Are criticisms of Atlantic Yards "extreme claims"? Only to a reviewer uninformed of some rather mainstream critiques

A review in Architectural Record of Oren Safdie's play The Bilbao Effect leads off with an anti-anti-Atlantic Yards perspective, as if to triangulate to some zone of balance:

Not much rankles like large-scale urban development. Take, for instance, some of the more extreme claims regarding the plan for a sports arena at Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards: ill-conceived, a waste of taxpayer money, a circumvention of the democratic process.

As I commented, why exactly are "ill-conceived, a waste of taxpayer money, a circumvention of the democratic process" deemed "some of the more extreme claims regarding the plan for a sports arena at Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards"?

After all, the New York City Independent Budget Office called the arena a money-loser for the city and Municipal Art Society then-President Kent Barwick, not exactly a radical, suggested, “Maybe the absurdity with which that proceeded will awaken the desire for a more rational process.”