn.

In San Antonio

In 2002, Ellerbe Becket answered questions regarding The AT&T Center in San Antonio (formerly the SBC Center) in a piece titled SBC Center: Design Q & A.

Q. In the wake of September 11, were any special security concerns raised?

A. We’ve had a year since September 11 to evaluate the implications and the bottom line is that there have been a number of relatively subtle issues addressed in the architecture and operations strategy. For example, you’ll notice metal detectors in use. We have the benefit of a very large site with lots of area and a generous public plaza space with shaded areas to que patrons in comfort. We think we’ve taken positive steps to deal with very real security issues and we’ve been able to integrate the additional security measures architecturally so that most patrons won’t even know they are in place.
(Emphasis added)

So Brooklyn, at the least, must be a challenge.

In Architectural Record (February 2007), editor called for "employing other voices"; now what?

This is well over two years late, but I don't think anyone noticed a thoughtful but flawed February 2007 column by Architectural Record editor Robert Ivy, headlined City of Trees and published shortly after the Atlantic Yards project was officially approved but, obviously, well before significant changes were made.

It's worth another look and Atlantic Yards, I think, deserves Ivy's attention again.

Ivy points to the need for development at the crucial intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues, cited the need for housing in the city, and pointed out the importance of professional sports in what could be the fourth-largest city in the country. (I don't buy his restatement of the cliche that Brooklyn is "still grieving the loss of the Dodgers in 1957," however.)

Issues of concern

However, he acknowledges concern:
Soon residents of surrounding property and their sympathizers began to protest the disruption to the urban fabric that the 22-acre master plan proposed. They decried the loss of low-scale housing in the Prospect Heights neighborhood (a gentrifying area), the use of eminent domain by a civic authority to block viable streets, and the variation in scale presented in the proposed project.

It's even more than urban design, scale, and even eminent domain, given factors like superblocks and indefinite interim surface parking. The big issue is process--why else would the Municipal Art Society's Kent Barwick have mused that AY might be "this generation's Penn Station"?

Gehry's role

Ivy writes:
The developer’s bona fide desire to bring prestige and credibility to his project resulted in hiring the world’s most prominent architect. Who could argue with his choice for qualified design? Ratner, who burnished his reputation by hiring Renzo Piano together with FXFowle for the New York Times headquarters, employed Frank Gehry, whose name carries instant recognition with educated audiences. The professional team included Laurie Olin, renowned landscape architect responsible for the ground plane in such New York icons as Bryant Park and Battery Park City.

Actually, you could argue with Gehry's public performance, couldn't you? And now Gehry's gone.

Scale and vision

Ivy goes on to offer some measured criticism:
Leaving aside the formidable issues raised by the locals, the questions facing the Atlantic Yards development become classic architectural ones: scale and vision. Gehry’s plan for Atlantic Yards, while admirably blending mixed-use principles and awareness of varying scales, nevertheless imposes a single consciousness on the urban fabric, and the viewpoint is his own.

Ivy questions whether one architect should be in charge of AY, pointing out it's as large as Rockefeller Center and Stuyvesant Town, thus becoming "a kind of experiment that others will have to live in."

He advises "including other respected architects to design individual components of the site," a pattern that Gehry and Olin both endorsed, but the developer--so far--has publicly eschewed, despite emerging evidence that others will design less-expensive buildings.

Gehry said that he would typically bring in other architects to help, but the client wouldn't let him. Now, however, value engineering and other architects have been imposed on the arena design, and multiple architects are likely for the rest of the project.

But Gehry, we must remember, was deployed in part to win over certain elements of the chattering class.

A realistic compromise?

Ivy concludes:
New York needs density, and more housing, but not at the expense of alienating urban advocates who decry closed streets, inadequate affordable-housing options, or imperiled existing residences. Their voices must be taken into consideration. Ultimately, Atlantic Yards will comprise its own city within the city. As Gehry himself has proposed, his large commission can be improved by employing other voices to build on the plans he has laid out to date, adding other sensibilities to the architect’s own, layering the new community now in formation with multiple points of view, and enriching the borough and the whole city as a result.
(Emphasis added)

This is essentially a "mend it, don't end it" solution, reasonably close to the issues raised by BrooklynSpeaks.

Squaring the circle?

But it doesn't square the circle: if existing residences are to be saved and streets not to be closed, Forest City Ratner's master plan must be significantly altered--and probably couldn't work. It implies a lower density; if so, the developer couldn't fulfill the affordable housing pledge it made.

Moreover, it doesn't deal with the dubious claims of blight. Nor does it deal with the developer's pattern of misleading the public.

It's understandable that Ivy, like other architecture critics, would focus on issues of urban design. But a project this big raises other questions, as well.

Now that it's been two years and counting, he should revisit the issue.

The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership's AY fig leaves

You'd think the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership (DBP) would've gotten this right, especially since its representatives last month testified in favor of Atlantic Yards before the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Empire State Development Corporation.

However, it claims on its web site that Atlantic Yards would be "built over the rail yards near Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues...."

For the record, Atlantic Yards would cover 22 acres; the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Vanderbilt Yard is about 8.5 acres. The project can't be built over the rail yards.

Also, some of the numbers are off; as approved in December 2006, the project would include 6430 housing units, a reduction from the 6800 once promised and stated on the DBP web site. There is no plan as of now for hotel space.

And, of course, the Atlantic Yards site is not in Downtown Brooklyn, but