Atlantic Yards Report

Goodbye, Triangle Sports: in 2005, Atlantic Yards sounded like a boon; now it's a reason to close

2012-01-30T19:41:00.000-05:00

From a 7/6/05 New York Times article headlined Brooklynites Take In a Big Development Plan, and Speak Up:

Henry Rosa, 55, the co-owner of a sporting goods store at Flatbush Avenue and Dean Street, said: "I suspect it will be great for us. Once the project is complete, with new residents here, it will bring us more traffic." But he said that if he lived in the area, he would probably be angry.

From today's Wall Street Journal, Bowing to Change: Brooklyn's Triangle Sports Feels the Pressure From All Sides:

A family-owned sporting-goods and apparel store on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn is calling it quits after 96 years in business, another sign of changes sparked by the coming of the nearby Barclays Center arena complex.

Feeling the pressure from big-box stores and the weak economy, Triangle Sports has put its building up for sale in hopes of finding a store or restaurant itching to be close to the multiuse sports, retail and residential project rising across the street.

"It's getting harder and harder for a smaller, independent retailer to survive," said an emotional Henry Rosa, one of the partners behind Triangle Sports, who started working in the shop as a teenager in the 1960s.

...National retailers and Manhattan restaurateurs have been quietly scoping out properties around the arena, real-estate brokers and property owners said.

See photos and comments on Here's Park Slope, and some not-so-happy former customers on Brownstoner.

What's going on here? Noisy, chaotic congestion during (unannounced) overnight work at Atlantic and Sixth avenues (updated: It was LIRR)

2012-01-30T16:54:00.000-05:00

Update 4:50 pm: Arana Hankin of Empire State Development responds:

The work that was occurring this weekend was being done by the LIRR and had nothing to do with Atlantic Yards. The LIRR is typically very good at notifying us of work that they need to do after hours so that we can inform the community, especially when it relates to Atlantic Yards. But apparently there was an emergency situation in the yard this weekend and they had to get in there very quickly.

It was a very busy Saturday night at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Atlantic Avenue, but the street closure, noise, confusion, and heightened danger were not predicted in the latest two-week Atlantic Yards Construction Alert, dated 1/16/12, that was distributed by Empire State Development (after preparation by developer Forest City Ratner).

Though no weekend third shift work was announced, the documentation appears in two postings on Atlantic Yards Watch.

On Saturday afternoon, January 28, trucks dropped off transformers that were later to be lowered into the Vanderbilt Yard. The trucks positioned themselves on the south side of Atlantic, east of Sixth Avenue, thus taking up a lane used as a bus stop.

In the evening

As noted in the video below, which begins at about 11 pm, the congested traffic led to some untoward consequences

The camera, which starts on Pacific Street east of Sixth avenue, at first moves to Sixth, passing an open gate to the Vanderbilt Yard, then goes north up Sixth to Atlantic.

As seen in the screenshot at right, Atlantic Avenue is occupied by construction-related equipment, with cones marking off the area.

The video shoes that there's a flagger in middle of Atlantic Avenue, but the flagger--as at 3:17 of the video--does not always direct traffic.

At about 4:05 of the video, drivers among the southbound traffic on South Portland Avenue (the extension of Sixth north of Atlantic), begin prolonged horn honking to indicate their displeasure with the situation.

A stall on Sixth

Meanwhile, northbound traffic on Sixth Avenue starts to get backed up, at about 4:30 of the video. Some cars, like the one in the screenshot at left, even start making illegal U-turns. In the background, the under-construction Barclays Center is visible.

At about 5:10 of the video, drivers even crowd the intersection--a key intersection when the arena opens, which raises questions of how well it will be managed.

A woman looking for the bus stop finds it unavailable.

More confusion

This next video shows continued frustration and confusion experienced by drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists.

For example, at about 0:17, a bicyclist coming south turns onto the Sixth Avenue sidewalk to avoid a collision with northbound traffic

As in the screenshot at right, at about 1:25, a construction worker has to move quickly to avoid the southbound bicyclist.

There's a significant amount amount of horn honking and aggressive driving, as at about 2:57 of the video.

What happens when a fire truck travels north on Sixth Avenue (presumably coming from the station house on Dean Street just east of the arena site)?

As seen in the screenshot at left, at about 3:59, the truck has to wiggle through some significant congestion.

A bit later in the video, workers bring out cones and barriers to protect the crane located on Atlantic just west of Sixth Avenue.

But Sixth Avenue is a narrow street, with relatively little margin for error, so when an obstruction (the crane) meets a complication (a large vehicle), which itself faces its own complication (another vehicle), things get dicey, as detailed at about 6:05 of the video.

Enter the tour bus

As seen in the screenshot at right, a tour bus going east on Atlantic wanted to turn right (southbound) on Sixth.

It had to overshoot somewhat to get around the crane, and as it turned, it came quite close to the passenger vehicle that had been going northbound on Sixth and was turning right on Atlantic.

What happens if and when large vehicles are using Sixth Avenue on the day of an arena event? Sure, there will be traffic agents in place, but an unanticipated event--say a breakdown of a vehicle--could have ripple effects.

What was the result?

At about 5:30 am, as detailed in the screenshot at left and the video below it, transformers were lowered into place.

What exactly will they be used for? Why wasn't this all announced?

I'll update this when I learn more.

And the next Construction Alert, for the two weeks beginning today, should be issued today or tomorrow.

Lingering questions: Where's the Barclays Center security plan? What precinct will be in charge? Who'll pay for traffic agents?

2012-01-30T06:01:00.000-05:00

Local elected officials are still waiting to examine the security plan presumably prepared for the Barclays Center arena, but are not getting very far. No one knows yet which police precinct will be in charge of the arena.

And there's still no clarity on whether the developer would pay for traffic agents needed for the area.

In other words, as the opening of the Barclays Center approaches in September, some major questions remain unanswered, as was aired at the Atlantic Yards District Service Cabinet meeting January 26, held at Brooklyn Borough Hall with agencies and officials whose work touches on the project.

Cost of overtime

The issue came up near the end of the meeting. Council Member Letitia James asked about the cost of police overtime for arena events.

"As I understand it, I'm not saying this is exactly how it works," Marshall responded, "what other arenas and venues do is they have a contract with the city to retain off-duty police at the expense of the venue, and that's something that we're hoping to have the same accessibility to the Police Department, and it's part of our discussions with them."

What about NYPD traffic agents?

"Sometimes it's a negotiation," Forest City Ratner executive Jane Marshall responded. "But there are traffic agents, for example, for the construction of the project. They've been funded, most of them, by Forest City Ratner. "

"But when they've been typical, historical locations, we have not funded them," she continued. "The NYPD does that just as its course of business. But something related to an arena event, because of the event, we would be, in all cases I would think funding the TEA [traffic enforcement agent]. Now where they would actually go is a function of NYPD and DOT [Department of Transportation] decisionmaking."

"The arena is not expecting the city to shoulder the burden of overtime that's necessary from the police for an event," she added.

Actually, according to the 2009 Amended Memorandum of Financial Commitments Forest City signed with the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), the developer's obligations are fuzzy:

FCRC shall enter into discussions with NYCDOT to determine the extent of FCRC’s financial responsibility for the traffic enforcement agents (“TEAs”) required to manage traffic flow for major arena events and shall comply with the terms of any such agreement with NYCDOT as required by the DOT letter. If necessary to ensure that the TEAs are deployed for major arena events as described in the FEIS, and only in the event that FCRC and NYCDOT do not reach a funding agreement, FCRC shall provide such funding for TEAs as ESDC shall reasonably direct, considering funding arrangements at other sports and entertainment venues in New York City.

Where's the security plan?

James noted that, along with Council Members Brad Lander and Steve Levin, had requested a copy of the security plan from Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, and to meet with him.

Last October, state Senator Velmanette Montgomery made a similar request. The arena will be very close to Atlantic Avenue, and officials since November 2007 have asked for a security study, once it was learned that a streets next to the Prudential Center in Newark were being closed. Forest City has hired its own security consultants.

After design changes in 2009, Forest City officials said they would meet with the New York Police Department--but only after the project had been re-approved by the Empire State Development Corporation.

Querying FCR

"Do you know whether the plan has been drafted, completed," she asked Marshall. "Is there a courtesy copy that we could be provided?"

"Council Member, I'm not aware--I know that we have been in discussion with NYPD, and I know that they're focusing on analyzing the manpower that's used and other things," responded Marshall. "I don't know that there's any plan that gets produced. I know there's a coordination and a protocol that's set up. And it changes on an ongoing basis. You don't have a plan, because the plan is different for every event.... It's all about protocol and communication."

She seemed to be focusing on the plan to deploy safety officers, not an overall security analysis, which presumably would state definitively whether streets would be closed, or the impact, perhaps, of narrow sidewalks.

Which precinct?

James didn't follow up, but moved on to a new question. She asked if one police precinct--of the three in the area including the project--would be put in charge.

"We'll have to talk to the NYPD about it," Marshall responded.

Captain John Breslin of the NYPD's Office of Management and Planning chimed in. "Currently there is extensive research on who's going to be policing the arena," he said. "That hasn't been signed off by the Police Commissioner. So we have gone into a review not only of crime, the population density, and... this is all done to try to figure out which precinct will be best served.... I'm sure as soon as the Police Commissioner signs off on it, you and all the other Council Members will be notified."

Before then, James said, she'd like Breslin to remind Kelly that local officials would like to meet with him.

Breslin said he would do so.

With transportation plan delayed, Nets finally survey fans about transportation options regarding Barclays Center attendance

2012-01-30T06:00:00.000-05:00

What a coincidence: a day after a public meeting in which officials revealed delays in the long-awaited Transportation Demand Management plan for the Barclays Center, Nets Basketball on January 27 sent "an important online survey about our move to Barclays Center in Brooklyn next season" to those on its mailing list.

The survey, which offered the opportunity to win "autographed merchandise, courtside seats to a NETS game or a NETS Fan Experience package!," seemed designed to alert people to the extensive public transportation options and deter them from driving.

However, should word-of-mouth or advertising attract drivers to non-arena-related garages or to residential streets in search of free parking, that will hamper the effort to promote transit use.

Last week, Arana Hankin, Director, Atlantic Yards Project, for Empire State Development suggested that the delay in the NBA season hampered development of the plan. Perhaps, but there's no reason why those on the Nets' mailing list could not have been previously surveyed.

Opening up

After asking demographic questions, the survey asked about past attendance at events at the following venues:

Citi Field in Queens, NY
Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, PA
Hoboken Sports Arena in Hoboken, NJ
Izod Center in East Rutherford, NJ
Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, PA
Madison Square Garden in New York City
MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ
Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, NY
Prudential Center in Newark, NJ
Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, PA
XL Center in Hartford, CT (formerly Hartford Civic Center)
Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, NY

Barclays Center

Then, after explaining that "Barclays Center will host over 200 events in its inaugural year, including world class concerts, professional boxing, college basketball, family oriented shows such as the circus, and will be the new home of the Brooklyn Nets," the survey asked how likely it will be that "you personally will attend" specific events there.

Such events include concerts, college basketball, tennis, family shows, boxing, and Nets games.

Click a semi-positive answer, and you qualify to continue.

The survey asked how many events of various types you'd attend, including weekday/weekend basketball games. It asked if we know of the Barclays Center, and its general or exact location.

Getting there

Then it asked whether we'd given much thought to transportation options. What might we use?
Arrive by Car or Other Individual Motor Vehicle to Barclays Center...

Taxi/Livery/Car Service that you pay for by the ride
Limousine/Luxury Car that will be there for the duration of the event
Motorcycle or motorized scooter
Car (you or a friend/relative drive)

Arrive by Public Transit to Barclays Center...

Subway
Bus (specifically, a NYC MTA Bus)
Long Island Rail Road (to Atlantic Terminal)

Other ways of arriving at Barclays Center...

Bike (non-motorized)
Walking all the way (Don't count your walk to/from the subway)
Charter Bus

Any other method not listed above (Specify)

What would be the alternative option, we were then asked.

What are the most important factors in choosing a transportation option? We were asked to rank issues like cost, timeliness, safety, and convenience.

Public transit options

We were then asked about familiarity with bus, subway, and LIRR transportation options, with the option to see a map with bus lines and another one with subway lines.

Does such information, we were asked, make it more likely we'd use such public transit?

Parking

The survey seemed designed to deter people from driving. It stated:

Barclays Center is located at the intersections of Atlantic & Flatbush Avenues in Brooklyn.

Drivers can pay to park at a number of existing garages in the vicinity of Barclays Center.

One new parking facility will be constructed 1-2 blocks east of the venue that will give priority to High Occupancy Vehicles (3+ people per vehicle) and VIP cars.

On-street parking is extremely limited in the area.

Click here if you would like to see a map of the area showing the subway lines and the arena.

But there are, as noted, other transportation options.

Potential plans

We were then asked our best guess about travel plans for a typical weekday Nets game: would we come from home, work, or somewhere else? What's the location? What mode would we use?

I answered subway, and was then asked what subway line I'd most likely be arriving on, and whether I'd be transferring to it.

I was also asked the chances I'd use a motor vehicle and, if so, what kind.

We were also asked at what time we'd arrive in the the general vicinity of the arena, perhaps to shop, eat, drink or hang out in the neighborhood:

2 or more hours before starting time
1 hour before starting time
At least 30 minutes before starting time
Close to starting time - less than 30 minutes before/after event starts
More than 30 minutes after starting time

We were then asked how soon we'd leave.

Transit nuances

After I responded that I'd leave by subway, I was asked:

How many minutes would you consider to be a surprisingly short wait - in other words, a quicker than expected wait?
How many minutes would be so long to wait that you'd seriously consider taking another form of transportation if you knew you would have to wait that long?

Incentives to drive?

We were asked if certain options increase the likelihood to drive instead of take public transit:

Closer and/or discounted parking for vehicles with 3+ passengers.
Availability of less expensive parking in a remote lot with a free shuttle bus to the arena.
Ability to pre-purchase a parking space online for a wide variety of parking locations to have a guaranteed space.

Summing up

As noted above, the survey seems designed to get people to use public transit, and to help advise transit agencies where service might be beefed up.

But there are still a lot of variables, including the desire for free neighborhood parking and the role of local garages.

Seen but not heard: the mayor's new emissary on Atlantic Yards issues

2012-01-29T07:00:00.000-05:00

Lolita Jackson, director of special projects at the mayor's office and described (probably over-described) as an ombudsman to oversee quality-of-life issues regarding the project--attended the January 26 meeting--her first--of the Atlantic Yards District Service Cabinet, which includes agency and governmental officials.

She was introduced by Sam Pierre, Brooklyn director at the Mayor's Community Assistance Unit. (Pierre was formerly an aide to Rep. Ed Towns, as well an officer in the powerful Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club, both of which have favorable postures toward Atlantic Yards, as does the mayor.)

“Lolita’s role will be to assist some of the work we're already doing here, working with city agencies, so that we can improve quality of life issues around the project," Pierre said. "We’ll be working with Carlo [Scissura, special advisor at the Brooklyn Borough President's Office], and Arana [Hankin, Director, Atlantic Yards Project, Empire State Development], and Forest City. We've had conversations, we’re going to be working together to make sure that we have our agencies work together... so that the project can be done.”

Jackson spoke individually to several people but didn't address the group. She had arrived at the 9:30 a.m. meeting--which normally starts ten minutes late--on time, despite a trip from the Upper East Side. You have to wonder what she thought about the delay in the Transportation Demand Management plan.

NetsDaily editor says Prokhorov's feelings toward US have been shaped by reception by Nets fans, ignores his own role as chief cheerleader

2012-01-29T06:30:00.000-05:00

A 1/26/12 post on Nets Daily, Did Fans' Reaction Help Prokhorov's View of U.S., West?, contains a glaringly obvious omission:

Those close to Mikhail Prokhorov say his feelings toward the United States have evolved, shaped, in part, by his experience as the Nets owner. When he purchased the team he didn't know what to expect. Would there be suspicions? a Cold War hangover?
But they say he was pleasantly surprised by reaction he got from NBA owners and particularly Nets fans. As one said, he found it all quite endearing. Now are we starting to see the product of that in his foreign policy pronouncements as he runs for Russian president? Seems so. On Tuesday he told an English language television outlet that it's time for Russia to embrace the West.

(Emphasis added)

Particularly Nets fans? The Nets fan who's led the embrace of Prokhorov is the author of that post, site editor "Net Income," aka Bob Windrem.

A 4/26/10 Times Sports Section article, headlined Russian Billionaire Is White Knight for the Nets, stated:

The NetsDaily blog has dubbed him “the Most Interesting Man in the World,” after the suave fellow in the beer commercials.

That dubbing came from "Net Income" in a 6/26/09 post.

Windrem earlier even wrote a profile for MSNBC quoting the words and work of "Net Income," but didn't acknowledge on MSNBC that he's the lead contributor to NetsDaily.

A 10/31/10 New York Times Magazine cover story on Prokhorov, headlined The Playboy and His Power Games, reported:

Prokhorov had invited anyone who couldn’t manage the rasp in the middle of “Mikhail” to call him Mike, but on NetsDaily, the premier Nets fan Web site, he quickly emerged as “Proky.” Proky was the sweet sound of salvation. The Web site editor (a 65-year-old New York-based television producer anxious to keep his old- and new-media identities separate) coined a phrase for the euphoria coursing through reader comments: the Prokhorov Effect.

Why does he want to keep his identities separate? Because he shoots from the hip and makes claims--and gets nasty--that he wouldn't do as "Bob Windrem."

Illuminating disgraced Senator Carl Kruger: was he a good guy gone bad, or amoral from the start?

2012-01-29T06:00:00.000-05:00

Earlier this month, New York magazine published an illuminating, somewhat sympathetic profile of King Carl of Canarsie: The gothic saga of Brooklyn power broker Carl Kruger, a state senator who loved a gynecologist and his family so much he was willing to sell his influence for them.

It allowed Kruger to half-explain how he slipped into corruption, clawing his way up from neglect (he was put up for adoption but returned to his mom) and poverty--and it provoked several (mostly anonymous) commenters, as noted below, to observe that Kruger was dirty a lot longer.

And, though Atlantic Yards is unmentioned, the Kruger saga provides excruciating context for the (then)-Senator's over-the-top support for Atlantic Yards, support that, at least in retrospect, seems provoked not by Brooklyn pride, or jobs, but something more.

It's not clear whether (guilty) lobbyist Richard Lipsky's payments to Kruger were predicated on support for Atlantic Yards, but Kruger pleaded guilty to, among other things, directing funds in response to a request from Forest City Ratner executive Bruce Bender. Was it just because they were old Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club cronies?

First, a video

For a glimpse of Kruger, with hardscrabble Brownsville in his accent, confidence in his affect, and toadying from a fellow official, watch the below video.

The title: Senator Carl Kruger Preparing Rosh Hashanah Meals at MASBIA in Conjunction with Met Council. (MASBIA is an Orthodox Jewish soup kitchen headquartered in Boro Park; the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty is an umbrella funder.)

"Everyone waits for the Chairman of Finance," declares Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. Also appearing in the video are William Rapfogel, CEOr of the Met Council and Sheldon Silver buddy, and Senate leader John Sampson.

From NY Mag

Geoffrey Gray writes:

Kruger had been a king of South Brooklyn. From the humblest of beginnings, the senator had turned his district office into a kind of one-stop shop for free constituent services like mammograms and flu shots. He artfully leveraged his ability to provide for Main Street into enormous power in Albany. He was a master tactician who was feared, not loved, and was appointed in 2009 to serve as chairman of the Legislature’s Senate Finance Committee, one of that body’s most powerful posts—all this with little more than a high-school education.

His beginnings in politics:

By the early seventies, Kruger was a neighborhood activist. He’d legally changed his name from Tack to Kruger, and he and his mother and stepsister cobbled together their savings to purchase a house on Avenue L with a small yard out front. He and his mother were concerned about the neighborhood, and they co-formed a civic association that met in diners and bowling alleys. Taking on quality-of-life issues made Kruger feel worthy. It also got him out of the house.

...His energy caught the attention of City Councilman Herb Berman, who hired Kruger to be his chief of staff, and later Assemblyman Genovesi, who saw that Kruger could organize people and run ground operations in Assembly races.

He helped the Turanos, his surrogate family, including his (alleged eventual) lover, Michael:

He micromanaged their careers. He helped them get scholarships and into medical school. He encouraged them to specialize in gynecology. When Michael graduated from medical school, he threw a party so big it made the local paper, the Canarsie Courier. Once the Turanos opened offices in Brooklyn and Manhattan, Kruger treated the joint practice as if it were a Jefferson Club political campaign. He targeted potential clients as if they were undecided voters. He sent out direct mail to 150,000 women.
In his way, Kruger was the ultimate doting parent, just like his mother. When the Feds were watching him, they noticed that Kruger brought the Turanos breakfast nearly every morning. When they went on trips, he bought them travel-size snacks. When Michael was working late, Kruger picked him up at the hospital to give him rides home.

The flip side

Gray reports significant hostility to Kruger:

All the loving-kindness Kruger showed to the Turanos had an opposite. “There’s some Jekyll and Hyde there,” said Frank Seddio, a former assemblyman who has known Kruger for four decades and looked on as Kruger earned a reputation in Albany for ruthlessness. While elderly constituents came to depend on Kruger and his staff for services, it’s hard to find a colleague who has anything good to say about him. One lawmaker who has known Kruger for decades said he was surprised to learn Kruger was capable of displaying emotion. “The Carl Kruger I know does not cry,” the lawmaker said. “The Carl Kruger I know is stone cold.” Said another lawmaker: “One character flaw that most politicians have is that we go into office because we feel the need to be liked. Carl feels the need to be feared.”
Over the years, Kruger managed to isolate himself from those he was once close to. While members of the Jefferson Club still carried his petitions—after all, as Senate Finance chair, he had been the most powerful official in South Brooklyn—Kruger rarely went into the club anymore.

The cancer story

Gray writes:

In 1980, Kruger was indicted with another civic booster for allegedly extorting money from a local builder, a Holocaust survivor, and his partner. Before the trial, Kruger claimed he’d been diagnosed with cancer. Seddio remembers driving Kruger to the hospital with operatives from the Jefferson Club and waiting in the car for Kruger to come out after meeting with his doctor. At trial, the charges against Kruger were dropped, as, apparently, were Kruger’s cancer treatments. Some thought he invented the sickness, perhaps to drum up sympathy from friends and colleagues at the Club.

The comments

The comments in response to the article are pretty rich, though most are anonymous.

Former Courier-Life "Brooklyn Politics" columnist Erik Engquist (now at Crain's New York Business) wrote:

It's not just the cancer story but the indictment that prompted Kruger to come up with it that tells you this is not a case of a good man gone bad, but of a guy who throughout his long career manipulated the system to his benefit and ultimately got busted. The case involved the Georgetowne Civic Association and the price of Carl's support for houses a developer wanted to build. I started dealing with Kruger 20 years ago as a cub reporter, when he was CB 18 chairman and Dottie was his district manager, and there were already plenty of stories floating around about his nefarious activities over the years. Morality? Never came up with Carl.

The rest were mostly anonymous, with a few positive. "brooklynbookworm" wrote:

The 18 years that Carl Kruger spent fighting relentlessly for the underdog and speaking out for the community's best interests should be his enduring legacy. As an elected official he was a rare breed -- always available to listen to a constituent's concern, intuitive, empathetic and quick to get a problem fixed.

A former staffer, "Brooklynbornandbred," suggested Kruger had changed:

I know Carl well and was on his staff from 1995-2000. He ran a great office, had a wonderful consumer advocate, an assistant with an amazing knack for cutting through bureaucratic red tape...

Clearly he lost his way. The tragedy is that in becoming a state Senator he had fulfilled his dream. He had what he always wanted. He was respected, feared. I wish he could have left it at that. But he didn't and he's going away for it. I hope he has the strength to take what is coming and survive it. I hope Dottie will make it through although my guess is that she is in rough shape right now, as her boys meant the universe to her and Michael is also going away.

...Carl's crimes are relatively minor compared to his out-sized contributions. I hope the judge understands that when he sends him to prison.

Others were less generous. One, "TruthSojourn," wrote:

Since I know people who actually sat in a car waiting for Carl to come back from his alleged "chemo" treatments for his miraculously cured cancer, his denial of the cancer story calls into question anything else that he has said in this story. I know at least THREE people, TWO still living, who would attest to it. SO, a cautionary note to the guy/gal who works up the Probation Report, be skeptical, be VERY skeptical.

Another, "boredatwork" wrote:

I have known Carl Kruger for almost 40 years, and he was a nasty, vindictive, despicable p.o.s. from day one. And I hope no one believes Brafman that this is a "good man" who became a corrupt politician. This is a bad, bad man, who finally got caught. May he rot in jail.

"Melvin_Green" wrote:

I told Kruger in 2000 when he tried to steal the city and state funds set aside for the youth of Canarsie that one day God would get him for all his evil and ten years later God finally got you, You Demon!!!

Street changes near arena site: planned "pedestrian refuge" on Atlantic Avenue at South Portland/Sixth provokes concern about eliminating turn from Atlantic

2012-01-28T07:50:00.000-05:00

At two meetings January 26, Chris Hrones of the New York City Department of Transportation described two planned changes in nearby roadway configurations that were not part of the Atlantic Yards plan, but are relevant to neighbors--and got some pushback about one.

Atlantic Avenue going west of Flatbush/Fourth

At Atlantic Avenue and Flatbush, there are four lanes going west on Atlantic, with one right turn-only lane. The original plan was to make another lane right-turn only.

But that would fuel congestion on Atlantic Avenue, as multiple lanes narrow to two lanes west of Flatbush (and Fourth Avenue). Now, Hornese said, the plan is to to create a 100-foot merge lane on Atlantic west of Flatbush/Fourth, thus extending an existing bus stop space (115 feet) by eliminating five or six parking spaces.

No left on South Portland on Atlantic going east

The other plan is to create a "pedestrian refuge" (mini-median) in the middle of broad Atlantic Avenue at the intersection of South Portland Avenue/Sixth Avenue, across from the northeast corner of the arena block. That would eliminate the eastbound left turn from Atlantic onto South Portland--a turn currently not available because of construction-related traffic changes.

There still would be an eastbound left turn at Fort Greene Place, he said, and one will be restored at Carlton Avenue. (This was also noted on Patch.)

The plan provoked some pushback from Jim Vogel, a representative of state Senator Velmanette Montgomery. "Fort Greene Place is demapped," he said, noting it was privatized for Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Center and Atlantic Terminal malls. "In terms of utility to the community, it's more important to have a left turn on South Portland. Eliminating a turn on a through street to favor a private shopping road is going to raise a lot of waves."

Hrones said it was an issue of pedestrian safety, and there was no other opportunity to create that refuge. As for Fort Greene Place, "Forest City is required to keep it open to the public," he said.

Rob Perris, District Manager of Community Board 2, said he agreed with Vogel: "South Portland, the way it connects with the street network, is a much higher utility route than Fort Greene Place or Carlton Avenue."

Could Barclays Center beer sales be cut off before third quarter ends? Nope

2012-01-28T07:40:00.000-05:00

In 2005, in response to a brawl between players and fans in Detroit, the National Basketball Association promulgated a Fan Code of Conduct, including a a ban on alcohol sales during the fourth quarter, a 24-ounce limit on the size of alcoholic drinks and a limit of two alcoholic drinks per customer.

But no NBA arena will be abutting a residential neighborhood as closely as the Barclays Center, scheduled to open for basketball in October, and neighbors are concerned about noise, sanitation, driving--and inebriated fans leaving the arena.

At the Atlantic Yards District Service Cabinet meeting January 26, Forest City Ratner executive Jane Marshall said that a code of conduct is being developed for the arena, and will be shared with the public. "I believe the NBA requirement is: after the third quarter, they stop [beer sales]. I don't believe we will be able to go any earlier than that.

When will that code of conduct be available?

"We're shooting to have a robust discussion about a lot of these issues, starting at the end of the spring," Marshall said.

Is there any possibility that the beer cutoff could be earlier than the end of the third quarter, asked Rami Metal, representing Council Member Steve Levin.

"I'm saying that I think it's impossible," responded Marshall.

BrooklynSpeaks criticizes delay in Transportation Demand Management Plan, limited scope, failure to address parking measures

2012-01-28T07:32:00.001-05:00

A press release from BrooklynSpeaks, issued yesterday, addresses the January 26 meeting in which officials revealed that the Transportation Demand Management Plan would be delayed at least five months.

Let's see if any other press outlets (beyond this blog, and Patch) cover the news, in which BrooklynSpeaks advances the story with some specific criticisms of measures (apparently) not taken in the emerging plan.

The statement:

BrooklynSpeaks sponsors reacted to a presentation yesterday of Forest City Ratner’s planned “transportation demand management” measures meant to reduce the volume of cars traveling to events at the Barclays Center arena, scheduled to open in September 2012. The presentation was given at Brooklyn Borough Hall by representatives of Sam Schwartz Engineering, traffic consultants to the Atlantic Yards project, to a group of elected officials, city agency employees, and community leaders.

The outline of the “transportation demand management” plan (or TDM) was first disclosed in Atlantic Yards’ Final Environmental Impact Statement, published in the fall of 2006, and reiterated in project documents executed in December 2009. Among the measures mentioned in the 2009 documents are remote parking facilities near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway with shuttle bus service to the arena; an HOV requirement for use of 600 of the 1,100 planned parking spaces at the on-site parking lot; free charter bus service from park-and-ride lots in Staten Island; and free roundtrip subway fare to Nets ticketholders.

The Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) stated in June 2011 that the TDM would be released in December 2011. At a meeting with community leaders in December, ESDC stated that a draft TDM would be released in February. Yesterday, FCR stated it expected to release a draft TDM in May, four months before the arena opening. No new details of the TDM were presented.

Although Barclays Center is expected to host more than 220 events per year, most provisions of the TDM disclosed to date represent incentives for patrons to use mass transit instead of cars to travel to the arena, and may apply only to the 41 anticipated Nets basketball games. For other events, Forest City need only “encourage” event promoters to use the measures.

Kate Slevin, Executive Director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, said, “The limited measures offered by Forest City won’t do the trick.” She added, “Studies have shown the most effective tactics to reduce traffic involve disincentives like reducing availability of parking and increasing its cost. But these are nowhere in the plan.”

The stated goal of the TDM is to reduce the number of vehicles traveling to a Nets game by 30% of the 2,400 initially projected. However, the zone for which the effectiveness of the plan will be measured extends only one-half mile around the arena—meaning that the final TDM may have limited impact in reducing traffic on highways and arterial roads leading to the arena.

The unrealistically short radius of the TDM’s focus is a recipe for congested residential streets in nearby neighborhoods,” said Michael Cairl, president of the Park Slope Civic Council. “Simply shifting the problem a few blocks away from the arena isn’t a solution, when traffic volume upstream from the arena, and congestion in the area, are already high.”

Other cities have implemented residential parking permit (RPP) zones around sports facilities, have extended parking meter hours to prevent patrons from taking on-street spaces just as metered parking ends, and have fined venue operators when utilization goals for remote parking are not met. Atlantic Yards’ TDM thus far contains none of these measures. Agreements between Forest City Ratner and the ESDC require only one review of the effectiveness of the TDM, midway through the first basketball season. No further oversight of the program by the State or City has been agreed.

“In the five years since Atlantic Yards was approved, the developer and the State have figured out how to change the project’s architecture, rework its construction schedule, delay delivery of its affordable housing and jobs, and reduce its labor expense,” said Danae Oratowski, chair of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council. “But they don’t appear to have given any further thought to how to lessen the impact of Atlantic Yards’ traffic on central Brooklyn. The City and the State have to deliver the comprehensive plan Brooklyn needs before it’s really too late.”

Delay in transportation plan for arena dismays residents, CM Levin; lack of info about area garages hampers efforts to reduce surface parking lot in residential neighborhood

2012-01-27T09:50:00.000-05:00

The delay in the release of the long-awaited Transportation Demand Management (TDM) plan, from once-promised December to now-promised May, has distinct real-world consequences, notably stalling the efforts of Prospect Heights residents to argue for a reduction in the size of the planned 1100-space parking lot on Block 1129, bounded by Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues and Dean and Pacific Streets.

The availability of parking garages elsewhere might buttress their case, but more than five years after the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) was completed, Forest City Ratner contractors are newly analyzing available spaces in parking garages near the project site.

During meetings yesterday of the Atlantic Yards District Service Cabinet (made up of affected agencies and elected officials) and the Transportation Focus Group (including neighborhood and civic groups), representatives of Sam Schwartz Engineering (SSE) did not discuss the emerging plan in great detail, but described the research process (e.g., surveys of attendees), the plan to select a vendor to manage parking, and shared how incentives for mass transit, including marketing, had reduced the number of drivers at other sports facilities, such as the Prudential Center in Newark and CitiField in Queens.

The pre-sale of parking spaces in local garages, plus parking in remote garages (with free shuttle buses), is aimed to steer drivers away from residential streets.

However, several residents expressed qualms about the effect in neighborhoods around the Barclays Center, given the failure, for example, to establish residential permit parking (RPP), which would deter out-of-area drivers looking for free on-street spaces.

And, in no surprise, they were told by Arana Hankin, Director, Atlantic Yards Project, Empire State Development, that, despite a request for veto power over the transportation plans, that was impossible

Inevitable bumps

"I think it's very important to remember, we open the arena, it's Day 1," Forest City Ratner executive Jane Marshall said at the first meeting. "People have to settle down... Then we have to evaluate whether it works at all." So the plan will be tweaked.

She noted that Jay-Z would inaugurate the building with a concert September 28. "I would caution people not to pin your hopes on the most seamless operation, since it’s a new building, it’s opening, it is going to be a raucous--a very joyous occasion."

"Raucous is more appropriate," countered Council Member Letitia James.

“Yes, I know,” Marshall responded, to some chuckles.

Dismay about delay

Peter Krashes of the Dean Street Block Association, at the evening meeting, pointed out that much of the SSE presentation could had been given in 2006, given that it described plans already in the environmental review. When Hankin, Marshall, and SSE’s Dan Schack met with his group last summer, “we were told they'd be done around Christmas or the New Year.”

Council Member Steve Levin expressed cordial dismay about the timetable. “Speaking for myself and the constituents that I represent, that's not welcome news," he said. "I don't think that's acceptable. We were told this would be coming out this month or in February."

"Obviously, time is running out. A plan put forth in May that's going to be implemented in September does not allow for enough time for adequate public input, for ideas to be addressed," he said.

“In a perfect world, we would love for draft plan to be presented earlier,” responded Hankin. "As Sam Schwartz [staff] mentioned twice today, they are very good at implementing plans with very little time, they did a plan in ten weeks," (I suggested earlier that a plan for Newark would be easier to implement than one for Prospect Heights and environs.)

"The plan does not take a long time to implement," Hankin said. "It does take a long time to analyze, and research, and collect the data. A number of the delays are because we are tweaking what was articulated in the FEIS, because it is so outdated... But I do understand your concern... which is why we're trying to come to the community."

“The clock is ticking,” Levin responded.

Reducing local parking

That 1100-space parking lot was originally supposed to be 900 spaces, and last three years before being put underground; now it's larger, and is expected to last much longer.

At the evening focus group meeting Danae Oratowski of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council suggested that Forest City should transfer some of that onsite parking, reserved for high-rollers in suites and HOV (high-occupancy) vehicles, to other lots, and “you can help us to advocate for RPP [residential permit parking] and maybe pricing measures for local garages.”

Forest City Ratner executive Jane Marshall demurred, calling the pricing issue private, but agreed “we should look at” trying to move planned parking into existing facilities. As for RPP, she said, “I know that DOT is looking at it."

At the morning meeting, Marshall had been even less encouraging. "Forest City doesn't have a particular position on RPP, though I understand that DOT and other people are looking at it," she said. "I think it's still important to assume that if there are on-street parking spaces available, people will want to use them."

(Forest City may not want to offend legislative allies from Southern Brooklyn like state Senator Marty Golden, who is adamantly against RPP.)

DOT’s Chris Hrones said the agency is examining RPP in the context of Yankee Stadium and the Barclays Center. “Some of you know this, it will require state enabling legislation, he said. He acknowledged skepticism about the policy, but agreed that the “best potential application” would be related to a major trip generator like an arena.

Analyzing the issues

Krashes expressed doubt about the utility of DOT's planned follow-up study of area conditions, given that the rest of the Atlantic Yards project is evolving.

DOT’s Hrones said the initial study would be as comprehensive as possible. “Do we need studies beyond it?” he asked rhetorically. ”It's a little crystal balling”

For all events?

Krashes noted that TDM is required for Nets games, but merely encouraged for non-Nets events. Will those buying tickets for a concert, he asked, also be steered to garages?

“That's how we are thinking about it, and we don’t see any obstacles,” Marshall said.

Medians in the parking lot?

Krashes directed a question to SSE’s Jee Mee Kim. He noted that her firm worked on the huge parking lot at IKEA in Red Hook, a lot built according to Department of City Planning (DCP) regulations, including such elements as traffic medians that absorb water and heat. “This lot won't be,” he said. “Is there any reason why this lot shouldn't conform to DCP regulations?”

Forest City's Marshall interrupted. “That's a question for me,” she said. “The answer to the question is that zoning is overridden for the project plan, including parking.”

The parking lot will include setbacks, landscaping, and screening, but will not see DCP rules applied on the interior. “Remember, it’s a temporary condition,” she said of the lot. “It it were a perfect world, and we could plant trees, it would be great, but A, it's temporary, and B, I don't know if we could ever do that.”

“It's a shared goal to use our research and our studies that we provide DOT and ESDC and Transit and LIRR so all of us can get to a point where we can provide fewer than 1100 spaces,” she said. “We just can't say today what that number is going to be. We all share the same goals: it’s just what's practical and what we can do when the arena opens.”

Updated info sooner than May?

Rob Perris, District Manager of Community Board 2 asked if Forest City could provide “interim work products” for discussion before May.

“I pondered this,” Marshall said. “It can't be done in a piecemeal way. You can’t break off the parking from the transit. I don't think there are individual pieces that we can present.”

She promised an update in early May, not late May, and “earlier than May if we can do it.”

Perris asked if it was possible to report on the progress of research in specific areas.

“If we can think of a way of doing that we will try,” Marshall said.

Back to Block 1129

“There's a lot of interest in learning about the operations of Block 1129,” Oratowski said. “That's a fairly self-contained area.”

“It's not,” Marshall responded bluntly. “It's directly linked at transit... and the discussions we're having.”

“Are you not required to provide 1100 spaces” on Block 1129, Oratowski asked.

“At this point we are,” Marshall said, noting that the environmental review was done in 2006, and the list of garages is now being updated. “The best plan doesn't necessarily mean 1100 spaces on Block 1129. In May, we are going to present a plan for Block 1129.”

“If we're missing something, I'd like to hear what you think we should do,” Marshall asked at one point.

“We'd like the parking lot on 1129 to be smaller,” Oratowski said.

“And I'd like it to be zero,” Marshall riposted, referring to her personal opinion, not the policy worked out by her employer and the ESDC.

More questions about the lot

At the morning meeting, Council Member Letitia James asked if a contractor had been chosen for the parking lot.

"Not at this time," Marshall responded.

How long would the contract last?

"I think it would be relatively short, because we intend to develop that site with buildings," Marshall responded. She said it likely would be short-term, with renewable clauses.

Will the cars be stacked, James asked.

"We want to avoid stackers, if we possibly can," Marshall responded.

Construction worker parking

At the evening meeting, Wayne Bailey of the Newswalk condominium asked about the ongoing impact of construction worker parking over a 25-year buildout.

“First of all, the construction workers, I don't think they're a problem,” Marshall said, with no nod to the ongoing compilation of incident reports on Atlantic Yards Watch. “Secondly, we're not going to build it over 25 years, we'll probably build it a lot faster than that.”

“Third, Block 1129 and the bed of Pacific Street--portions are set aside, they are not part of the parking garage, because they are used to construct the permanent Long Island Rail Road railyard," Marshall said, "and to stage the construction. So there is not necessarily a conflict with the construction worker day, and the staging that was required... and arena parking.”

Other arena-related concerns

Oratowski added that community members have other concerns regarding how the arena operates, including noise, public safety, and sanitation. She asked for monthly meetings.

Hankin said she hoped to discuss such issues at the bimonthly District Service Cabinet meetings, but was willing to consider Oratowski’s request.

The next focus group meeting will be in March, she said.

Shuttle bus dropoff

Would shuttle buses from remote parking lots park, idle, or drop off on residential streets? "Not to make an untoward suggestion," suggested Jim Vogel, representative of state Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (and a resident of Pacific Street east of Fourth Ave ue). "I'd urge you to consider the utility of Fort Greene Place (between the Atlantic Center and Atlantic Terminal malls], which is already owned by the developer."

Marshall said the goal is for the buses to be "on well-used mass stransit streets that are not local."

"DOT would designate the bus stop for any new transit service," Hrones said, noting that the agency would aim to use existing bus stops first.

Reaching out to Southern Brooklyn

At the morning meeting, Carlo Scissura, special advisor to the Brooklyn Borough President, said he wanted to make sure that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority serves distant pats of Brooklyn, such as Bay Ridge, Sheepshead Bay, and Canarsie.

Not only are some neighborhoods not well served by transit, weekend outages make thing worse, said Scissura, who hails from Southern Brooklyn. He said he wanted set up a separate meeting involving the MTA to focus on those issues.

Wanting to drive

At the evening meeting, Jesse Hamilton, a representative of state Senator Eric Adams, a self-described four-year Nets season ticket holder and driver to games in Newark, said that he was told there was no parking available.

“It's interesting,” he mused. “You'd assume, someone would build a parking lot.” He added that he had not been told about public transit options, and asked whether there was a study of traffic impact on the local communities.

Marshall patiently explained that yes, there had been an environmental impact study in 2006, which generated mitigation measures that are part of the TDM plan. She said it was unwise to provide parking when that much mass transit is available. Focus groups and surveys, she said, revealed that Nets fans “didn't know how much mass transit there is.”

Forest City Ratner: Carlton Avenue Bridge "projected completion" early September; arena on schedule (no mention of report on delays); facade company catching up after temporary closure

2012-01-27T06:35:00.000-05:00

At yesterday's Atlantic Yards District Service Cabinet meeting, held at Borough Hall, Forest City Ratner officials gave several assurances about the timetable for ongoing work--but also left some questions lingering.

Carlton Avenue Bridge

Construction chief Bob Sanna provided an update on the Carlton Avenue Bridge, which is supposed to be reconstructed before the arena opens in September, thus reopening a long-closed connection between Prospect Heights and Fort Greene.

"The bulk excavation is 95% complete, there’s an extensive storm retention system that’s below the tracks. We have two of the three detention tanks now complete," he said. "The north abutment is about 60% complete, we started working on the south abutments."

"We expect to be able to cut over the yard, transfer trains into the newly laid track in February, and cover the trains over in May," he said, "which will allow us to complete the bridge in the early part of September. So the projected completion of the bridge... is the early part of September.”

That doesn't give them a lot of slack, given that the arena is supposed to open September 28, following several pre-opening events. I wrote earlier this month about the possibility of the schedule slipping, and the non-punitive penalties--a stall on starting a new tower--facing Forest City.

Arena schedule

“And the arena is on schedule, just FYI,” chimed in Forest City executive Jane Marshall.

Sanna followed up: “The framing of the arena is now complete, we had a little onsite ceremony with the workers, last of the beams. The framing system is 97% complete... Much of that [roof] tarping has been put in place, so we can advance the interior construction... We're in the process of finalizing permanent connections to the electrical system.”

Unmentioned: the report earlier this month by the construction monitor to bondholders that the arena has been behind for three months, in terms of actual vs. projected cash flow.

Facade work

Sanna took note of the closure and reopening of ASI Limited, the fabricator of the metal facade.

"And the facade work continues," he said. "It's been noted we had some difficulty with the facade contractor in December. Fortunately, all contracts of that size, we have a bond, an insurance policy that requires an insurance company to step in if the vendor can't complete the work. That bond company is part of Farmers' Fund"

"Farmer’s Fund has now taken over that entire operation, and re-employed all the employees," Sanna said. "Fabrication of the facade has resumed since the first week of January... We have people at the plant monitoring the completion of that work... It’s not quite back on schedule yet, but we are about to turn the corner and have that work in place.”

He didn't mention, as Crain's New York Business reported, that contractor Hunt Construction was looking for additional subcontractors to make the steel.

Who was missing from the press conference last Sunday? Sen. Montgomery and other Atlantic Yards critics

2012-01-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

Mary Alice Miller, the Our Time Press reporter/columnist who bluntly asked three belated critics of Atlantic Yards "Where were y'all?" last Sunday, offers her take, in Eye on the Politics of the Atlantic Yards Project.

Notably, she points out who was not present at the press conference instigated by Sen. Eric Adams, who was joined by allied Assemblymen Hakeem Jeffries and Karim Camara:

State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, a staunch critic of the Atlantic Yards development as it was proposed and funded, was not invited to the presser. Neither were Assembly members James Brennan or Joan Millman. Montgomery is the Senate sponsor of the bill; Brennan and Millman are co-sponsors of the Assembly bill. Oddly, Adams has not yet co-sponsored the Senate bill.

And what about redistricting

Unrelated but intriguing was the news yesterday that the GOP-proposed Senate redistricting would pit two sitting Democratic Senators, as reported by City and State NY:

Brooklyn State Sens. Eric Adams and Velmanette Montgomery’s residences are now in the same Senate district, spokespersons for both the Senate Republicans and Democrats confirmed, potentially putting the two colleagues in the position of running against one another.

Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has promised a veto.

First residential tower now delayed until spring or summer; Forest City admits "goal" of including more larger units won't be met; CM James says developer's not meeting commitment

2012-01-26T15:09:00.000-05:00

For the umpteenth time, Forest City Ratner has pushed back the projected groundbreaking for the first Atlantic Yards residential tower, Building 2 (B2), at the corner of Flatbush Avenue and Dean Street flanking the Barclays Center arena. Now the groundbreaking could be spring, as most recently projected, or summer.

Also, as acknowledged today at the Atlantic Yards District Service Cabinet meeting, Forest City will not meet its "goal"--purportedly guaranteed by the Community Benefits Agreement and long promoted by the developer--of ensuring that half of the subsidized "affordable housing" would be (in square footage) devoted to larger units of two and three bedrooms.

"It doesn’t dilute our desire to meet the commitment in the future," insisted Forest City executive Jane Marshall at the meeting, held at Borough Hall.

"I understand your desire," responded Council Member Letitia James, skeptically. "I desire to be thin, and young"--the audience chuckled--"but that’s not going to happen. The bottom line is that, there was a commitment, there was a promise. There’s a need in the neighborhood... I would hope you would honor your commitment to the community.”

Forest City Ratner's partner ACORN, or its successor, was supposed to hold the developer to its housing pledge, but Bertha Lewis, who promoted the project because of the pledge, has not yet questioned the commitment.

B2 delays

Forest City initially promised that the 16 towers, along with the arena, would be built out in a decade, as promised in the plan approved in 2006 by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC).

After the recession hit in 2008, Forest City asked the ESDC for help in achieving savings, and the agency, in the 2009 Modified General Project Plan, re-approved the project to allow for the use of eminent domain in stages, rather than at one time, thus saving the developer from paying for the land all at once.

The state agency allowed that the project might take longer than ten years, but insisted that the first tower was on schedule. That schedule has been slipping ever since.

June 2009, ESDC Technical Memorandum: "These potential delays due to prolonged adverse economic conditions would not affect the timing of the development of the arena, the transit access improvements, the construction of the new LIRR rail yard, the reconstruction of the Carlton Avenue Bridge or the construction of Building 2."

September 2009: arena architect Gregg Pasquarelli of SHoP said, "The current plan by the client is to get Building 2 started six to nine months after the arena begins." (The arena began in March 2010, so that meant a late 2010 groundbreaking.)

February 2010: Marshall said, "As we've stated publicly, we intend to begin design of the first residential building in such a way that it can break ground in the fourth quarter of this year."

September 2010: Forest City executive MaryAnne Gilmartin said, "We anticipate having funding in place to start the first building at Dean and Flatbush in the spring of 2011, the second six to nine months later, and the third about the same time after that."

November 2010: Gilmartin said the developer intends to release designs and start construction in the first quarter of 2011.

February 2011: Marshall said, ""We still believe we can get in the ground in 2011, and that’s our goal."

July 2011: Gilmartin said, “We expect to decide on our construction approach in the coming months, and we anticipate a groundbreaking by year end."

September 2011: Marshall said, "We hope to have something to report by the end of the year, and have the first residential building, in construction by the beginning of the year.”

November 2011: Marshall said, "“We still believe that, before the end of the year, we will be able to announce which way we’re going and show the design to the public. That's our goal, consistent with our goal to break ground on B2 early next year.”

November 2011: Forest City Ratner releases plan for modular construction of B2, and tells the Wall Street Journal it expects B2 "to be started in the spring."

January 2012: Marshall says today, "We want to break ground in the spring or in the summer."

Today's explanation

This morning, Marshall told the group, which consists of representatives of elected officials and interested agencies, with some community members watching, "We are continuing on--pursuing our efforts in the design, finalizing the design for Building 2, and talking with the city about financing. We released a design and we released details of the building in the fall. And it’s a 50% market, 50% affordable building. And it has approximately 400 units total"--actually 350--"and we continue to pursue our efforts to build so we can break ground this year. We want to break ground in the spring or in the summer."

Marshall did not mention whether Forest City was still expecting to construct the building using modular technology--as announced--or whether it had put that plan aside.

Arana Hankin, Director, Atlantic Yards Project, for Empire State Development, said that Forest City had submitted a design for the agency's design review, to ensure that the building complies with the Design Guidelines for the project.

Why no larger units?

Later in the meeting, James noted that there's a "desperate need" in her Council district for two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments. How many would there be in B2?

"I believe that we have a goal of a certain percentage of two bedroom units, which I think is 20%, although somebody can correct me," Marshall responded quizzically. (Actually, there's no goal for a percentage of two-bedroom units; there's a commitment to devote 50% of square footage to two- and three bedroom units, as she could have read two days ago.)

"I don't believe that the current design reflects or meets that goal," Marshall said. "We recognize the need for larger units...We are currently trying to achieve that goal, although we have to proceed with design, with trying to get this building into the ground."

What does that mean? "Trying to get this building into the ground," I suspect, means "delivering at least some of the promised affordable housing." Also, if Forest City does not get B2 started before the arena opens, it could see development stalled as a penalty, if the Carlton Avenue Bridge does not reopen in time.

Not giving up

"So in no ways have we deserted that goal," Marshall said. "We are continuing discussions with the city and financing agencies. It has to do with the way they calculate floor area and the subsidies in this complicated discussion... Right now, Building 2 is short of the goal that we all want to achieve, which is a larger number of two-bedroom units."

"My understanding is that sometime ago," James followed up, "there was a commitment that half of the units would be larger units, not just 20 percent."

"If I'm wrong about the percentage, it's just because I'm not specifically, in detail, knowledgeable about it," Marshall replied, a sign of either faux-naivete or some kind of memory loss. "Whatever the percentage is, it’s a goal. It's not something we're deserting or giving up on."

"We recognize that B2 right now does not meet that goal," she continued. "We also want to go forward with B2, so there is a chance B2 will go forward not meeting that goal. That doesn’t mean we won't pursue meeting that goal for all of the other buildings. We are still in discussions with the city about this, so we haven’t given up."

Will goal be met?

James said that the other units might not arrive until the "far distant future."

Marshall said it was complicated, that "the financing vehicles from the city make it difficult to reach those goals."

"You probably in all likelihood will not reach those goals," James countered.

"I don't think that's fair," Marshall replied. "We may not, on the first building, but that doesn't dilute our desire to meet it, and it doesn’t dilute our desire to meet the commitment in the future."

And that provoked James comment that "I desire to be thin, and young, but that’s not going to happen."

Transportation Demand Management plan for arena, originally due in December, then pushed to February, now expected in May; state official: "I think we're going to be OK"

2012-01-26T13:53:00.000-05:00

The long-awaited Transportation Demand Management plan for the Barclays Center arena has been pushed back a second time, marking a delay of at least five months, officials revealed today at the bimonthly Atlantic Yards District Service Cabinet meeting.

So the expected release in May leaves a much shorter window of opportunity for area residents and other stakeholders to offer constructive criticism before the arena opens in late September.

Arana Hankin, Director, Atlantic Yards Project, for Empire State Development, acknowledged that her agency, responding to a question at a public meeting last June about the TDM plan, "anticipated" that developer Forest City Ratner would present the plan "to the public for comment in about six months."

The plan involves incentives to reduce use of cars, free MetroCards, cross-marketing with local businesses, remote parking, and more.

Second delay

At a December 2011 meeting on transportation issues, we learned that the plan was more likely coming in February, provoking Community Board 2 District Manager Rob Perris to comment that “we should be be very careful” because of the tight time frame.

Today, none of the elected and agency officials at the Borough Hall meeting brought up the new delay, though it's sure to be raised tonight at a community meeting on traffic/transportation issues.

Why the delay?

I asked Hankin about the cause of the delay. "It’s a very complicated plan," she said. "The delay of the NBA season [because of labor strife] created a lot of problems."

For example, she said, it was harder to collect data from fans about transportation choices. "They have to deal with hiring a research firm to do a much more thorough analysis," she said.

Reason for concern?

How worrisome is the delay, I asked Hankin.

She pointed out that staffers from consultant Sam Schwartz Engineering (SSE), the firm Forest City hired to work on the plan, had described how they put together a successful plan for the new arena in Newark, the Prudential Center, in ten weeks. "I think we’re going to be OK," she said.

SSE also did successful plans for the new Mets stadium, CitiField, and the Ikea in Red Hook, ensuring a greater than expected use of mass transit.

Clearly they have expertise in this field, but, I'd observe, Brooklyn is not Newark. For one thing, the challenge in Newark was to get an existing fan base, heavily dependent on private automobiles to reach the Nets' previous home at the Meadowlands, to use more public transit. The fan base in Brooklyn will be different.

Also, Newark offers a far less fine-grained urban texture immediately around the arena--there's more of a buffer zone from a residential district. Also, the city possesses a significant number of nearby parking lots, built for the business district, that are available at night.

More from the meeting

I'll have more on the presentation by SSE, which described the scope of their work, not their findings, in a later post. And I'll write about several other issues raised at the meeting.

Two-for-one: Bruce Ratner's wife matches campaign contributions to Cuomo, Senate Republicans, Camara

2012-01-26T08:13:00.000-05:00

I wrote today about how Pamela Lipkin, Bruce Ratner's wife, gave a $3000 contribution to the campaign of Assemblyman Karim Camara on the same March 2009 day her husband also gave to Camara.

That's not the only time Lipkin (list, reproduced below) has matched Ratner's contribution.

Notably, Lipkin gave $5000 to Andrew Cuomo's gubernatorial campaign in February 2009 and $7500 in May 2010, matching Ratner's contributions.

And she gave $7500 to the New York State Senate Republican Campaign Committee on the same November 2010 day Ratner also gave. (Remember, as architect Frank Gehry put it, "Bruce Ratner is politically my kind of guy, he's a do-gooder, liberal, we can talk.")

I mentioned Lipkin, then Ratner's girlfriend, in a 9/5/06 post, but she's made other contributions since then, including a $3100 October 2006 contribution to the uncontested Assembly campaign of Brooklyn Democratic Chair Vito Lopez, and a $5400 September 2006 contribution to the Senatorial campaign of Martin Connor.

The list (click to enlarge)

ddd

New Atlantic Yards critics Camara and Adams got Forest City Ratner-related campaign money in the past. Maybe now they don't think they need more.

2012-01-26T08:00:00.000-05:00

When covering the press conference last Sunday by three elected officials previously on-the-fence or supportive of Atlantic Yards, I didn't point out that two of three had received campaign contributions from people connected to Forest City Ratner and Atlantic Yards.

Such contributions, along with constituent feedback, might have nudged Assemblyman Karim Camara and state Senator Eric Adams toward their respective AY positions, supportive and near-the-fence.

My armchair analysis: Camara and Adams don't need such campaign money now, and they're more worried about constituents who haven't gotten expected/hoped-for jobs, contracts, and housing at the project.

While I had covered most of those contributions, I'd also missed somel. In no case did the Atlantic Yards-related money represent a large percentage of the total, but the contributions were significant enough to be noticeable.

Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, who did not get Ratner-related contributions, probably is happy to distinguish himself from Rep. Ed Towns, an Atlantic Yards supporter whom he's challenging for Congress. In criticizing Atlantic Yards, Jeffries also might take some votes from those constituents sympathetic to the anti-AY stance of city Council Member Charles Barron, who's also in the race.

(As I've learned, Adams, the host, instigated the press conference. He's at the podium, with Camara to his right. Photo by Tracy Collins.)

Contributions to Camara

Camara, a supporter of Atlantic Yards (as at this 2008 rally) received contributions from Bruce Ratner's brother Michael Ratner ($1000), and his wife Karen Ranucci ($2500) in September 2006, as shown in the graphic below. Camara also received $3000 from Bruce Ratner in March 2009.

I wrote about the Michael Ratner/Ranucci contributions here and Bruce Ratner's contribution here.

Michael Ratner is president, emeritus, for the "progressive," "radical" Center for Constitutional Rights, and Ranucci now works on special projects for the anti-establishment news program Democracy Now.

Given the seemingly contradictions between Michael Ratner's support of Atlantic Yards and his professional work, sports columnist Dave Zirin of the Nation has challenged him to co-host a showing of the documentary Battle for Brooklyn.

However, I had not written about the $3000 contribution made by Pamela Lipkin, Bruce Ratner's wife, on the same March 2009 day her husband gave to Camara.

Contributions to Adams

Michael Ratner, in October 2006, gave $1500 to the campaign of Adams, who, as I wrote in November 2006, had already moderated his stated opposition to Atlantic Yards.

However, I missed the $3500 contribution made by Ratner's wife Ranucci. (It's curious that, in paired contributions to both Adams and Camara, each made on the same day, Ranucci gave more than twice as much as her husband. Was that an attempt to be less obvious?)

I did not write about two other contributions arguably related to Atlantic Yards. Adams received $725 in 2006 from Elenora Bernard, president of the New York State Association of Minority Contractors, a a signatory of the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement.

Adams also received $500 in 2009 from Darryl Greene, the controversial minority contracting consultant who works for Forest City Ratner on Atlantic Yards.

While those contributions might be related to AY, both Bernard and Greene likely have interests in other projects and issues in and around Adams's district.

Value of Nets rises 14% despite huge losses; the new arena/market must be key

2012-01-26T07:47:00.000-05:00

The numbers are stunning. The New Jersey Nets, soon to be Brooklyn Nets, have the third-highest debt to value ratio in the National Basketball Association, at 79%, according to Forbes. The team lost the third-most in the last season, $23.6 million.

Yet the value of the Nets rose 14%, from $312 million to $357 million, according to Forbes, vaulting the team from 21st (of 30) to 14th place.

In the 2011 rankings, the value had risen 16% on losses of $10.2 million, though with an astronomical 224% debt/value ratio.

The article does not go into the explanation, but the opening of a new arena in the new Brooklyn market, is surely key; it offers new revenue streams and sponsorships, and a more valuable TV deal.

Lawsuit against NYU alleges sexual harassment by former Forest City executive Stuckey

2012-01-26T07:26:00.000-05:00

Remember that anonymously sourced New York Post article last October that alleged that former Forest City Ratner executive (and Atlantic Yards point man) Jim Stuckey had resigned suddenly from his job at New York University for alleged sexual harassment?

Well, now there's another piece of evidence. The New York Daily News, in NYU administrator Stephanie Bonadio says job vanished after her sex harassment complaint: She says James Stuckey, ex-dean of Schack Real Estate Institute, tried to make her perform sex act, reports:

A NEW York University administrator charged the school Wednesday with eliminating her job when she accused a dean of sexual harassment.

Stephanie Bonadio, 34, once a rising star in NYU’s Schack Institute for Real Estate, claims her career was ruined when she accused her boss of forcing himself on her.

In the Manhattan Supreme Court suit, Bonadio says she was having dinner at the Strip House restaurant on E. 12th St. with James Stuckey, then dean of the Schack Institute for Real Estate, when he tried to get her to perform a sex act.

As she asked about her pending promotion,“He grabbed her hand and ...without her consent, he forcibly placed her hand on his crotch and his erect penis,” the suit charges.

She said she told Stuckey “she was not that kind of girl.”

Soon after Bonadio reported the incident, Stuckey, a former executive with Forest City Ratner and ex-head of Mayor Bloomberg's commission on design, resigned “for health reasons,” the suit says.

NYU denied to the Daily News that it had retaliated, and neither Stuckey nor Bonadio commented.

So it's murky. But Bonadio's allegations against Stuckey, if they go to court, might be backed up if she can find witnesses who can confirm, as the Post also reported, that Stuckey had left Forest City abruptly because of complaints filed by female employees.

The Daily News didn't mention the Post article because, well, tabloids don't play nice with each other.

The suit (via NY Observer)

BonadioSuit

A couple of big Atlantic Yards meetings today

2012-01-26T06:00:00.000-05:00

The first meeting today (as I previously wrote) is the bimonthly Atlantic Yards District Service Cabinet meeting, is open to the public, at Borough Hall at 9:30 am. The expected topic is the long-awaited Transportation Demand Management plan.

The second, at Borough Hall at 6 pm, is an invite-only event regarding community groups' response to general traffic/transportation issues.

From Atlantic Yards Watch: "urina" trash on Pacific Street

2012-01-25T07:54:00.001-05:00

Neighborhood opposition to the expected cluster of bars and restaurants near the Barclays Center includes concern that inebriated patrons will use the neighborhood as a urinal. That generated unsurprising mocking response from the bravely pseudonymous contributors at NetsDaily.

However, as noted on Atlantic Yards Watch, a version of the "urina" is already in place. Construction workers have been discarding bottles of urine as neighborhood trash for months.

That bottle in the photo below, in a tree bed on Pacific Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues? Not apple juice. Maybe it would be less noticeable if the workers didn't park in a residential neighborhood.

Federal agency overseeing EB-5 immigrant investment program confirms that it will continue to let states gerrymander districts of high unemployment

2012-01-25T06:30:00.001-05:00

I wrote 1/11/12 how a revised draft memo on EB-5 Adjudications Policy, issued that day by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), punted regarding the practice by states of gerrymandering maps to ensure projects aimed at immigrant investment were located in areas of high unemployment.

And that allows for a lower investment level, $500,000, rather than $1 million, for those seeking green cards and their families.

Last month, in a front-page article, the New York Times put the gerrymandering issue on the national agenda, forcing USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas to acknowledged concern about the spirit of the legal provision which aims to help high-unemployment districts.

The Times article, which focused on the odd maps approved for New York projects (including what I've dubbed the "Bed-Stuy Boomerang" involving Atlantic Yards), even generated an editorial chiding the federal agency.

But the memo issued earlier this month stated that the USCIS would continue to give deference to the lines drawn by the state.

Further confirmation

The agency has since offered further confirmation. After a 1/12/12 meeting Mayorkas and staff held with stakeholders--almost all immigration attorneys and project promoters eager to ensure a smooth ride for their clients--EB-5 attorney Ron Klasko wrote, in a 1/18/12 post on the EB-5 News Blog:

USCIS reconfirmed that it will defer to the designation by a state of a specific geographical area as a targeted employment area.

On Monday, 1/23/12, in another teleconference with stakeholders, listeners heard it directly from a staffer, Kevin Bezaire:

"We've recently decided that, as in the director's iterative memo, that we are going to defer to state agencies in regards to the geographic area of TEA designation. And I guess that’s the main point I wanted to make today."

So, it seems Mayorkas was posturing for the press.

Prospects for reform

Will there ever be reform? Only if Congress steps in (as the Times urged).

And it can, given that the main component of the EB-5 program--investments through federally-designated entities known as regional centers--must be renewed by the end of September.

Stockman on crony capitalism: "It is not a free market system. It is a system run by powerful, political and corporate forces."

2012-01-25T05:30:00.000-05:00

Would you believe that David Stockman, the author and former White House Budget Director under President Ronald Reagan, has emerged as one of the prime critics of crony capitalism--and another sign that crony capitalism is less about right and left than insiders and outsiders.

He was recently interviewed by Bill Moyers on the latter's new Moyers & Company Show, along with New York Times writer Gretchen Morgenson, co-author of Reckless Endangerment.

Moyers & Company Show 102: On Crony Capitalism from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Excerpts from the transcript

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean by crony capitalism?

DAVID STOCKMAN: Crony capitalism is about the aggressive and proactive use of political resources, lobbying, campaign contributions, influence-peddling of one type or another to gain something from the governmental process that wouldn't otherwise be achievable in the market. And as the time has progressed over the last two or three decades, I think it's gotten much worse. Money dominates politics.
And as a result, we have neither capitalism or democracy. We have some kind of --

BILL MOYERS: What do we have?

DAVID STOCKMAN: We have crony capitalism, which is the worst. It's not a free market. There isn't risk taking in the sense that if you succeed, you keep your rewards, if you fail, you accept the consequences. Look what the bailout was in 2008.
There was clearly reckless, speculative behavior going on for years on Wall Street. And then when the consequence finally came, the Treasury stepped in and the Fed stepped in. Everything was bailed out and the game was restarted. And I think that was a huge mistake.

...BILL MOYERS: You name names in your writing. You identify several people as the embodiment of crony capitalism. Tell me about Jeffrey Immelt.

DAVID STOCKMAN:He is the poster boy for crony capitalism. Here is GE, one of the six triple-A companies left in the United Sates, a massive, half-trillion dollar company, massive market capitalization. I'm talking about the eve of the crisis now, in September, 2008.
Suddenly, when the commercial paper market starts to destabilize and short-term rates went up. He calls up the Treasury secretary with an S.O.S., "I'm in trouble here. I need a lifeline." He had recklessly funded a lot of assets at General Electric Capital in the overnight commercial paper market. And suddenly needed a bailout from the Treasury. Within days, that bailout was granted.
And therefore, General Electric was able to avoid the consequence of its foolish lend long and borrow short policy. What they should have been required to do when the commercial paper market dried up -- that was the excuse. They should've been required to offer equity, sell stock at a highly discounted rate, dilute their shareholders, and raise the cash they need to pay off their commercial paper.
That would've been the capitalist way. That would've been the free market way of doing things. And in the future they would've been less likely to go back into this speculative mode of borrowing short and lending long. But when we get to the point where the one triple-A, a multi-hundred billion dollar company gets to call up the secretary, issue the S.O.S. sign and get $60 billion worth of guaranteed Federal Reserve and Treasury backup lines, then we are, you know, our system has been totally transformed. It is not a free market system. It is a system run by powerful, political and corporate forces.

BILL MOYERS:So when you saw that President Obama had appointed Jeffrey Immelt, as the head of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, what went through your mind?

DAVID STOCKMAN:Well, I was in the middle of being very disgusted with what my own Republican Party had done and what Bush had done and the Paulson Treasury. And then when I saw this, I got the title for my book, “The Triumph of Crony Capitalism.”

...BILL MOYERS:Where is the shame? Shouldn't these people have been at least a little ashamed of running the economy and the financial system into the ditch and then saying, "Come lift me out?"

DAVID STOCKMAN:Yes. You know, I think that's part of the problem. I started on Capitol Hill in 1970s. And as I can vividly recall, corporate leaders then at least were consistent. They might've complained about big government, or they might've complained about the tax system.
But there wasn't an entitlement expectation that if financial turmoil or upheaval came along, that the Treasury, or the Federal Reserve, or the FDIC or someone would be there to back them up. That would've been considered, you know, it would've been considered, as you say, shameful.And somehow, over the last 30 years, the corporate leadership of America has gotten so addicted to their stock price by the hour, by the day, by the week, that they're willing to support anything that might keep the game going and help the system in the short run avoid a hit to their stock price and to the value of their options. That's the real problem today. And as a result, there is no real political doctrine ideology left in the corporate community. They are simply pragmatists who will take anything they can find, and run with it.

...BILL MOYERS:No one I know has a better understanding of the see-saw tension in our history between democracy and capitalism.
Capitalism, you accumulate wealth and make it available. Democracy being a brake, B-R-A-K-E, on the unbridled greed of capitalists. It seems to me that democracy has lost and that capitalism is triumphant -- crony capitalism in this case.

DAVID STOCKMAN:And I think it's important to put the word crony capitalism on there. Because free-market capitalism is a different thing. True free-market capitalists never go to Washington with their hand out. True free-market capitalists running a bank do not expect that every time they make a foolish mistake or they get themselves too leveraged or they end up with too many risky assets that don't work out, they don't expect to go to the Federal Reserve and get some cheap or free money and go on as before.
They expect consequences, maybe even failure of their firm, certainly loss of their bonuses, maybe the loss of their jobs. So we don't have free-market capitalism left in this country anymore. We have everyone believing that if they can hire the right lobbyist, raise enough political action committee money, spend enough time prowling the halls of the Senate and the House and the office buildings, arguing for their parochial narrow interest -- that that is the way that will work out. And that is crony capitalism. It’s very dangerous and it seems to be becoming more embedded in our system.

[HIS SOLUTION] Ban corporations from campaign contributions or attempting to influence elections. Now, I know that runs into current free speech. So the only way around it is a constitutional amendment to cleanse our political system on a one-time basis from this enormously corrupting influence that has built up. And I think nothing is really going to change until we get money out of politics and do some radical things to change the way elections are financed and the way the process is influenced by organized money. If we don’t address that, then crony capitalism is here for the duration.

...BILL MOYERS:Since you've been covering capitalism, business and finance what's been the biggest change you've seen?

GRETCHEN MORGENSON:Previously I believed that bankers that presided over this kind of a train wreck would have wandered away from the scene, tail between their legs, ashamed, or the regulators would have cleaned house, fired the management, clawed back their compensation.
We've seen none of that in 2008. Did the U.S. government replace any of these managements? No. Did the U.S. government claw back any of the money that these people made when the boom was going on which we now all know was a phony boom and so therefore that was phony money that they earned during those years.
We also didn't have a penalty, there were no penalties paid except by the innocent taxpayers. There were no penalties paid by the people who created the crisis.

Battle for Brooklyn does not make the list of Oscar finalists

2012-01-24T20:26:00.000-05:00

But the director says the film still has momentum.

How many subsidized apartments for low-income families in first Atlantic Yards tower? Just eight 2BRs, as Forest City Ratner reneges on promise to build half the affordable space as 2BR/3BR units

2012-01-24T06:00:00.000-05:00

How many affordable apartments would there be for low-income families--families that need two bedrooms or more--in B2, the first planned Atlantic Yards tower?

Only eight.

And that's out of 350 total units.

The building, which has been delayed nearly two years and has not yet broken ground, would include 130 studios, 180 one-bedroom, and 40 two-bedrooms.

Of those latter 40 units, 20 would be subsidized. However, only eight of them would be low-income, with monthly rents at $701.75 and $902.25, at least under current income guidelines.

The other subsidized "affordable" two-bedroom units--four each--would cost $1604, $2406, and $3007. It makes you wonder how much the market-rate units would go for.

Reneging on the pledge

Why so few larger units? For the first building, Forest City Ratner has reneged on its long-promised "goal" to ensure than half the affordable housing--on a square foot basis--would be two- and three-bedroom apartments.

And that was a key selling point to struggling families hoping for better housing, as noted in the screenshot at left, from the original AtlanticYards.com web site.

Note that the web site misleadingly implied that half the number of units--rather than square footage--would be larger units.

The pledge, with the "square foot basis" caveat, was part of the Affordable Housing Memorandum of Understanding the developer signed in 2005 with the housing advocacy group ACORN, and later incorporated into the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement (CBA). See screenshot at right.

The pledge was repeated in the November 2006 Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement, Chapter 1, Project Description, which stated:

Affordable units would be reserved for households making between 30 percent and 160 percent of citywide Area Median Income (AMI) and 50 percent of these units (on a square foot basis) would be two- and three-bedroom units.

Now it seems abandoned--and for Forest City to meet the overall pledge, future towers would have to be skewed toward larger apartments.

Can they get away with it?

Apparently this path is OK, at least in terms of city oversight. According to rules promulgated by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, under the Inclusionary Housing program, a project must include a mix of affordable units that is either proportional to the market rate mix or includes at least 50 percent two bedroom units.

Guess which option Forest City has apparently chosen.

Think about it: how many families want to pay market rate for apartments in a tower next to a basketball arena, especially one that may be built via newfangled modular technology? Forest City likely concluded it has a better bet renting market-rate units to singles and couples.

That means smaller apartments, as indicated in the screenshot at right. And that means that most of the subsidized units would be small, as well.

The affordable studio apartments must be 400 square feet or more. The one-bedroom units must be at least 575. The two-bedroom unites must be 775 sf or more. The market-rate units, almost certainly, will be larger.

Both the 12/8/06 Memorandum of Mitigation Commitments and the updated 12/21/09 Amended Memorandum of Environmental Commitments produced by the Empire State Development Corporation provide lots of wiggle room. Both documents state:

Based on currently available information, the parties anticipate that the affordable housing units will be made available to households with incomes falling within the income bands set forth in the FEIS. However, the income bands may be adjusted to accommodate the requirements of any City, State or federal housing program utilized for the construction of the affordable housing, subject to City approval.

So too is City approval necessary for the mix of sizes. The building remains delayed, but Forest City Ratner in November announced their intention to build using modular technology, an effort to save money in the absence of extra subsidies.

We should know in a few months whether they will proceed with the modular plan, or instead use that plan as a threat to gain union concessions.

Could housing advocates make a stink?

ACORN was contractually obligated to support the project--at least if it pursues the promised goals.

ACORN has been disbanded, but its longtime leader, Bertha Lewis, continues to support the project, unwilling, for example, to comment on the failure to hire an Independent Compliance Monitor required by the CBA.

And it successor organization is expected to help market the affordable units, which will be distributed via a city lottery, with half the units directed to residents of the three Community Boards containing the project.

Whatever the configuration, demand is such that the subsidized housing--at least the low-income units--will be hugely oversubscribed.

A misleading pledge

Not only is Forest City deviating from the pledge in the MOU and in the Final EIS, it exaggerated the pledge in public discourse.

Along with the screenshot from the AtlanticYards.com web site, look at the slide (left) shown to those who attended a July 2006 affordable housing information session at the Brooklyn Marriott.

It emphasized the role of larger units, stressing that about half of the "affordable units will be 2- and 3-bedroom units." Unmentioned was that the analysis would be on a square foot basis.

Similarly, in 5/20/05 coverage of the announcement of the housing plan, the New York Times summarized the plan: "half of them studios and one-bedrooms and half of them two- and three-bedrooms."

Looking at B2

Though Forest City Ratner emphasized the role of both two- and three-bedroom apartments, the first tower would not include any three-bedroom apartments, according to a fact sheet on the AtlanticYards.com web site and reproduced below.

Only 40 of the 350 units, or 12%, would be two-bedroom units. Of that total, 20 would be market-rate, and 20 would be subsidized.

But only 40% of the subsidized "affordable housing" is geared to low-income households, with incomes up to half the Area Median Income (AMI). The rest would go to moderate- and middle-income households.

What's 40% of 20? Eight.

That's the number of low-income families, for example, on the long list (128,000 as of December 2009) for Section 8 vouchers who might qualify.

Arguably, another 10% of the affordable housing is geared to the "real Brooklyn"--those who might qualify for public housing. If so, that means ten two-bedroom units would be available to those most needy.

What the mix could be

What if B2 included at least 50 percent two bedroom units, following city guidelines? That would means 175 such apartments, and, assuming no larger units, the remaining 175 units divided into studios and one-bedroom units.

What if 50% of the B2 square footage was devoted to larger units?

Assuming that the apartments would be all at the smallest size listed, in 2006 I calculated 719 studios (32%), 719 one-bedrooms (32%), 406 two-bedrooms (18%), and 406 three-bedrooms (18%).

If that ratio were applied to B2, then there would be, in total, 112 studios, 112 one-bedrooms, 63 two-bedrooms, and 63 three-bedrooms.

Divide by two for the affordable units.

The expected mix now, however, would be very different.

What would they pay?

Rent is based on Area Median Income (AMI), which includes not just all five counties in New York City but several wealthy suburban counties. When Forest City Ratner was discussing affordable housing in 2006, the AMI was $70,900, as in the chart below. The eligibility is divided among five income Bands.

Now, the AMI is $80,200.

Let's follow the same technique used on the chart: calculate the rent by taking the midpoint of each Band divided by 12 (to obtain monthly income), then multiplied by 30%. (Each Band gets 20% of the subsidized units, or 450 over the life of the project--but each Band also has a mix of smaller and larger apartments.)

I'll use only households with four people, who might want a two-bedroom apartment.

Midpoint for those in Band 1, the lowest income, is 35% of AMI, or $28,070. That translates into $701.75 monthly rent for a two-bedroom.

Midpoint for those in Band 2, the other low-income category, is 45% of AMI, or $36,090. Rent would be $902.25.

Midpoint for those in Band 3, the moderate-income category, is 80% of AMI, or $64,160. Rent for a two-bedroom would be $1604.

Midpoint for those in Band 4, a middle-income category, is 120% of AMI, or $96,240. That translates into $2406 for a two-bedroom.

Midpoint for those in Band 5, the higher middle-income category, is 150% of AMI, or $120,300. Monthly rent = $3007.50.

It makes you wonder what the market-rate units would cost. And it certainly suggests that the smaller market-rate units would be easier to rent.

B2FactSheetNov2011

Times Public Editor Brisbane gingerly moves to embrace more fact-checking, offers warnings; I suggest Atlantic Yards as a subject, offer examples of misleading coverage

2012-01-23T07:26:00.002-05:00

New York Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane, fresh off his "Truth Vigilante" exploration, yesterday gingerly surveyed the new media world of dedicated fact-checking outlets/efforts. He pronounced himself somewhat chastened:

Newspaper journalism’s traditional way of dealing with spurious claims, meanwhile, isn’t satisfying readers. Often derided as the “he said, she said” approach, this method entails finding and quoting someone to counter a claim, thereby offering a form of balance but no resolution. This sufficed in the past, for many at least, but now many readers are asking for more aggressive rebuttals.
I heard this loud and clear last week when I asked readers on my blog whether they wanted more fact-checking in straight news articles and they said, resoundingly, yes.
James Fallows, author of “Breaking the News” and a national correspondent for The Atlantic, told me it is incumbent on reporters to correct falsehood, not just balance it.

But he offered some caveats:

First, are you rebutting a fact that is quantifiable and knowable, or are you rebutting an opinion?
Can you fact-check without displaying bias?
Don’t you risk making errors when you fact-check on short deadlines?

Fact-checking - argument?

His worry:

I join others who worry that The Times needs to be very careful with this. Jill Abramson, the executive editor, said that if fact-checking were made a “reflexive element of too many news stories, our readers would find The Times was being tendentious.” Readers, she added, could come to see The Times “as a combatant, not as an arbiter of what the facts were.”
Ubiquitous argument in straight news articles is not the way to go. Checking facts in politics — and in other subjects — takes time, resources and great care. Editors and reporters need to identify priorities and exercise judgment: they cannot do everything.

Need for a sidebar

His conclusion:

For these reasons, I think The Times should broaden the “Fact Check” sidebars to include issues that arise outside of the debate forum. Regular installments of fact-checking journalism, identified as such, would strengthen the paper’s approach. Links from fact-check items back to the original articles online would help readers connect the dots.
I favor rebutting assertions in some routine news articles. But The Times needs to be disciplined about it. The paper’s straight news function remains its most valuable asset, which would be undermined if argument replaced fact-gathering

My observation

Well, with Atlantic Yards, some routine "he said, she said" actually would be an improvement over accepting, in stenography form, mistaken assertions.

For example, in 9/10/09 coverage of a new report by the NYC Independent Budget Office, the Times quoted without question the dishonest claim by a spokesman for the NYC Economic Development Corporation that the Atlantic Yards was "now an open railyard without any public benefit."

But that requires actual outreach to people who know better.

I posted a comment:

If the Times is going to do some non-political fact-checking, why not start with the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, where so many facts promulgated by elected officials and the developer are supremely questionable, and the newspaper too often acts as a stenographer?
Take, for instance, the Times's unquestioning March 2010 coverage of promises regarding jobs made at the Atlantic Yards arena groundbreaking.
Or, even more glaring, consider the Times's coverage last year, *supported by* the Public Editor, of the spurious claim that the Barclays Center naming rights deal is worth "nearly $400 million," rather than, as documents indicated, a sum closer to $200 million.

Finally "fed up," Adams, Jeffries, Camara cite lack of Atlantic Yards jobs and housing, call for governance reform; a "litmus test" for Governor Cuomo

2012-01-22T22:15:00.000-05:00

At a press conference today, three local Democratic officials who've held nuanced and/or supportive positions toward Atlantic Yards adjusted their tune. They condemned the failure to deliver jobs and housing, and urged passage of a state bill to establish a new governance structure, with local input, for the project.

"We are truly concerned--we are outraged," declared state Senator Eric Adams (at podium in photo at left). Developer Forest City Ratner "thought we were going to have short memories and a long construction schedule."

Assemblymembers Hakeem Jeffries and Karim Camara, with the under-construction Barclays Center looming in the background, echoed similar sentiments.

"We have been extremely patient with this project," Adams said at one point. "I don't think that you can find three more elected officials who have attempted to be a voice of reason around this project. And if we're saying we're fed up, then clearly the developer had gone too far."

Their statements likely represented some measure of political calculation--two of the three are running for office--as well as a reflection that their constituents are frustrated.

The project, when initially passed in 2006, was supposed to take ten years to deliver 16 towers and an arena, with 15,000 construction jobs (in job-years) and thousands of permanent jobs. It also was to include 6430 apartments, among them 2250 subsidized "affordable" units.

The project, however, was delayed by the economic downturn, unrealistic plans, and litigation, and was revised in 2009, with contractual documents that allow a 25-year buildout. Only the arena is is under construction right now, and that, officials said, does not justify the subsidies and special benefits Forest City gained. Also see coverage in the Wall Street Journal, with un-rebutted comments from Forest City Ratner and Empire State Development, and my posted comment.

(Still photos and set copyright Tracy Collins. In photo above right, Jeffries is at the podium, with Camara to his right.)

A "litmus test" for Cuomo

"This is a litmus test for our new governor," Adams said of Andrew Cuomo. "One of the major problems we've had historically is that too many people have used taxpayers' dollars to give promises, and did not deliver. And he is against that, and this is the perfect opportunity: this developer has become the poster child of how we will not do business [any more] with taxpayers' dollars."

(Indeed, Cuomo has publicly aimed to be a better steward of taxpayer dollars on highway construction projects, at least.)

Displaying his Jesse Jackson-esque knack for political rhyme, at one point Adams declared, "We want real benefits. The developer is offering Jay-Z"--who'll open the arena with a concert in September--"but we're saying j-o-b."

The press conference was held at the southeast corner for Flatbush and Atlantic avenues, with Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center malls visible across the street. "This is not Midtown Manhattan," Adams said at one point, emphasizing Brooklyn's neighborhood feel. While that's true, it depends on perspective: the north and west borders of the site are far busier than the low-rise southern and eastern borders.

Press conference video

The AY Governance Act

The Atlantic Yards Governance Act, the officials said, could help right the balance. Maybe somewhat, I'd suggest, but the legislation still leaves the state in charge, and developer Forest City Ratner negotiated contracts that give it a long leash to build the project and thus deliver on the housing and jobs.

Even though the legislation would not, for example, allow community control or other significant changes, Forest City has opposed it. So too has the state, via Empire State Development head Kenneth Adams. So passage would represent a significant symbolic shift, with potential real results down the line

What would it take to move the legislation, I asked (at 13:50 of the video), especially since it's passed the Democratic-dominated Assembly but not the Republican-majority Senate?

"We have a new governor, who understands the importance of employment," Adams responded, not too convincingly. "We're going to reach out to Martin Golden," the powerful Brooklyn Republican senator who supports the project. "We're going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn't know why this bill was right."

Jeffries left open the potential to pressure Cuomo, who helped get the Senate to pass marriage equality and other bills, to step in. Then again, Cuomo's expressed so little interest in Atlantic Yards that his administration has not appointed a community relations representative to fill a position that's been open since last June.

Adams said he had a meeting scheduled next week with Forest City, and "we're going to sit down and strongly reinforce what our positions are."

Political calculation and constituent response

Why go public now, on a slow-news-Sunday, with a press conference spurred by the elected officials and promoted by the BrooklynSpeaks coalition? (BrooklynSpeaks had long sought to reform the project, rather than stop it, as had Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, though the two coalitions are jointly working on the last AY court case.)

As suggested above, there was surely some measure of political calculation: Jeffries is running for Congress and Adams is running for re-election, with a rumored bid for Borough President in 2013. Camara is an ally.

But the officials also are likely responding to their constituents, many of whom supported the project because they expected benefits from the much-promoted but not-so-reliable Community Benefits Agreement (CBA), but are confronting the reality of few jobs and delayed housing.

"Where were y'all?"

Given the trio's lack of historical opposition to the project, their statements provoked a blunt question (at about 18:25 of the video) from Mary Alice Miller (right), a reporter/columnist at the Bed-Stuy-based Our Time Press.

"All of you are known for somewhat supporting this project, as opposed to James and Montgomery, who were for years vociferously opposed to it, because they smelled that that Community Benefits Agreement was not enough--it was unenforceable." (I'd add that their opposition went well beyond the CBA.)

"So for five years," Miller asked, where were y'all, and where was this legislation?"

Adams said he had never supported the CBA, which was a privately negotiated agreement, not subject to public oversight but used as proof of community support. "I don't believe developers should sit down with hand-picked community residents and decide how to shape a project," said Adams, who added that the project should never have circumvented City Council oversight.

"Elected officials use different methodologies to carry out how they want to see government move forward," he said, by way of explanation. "So I commend Senator Montgomery, and I commend City Council Person Letitia James on their methods... There's not a one-size-fits-all for making sure developers do their job."

Jeffries (left), a polished trial lawyer in his past, parried the question gamely. Neither he nor Adams were in office, he pointed out, when the project was approved in 2006. As Assemblyman-elect, he had written a letter, unheeded, asking Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver for the Public Authorities Control Board to delay its vote on the project because there was inadequate information about project benefits.

"So I've expressed a great deal of skepticism from the very beginning," he said.

(Unmentioned: Jeffries took a moderate, even confusing posture on the project during the campaign, in clear contrast to anti-AY candidate Bill Batson. He also asserted that he opposed eminent domain to build a basketball arena, and wrote a letter, but never backed those who filed suit against the state's use of eminent domain.)

And, Jeffries noted, he'd pushed for the legislation for the last three legislative sessions, and it had passed the Assembly last year for the first time. "The developer is now saying the project is something we have to live with for 20 or 25 more years. If that's the case, we're going to step in as forcefully as we can and urge the governor and ESDC to get involved and bring to light what should be a public-private partnership."

Jeffries: a "graveyard of broken promises"

"This is a project that has promised much but delivered little," Jeffries said in his initial statement. "Less than 100 people from this community have received meaningful employment." (Presumably he meant to contrast jobs at the project site with retail and other low-wage jobs that workers have gotten through CBA signatory BUILD, or Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development.)

"The women and minority-owned businesses that have gotten contracts appear to be few and far between," he added. (Forest City would dispute that, but its self-reporting is surely less credible than if it came from the Independent Compliance Monitor required by the CBA.)

"This was supposed to be a field of dreams, it's turned into a graveyard of broken promises," he said. And it didn't have to be this way. When we think about the fact that this should have been a meaningful public-private partnership... $200 million from the city, $100 million from the state, the opportunity and the threat of eminent domain, the waiver of the land use process and zoning changes, all of which were necessary for this project to take place, and yet we see no significant public benefit. And part of the reason is that, from the very beginning the fix was in, and there was not the appropriate government structure that was put in place to make sure there was transparency, and accountability and meaningful public input."

He noted that other projects, like Brooklyn Bridge and Moynihan Station, all have subsidiary corporations.

Camara: hearing the complaints

Camara, who unlike Adams and Jeffries had been a clear supporter of the project, said, "What I find most distressing: there are existing members of the Carpenters Union, who I represent in the Assembly, who put their name on the list and can't get on the site, and that was a reason why we supported the project."

Camara said that "we're not sure" if 100 to 150 people benefited from a pre-apprenticeship training program. (Actually, only 36 people went through a training program organized by BUILD and seven have filed suit, charging they were promised jobs and union cards.)

"All we have is a basketball arena," Camara said. "I would say that's a slam dunk in the faces of many in this community."

Other speakers

Also backing the efforts were several leaders of BrooklynSpeaks: 52nd District Democratic Leader JoAnne Simon; Deb Howard of the Pratt Area Community Council, and Gib Veconi of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Association.

Simon, speaking after Camara, pointed out, "Many of us... didn't support this project... in part because we were suspicious of the level of promises that were made, and we also know that this area is so fragile: that if things weren't done right, with meaningful input from community, we would have a much more serious problem on our hands."

Also speaking was Ede Fox (right), president of Prospect Heights Democrats for Reform; she's also an announced candidate for the 35th District City Council seat currently held by James, who's expected to run for another office. "We cannot let the developer choose to provide the benefits he deems valuable, so we must demand accountability and openness."

One Zelig-like figure in some of the photos is a gentleman in a wool cap and dark glasses, positioned between Adams and Jeffries in the photo at top and, though partly obscured, just behind Fox in the photo at left. That's Vincent Haynes, not a member of BrooklynSpeaks but rather a supporter of BUILD.

Adams for BP?

After the press conference, I asked Adams if this was an issue for the Borough President--yes, he answered.

"And are you going to be running?" I asked at 24:18 of the video.

"Right now," I'm running for state Senate," he said with a bit of a smile. (Translation: I wouldn't bet against it.)

Camara interview

After the press conference, I queried Camara about the evolution of his views.

"I was never completely opposed to the project," he responded, amending his response (after I interjected) to "I was supportive of it. There were also people who would support it with certain provisions, including if there were more teeth to the Community Benefits Agreement, if there was construction jobs, if there were permanent jobs, if there was affordable housing."

"My reasons again--in hindsight, I do have some regrets at being so enthusiastic for it without having more teeth in the Community Benefits Agreement--my support was not because of the basketball arena, but because the potential creation of construction jobs, which I anticipated to be 15,000 by 2016, 10,000 permanent jobs, and affordable housing," Camara said. "The reason I have some reservations and have been disappointed is that those promises have not been met."

"I think that even those people who were against the project would agree that it would be great to have that number of jobs and affordable housing," he added. "Other things, traffic, environmental concerns, quality of life concerns were why people were against it."

I pointed out that I've written skeptically because I know there have been mistaken and misleading projections all along. (I didn't add the specifics: that there was always reason to question the timetable for the project, and that the 10,000 permanent jobs was discarded long ago.)

"In the political world, people say, oh someone flip-flopped," Camara continued. "But I think, as a leader, you make decisions based on the information at your disposal at the time. I was enthusiastically for the project. Now that those promises have been met, and I look at the information that I have now at my disposal, I can admit that I'm very disappointed with the results and why I think that the ESDC bill that Assemblyman Jeffries has is critical, because there would be more monitoring of the project and the promises made by the developers."

I asked what he's hearing from his Crown Heights constituency. Camara said he'd talked to union members "who anticipated being on this job, and or at least have a strong chance.... I don't know of any strong number of people who've been on this job."

He said, that "we should have an accounting from the developer, the total number of jobs, the total number of local jobs."

I asked if he knew about the Independent Compliance Monitor required by the CBA. He said he did, though he then pivoted to suggest that Jeffries' bill might help provide that information.

That may be so, though if Jeffries, Adams, and Camara want to effect change, why not also write a letter requesting that Forest City Ratner hire the Independent Compliance Monitor now, not later?

Press conference on Atlantic Yards governance bill today at 2 pm: Jeffries, Adams, Camara

2012-01-22T08:24:00.001-05:00

A press release from BrooklynSpeaks:

State Legislators Call Foul Over Failure of Barclays Arena Developer to Score on Community Givebacks

New York State legislators Senator Eric Adams, Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, and Assemblyman Karim Camara will hold a press conference to call for changes in the governance of the Atlantic Yards project, the development that includes the Barclay Arena, future home of the New York Nets.

Many of the community benefits promised by the developers – including job creation, a public safety plan and the inclusion of affordable housing – have failed to materialize. The group will call on Kenneth Adams, President of the Empire State Development Corporation, to implement oversight changes in the Atlantic Yards development project.

At the press conference, the elected officials will announce their plans to introduce legislation that establishes a subsidiary corporation for Atlantic Yards oversight and development. This new body will ensure transparency and accountability to protect public resources invested in the project.

Date: Sunday, January 22, 2012
Time: 2:00 PM
Location: Front of Barclays Center (Corner of Atlantic Avenue and Flatbush Avenue)
Presiding: Senator Eric Adams, Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, Assemblyman Karim Camara

While Jeffries has been out front on this issue periodically, and Adams has sometimes joined on Atlantic Yards issues, Camara is more of a project supporter, for example speaking at a 2008 rally and 2006 public hearing.

Is his role today a significant change in his posture, or a more nuanced one? And, given the state Senate's obduracy toward this bill (it did not come back last summer, as predicted), might Camara's role be part of aiding Jeffries' announced bid for Congress, as well as Adams's potential run for borough president?

Nets/Barclays CEO Yormark claims "all I’m seeing is support for this project" and every decision has "put Brooklyn first"

2012-01-22T08:13:00.000-05:00

SLAM magazine recently held a Q&A with Nets/Barclays Center CEO Brett Yormark, who confirmed that he is truly looking through rose-colored glasses.

SLAM: There have been some economic, housing and environmental issues that some people have had with Barclays Center and Atlantic Yards. There is probably going to be a group of folks who you can sway to come to Barclays even if they were previously against the arena being constructed, and there will be a group that won’t go no matter what. How do you identify those two different sets of people?

BY: As far as I’m concerned, all I’m seeing is support for this project. Anyone that was a naysayer, anyone that was truly not supportive early on, realizes that it’s happening. Obviously, we’re months away from opening, and that they need to embrace it. I think that’s the overall feeling. You’re always going to have people, in any situation, that don’t embrace a movement.

But I think this project, from Day One, has been about bringing sports entertainment back to Brooklyn. It’s been about Brooklyn, it’s been about job creation, it’s been about affordable housing. It’s been out doing what’s right for Brooklyn. There hasn’t been a decision that we’ve made that hasn’t put Brooklyn first and the people of Brooklyn first. If there are a few people out there who aren’t supportive, so be it. It is what it is.

But I think the majority of people love what we’re doing; they’re very supportive. In our season ticket sales alone, over 41 percent are coming from Brooklyn. Which is quite surprising for me because I knew that we would get the support from Brooklyn. But we’ve only released our 4,400 premium seats. We haven’t gone on-sale with our non-premium seating and people in Brooklyn are voting ‘yes’ for the Nets. Even at the premium seat level and there will only be more as we release the non-premium seats.

We love the support we’re getting. Our players go into Brooklyn quite often, and they’re doing community engagement. People are honking their horns and saying ‘We love you, Nets’ and it’s a great feeling.

(Emphases added)

Every decision has "put Brooklyn first"?

How about Bruce Ratner's acknowledgment that "the existing incentives for developments where half the units are priced for middle- and low-income tenants 'don't work for a high-rise building that's union built'" and that the announced and promoted ten-year timetable "was never supposed to be the time we were supposed to build them in.”

Behind the "Atlantic Yards Now" button: a 24-hour turnaround

2012-01-21T06:30:00.000-05:00

As I've been noodling around some databases for small business and MWBEs (minority- and women-owned businesses enterprises), I found one interesting mention:

Creation of "Atlantic Yards Now" button. 24 hour turn around

Those were given out to union workers and other project supporters in advance of the 5/29/09 state Senate oversight hearing on Atlantic Yards held at the Pratt Institute.

The buttons were produced by Concept Marketing & Promotions Inc., led by Ellen North, a WBE that was hired by the public relations firm Geto & DeMilly ("Shaping public policy. Creating strategies that generate change").

The tab: $475.

(Photo by Jonathan Barkey)

Responding in timetable case appeal, community coalitions charge ESDC with "fabrication," "sham," and "cover-up" for not analyzing impact of 25-year buildout; argument likely in February

2012-01-20T07:00:00.000-05:00

The two community coalitions challenging the state's failure to study the effects of a 25-year project buildout have filed a joint brief responding to the dual filings by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) and Forest City Ratner that appeal a lower court's decision finding the ESDC's actions arbitrary and capricious for failing to order a Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS).

The legal dispute does not affect the building of the arena, nor the towers around it, but does address plans for and impacts of Phase Two of the project: the eleven towers east of Sixth Avenue, including those to be built on a platform over the Vanderbilt Yard.

On a broader note, the case, which should be heard in a state appellate court in Manhattan in February, addresses whether the state agency essentially cheated to ensure that Atlantic Yards would move forward.

As the plaintiffs--coalitions led by Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn and BrooklynSpeaks--argue, had the ESDC been forced to conduct an SEIS, the agency, which approved a new Modified General Project Plan in September 2009, would have had to delay approval until 2010.

That would have forced Forest City Ratner to miss a crucial end-of-2009 deadline to get federally tax-exempt arena bonds sold. And that would have cost the developer at least $100 million more.

(BrooklynSpeaks issued a press release announcing the filing, and urging Governor Andrew Cuomo to end the cycle of litigation and produce housing and jobs--an intervention that is highly unlikely, given that Cuomo's administration is appealing the case.)

Key to the legal dispute are disagreements about guidance provided by certain legal precedents, as well as whether new analysis was needed of prolonged impacts, or whether impacts of an extended buildout could simply be pronounced no worse than a concentrated buildout.

The Development Agreement

The most crucial document in dispute is the Development Agreement, which was referenced vaguely in documents approved by the ESDC board when it passed that new Modified General Project Plan (MGPP). The MGPP was premised on a ten-year project buildout, though an accompanying Technical Memorandum did analyze a potential five-year delay.

Attached lease abstracts referenced a 25-year lease on site property, but the MGPP stated that the future "project documentation" (aka Development Agreement) would require Forest City "to use commercially reasonable efforts to achieve this [ten-year] schedule."

Not really. The Development Agreement, which was withheld until after the first oral argument in this case, in January 2010, clearly indicated that the outside date to finish the project would be 25 years, and that the penalties to enforce that timetable, at least for Phase Two, would be modest.

The sequence in court

Shortly after that January 2010 oral argument, Supreme Court Justice Marcy Friedman, refused to allow the Development Agreement into the case record. Then in a 3/10/10 decision, a day before the arena groundbreaking, she upheld the agency--just barely.

In that decision, Friedman criticized the ESDC’s “deplorable lack of transparency” and acknowledged that the ESDC’s use of a ten-year timeframe for the project buildout in the Modified General Project Plan (MGPP) was supported “only minimally.”

Both sets of petitioners asked Friedman to reopen the case, which she did, acknowledging a misapprehension--though not quite a mistake on her part--about the Development Agreement.

In November 2010, Friedman remanded the proceedings "to ESDC for findings on the impact of the Development Agreement and of the renegotiated MTA agreement on its continued use of a 10 year build-out for the Project, and on whether a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement is required or warranted."

The ESDC responded by issuing findings, including a new Technical Analysis, that said no such SEIS was needed. Friedman, after hearing oral arguments on 3/15/11, issued her ruling 7/13/11.

She ordered ESDC to prepare an SEIS “assessing the environmental impacts of delay in Phase II construction of the Project” and make “further findings on whether to approve the MGPP for Phase II of the Project.”

Friedman wrote that the ESDC's Technical Analysis does not provide technical studies of the effects of "significantly prolonged construction" but "appears to take the position that it is a matter of common sense that less intense construction will result in lower impacts for conditions such as traffic, noise, and air quality. "

Reasons for doubt

As the brief states:

By mid-2009, when ESDC determined that a modified project plan was required, the idea that construction of the Project would be completed in 10 years was not simply in doubt because of the precipitous market decline – it was totally undercut by the terms of the MTA Agreement extending the time to acquire the required land by 18 years to 2030, before taking account of the additional three years needed to construct buildings on it. Nonetheless, in its SEQRA Technical Memorandum assessing the environmental impacts of the changes wrought by and reflected in the 2009 MGPP, and purporting to rely on a self-serving real estate study that it had commissioned, ESDC adhered to the conceit that the Project would be fully built out 10 years after construction began. As a result, it evaluated the modified development on this basis, ignoring the aggregate and long-term effects that up to 25 years of construction would impose on adjoining neighborhoods.

The "continued 10-year assumption was a fabrication that served an important purpose," according to the brief, allowing for tax-exempt financing.

But there were other reasons for doubt, including statements by the ESDC's leader:

Thus, on April 9, 2009 – five months before the MGPP was acted on by the ESDC Board – Marisa Lago, the agency’s CEO, responding to a question put to her regarding the build-out of the Project in light of the recession, recognized “that it is project that is scheduled to grow out over multi-years, decades, not months.” [Here's the link.] This statement alone makes it clear that within ESDC, it was well understood at the time that construction would extend for 20 years, if not longer.

Notwithstanding the Brooklyn extreme market decline, ESDC was able to purchase the opinion of a real estate firm that it “was not unreasonable” to assume that that market could absorb 6,400 units of housing over the next 10 years. This “opinion” defied the realities on the ground. Moreover, it took no account of the fact that real estate financing had dried up and there was no way FCRC would be able to finance construction of the 16 buildings needed to complete the Project. Indeed, even today, two and a half year later, FCRC has yet to secure financing for a single building beyond the Arena.

There were many problems with that opinion by the consulting firm KPMG, as I've detailed.

What the Development Agreement said

The brief notes:

But ESDC did not advertise this, much less disclose that (i) FCRC would be given 25 years to complete the Project, (ii) no required “start” dates were provided for 10 of the 11 Phase II high-rise residential buildings, and (iii) that 10 buildings, which were assumed in the Technical Memorandum to be finished in 10 years, would not have to be completed for 25 years. Instead of presenting this critical information to the Court below, either in the papers it submitted or at oral argument, which took place after the agreement had been executed, ESDC suppressed the documentation, persuading Justice Freedman [sic], in a conference call following oral argument, not to consider that agreement and thereby keep it and its implications from the Court. These implications were that Project construction would continue far longer than the 10 years that ESDC was insisting was reasonable for the analysis of impacts it made in connection with the 2009 MGPP, even at the same time that it was negotiating a development agreement allowing 25 years for the buildout.

The 2010 response

The brief describes the ESDC's late 2010 response to Friedman:

Instead, ESDC came forward with the Technical Analysis, which it had compiled in five weeks or less. In this, the agency purported to analyze the impacts of a 25-year build-out, concluding that they would be no different from, or would be less than those associated with, 10 years of construction. This Analysis was silent on the critical question of the effects of 25 years of overhanging construction on the adjoining neighborhoods, and it took each area of impact in isolation, rather than assessing their cumulative effects.

Was ESDC's 2009 approval arbitrary?

One key legal question is whether the ESDC's approval of the 2009 Modified General Project Plan was arbitrary and capricious--the threshold at which judges, who typically defer to agency decisions, can overturn them.

According to the brief:

This is not an instance where an administrative body made a reasoned decision that might or might not be correct – a decision of the sort that courts are not empowered to second-guess. Rather, it is an instance where before it acted, the agency, by the admission of its own CEO, knew that the position it was taking was wrong, endorsed it nonetheless and then, when challenged, sought to cover up that reality and hide it from the court. In such situations, the judiciary alone stands between lawfulness and lawlessness.

The brief details elements of "the sham":

the decision to adhere to the 10-year construction schedule despite Lago's comments
the KPMG report "that effectively denied the market collapse"

The "cover up"

The "sham was converted to a cover up," according to the brief, when ESDC told the court that it wasn't the MTA agreement, which extended the purchasing term of railyard development rights to 2030, that governed the buildout schedule but rather the Development Agreement--even though the terms had not been disclosed.

Let's go to the oral argument transcript from January 2010. During the hearing, at p. 44 of the transcript (or p. 265 of this filing), ESDC lawyer Philip Karmel stated:

From the standpoint of my client, the Empire State Development Corporation, we're relying on the contracts that we are negotiating with Forest City to implement the General Project Plan. We have a development agreement. We have many other contracts with Forest City. They are outlined in the record. They did not exist at the time of the 2007--of the 2009 approval. And they're not in the record and properly so. But ESDC is not relying upon MTA to force Forest City to do something. ESDC is relying upon its contracts to implement this project. And if you look at the development agreement, the principal terms of which are outlined in the record, and this is a development agreement between ESDC and Forest City, in that agreement, Forest City is required to build the entire project--

Friedman interrupted:

Where in the record is this development agreement?

Karmel responded:

The abstract of the terms, your Honor, as I mentioned, the development agreement itself did not exist as of September 17th, 2009. But the terms of the development agreement are described on page 7070, 7070 of the record. And it says that the development agreement will require the Forest City affiliates involved in this project to construct the project described in the Modified General Project Plan, including, and then it summarizes many of the salient elements of the General Project Plan there. So it is the Development Agreement between ESDC and Forest City that ESDC is relying on to say, yes, this project is going to get built in conformance with the Modified General Project Plan. The fact that Forest City has negotiated a property acquisition agreement--

What's on p. 7070 of the record?

It's the Lease Abstract document below, on the second page, under the category "Non-Arena Development Leases":

Terminates upon completion of construction of the improvements to be located on the parcel of land leased thereby, but no later than the 25th anniversary of vacant possession of the Arena Block and any other properties acquired in the first taking (subject to force majeure).

From the 2009 MGPP

The terms of the Development Agreement--"commerically reasonable efforts"--are actually described with more specificity on p. 9 of the Modified General Project Plan, which states:

Sponsors expect to commence construction on the first non-Arena building within six months of ESDC's delivery of vacant possession of the Arena Block to the Project Sponsors, but in all cases, on or before the third anniversary of ESDC's delivery of vacant possession of the Arena Block to the Project Sponsors; the second non-Arena building within six months following the commencement of construction on the first non-Arena building, but in all cases, on or before the fifth anniversary of ESDC's delivery of vacant possession to the Arena Block to the Project Sponsors; and the third non-Arena building within six months following the commencement of construction on the second non-Arena building, but in all cases, on or before a date certain agreed to by ESDC and the Project Sponsors. The Project documentation to be negotiated between ESDC and the Project Sponsor will require the Project Sponsors to use commercially reasonable efforts to achieve this schedule and to complete the entire Project by 2019. The failure to commence construction of each building would result in, inter alia, monetary penalties being imposed upon the Project Sponsor.

Back to the argument

Friedman interrupted:

Excuse me. Has the Development Agreement been negotiated as of today's date?

Karmel:

Yes, it has, your Honor.

Friedman:

It is not in the record; is that correct?

Karmel:

That is correct, your Honor. The master closing occurred, as set forth in the papers submitted in connection with the preliminary injunction motion before the Court, the master closing occurred on December 23rd, 2009. And it was on that date that ESDC and Forest City signed the Master Development Agreement, numerous leases pertaining to the project. Other agreements require letters of credit to provide security that Forest City will pay for their just compensation awards in eminent domain proceedings. ... But the salient terms are outlined in the record.

Friedman:

And there are penalties for failure to build Phase II of the project?

Karmel:

Yes. Absolutely.

Friedman:

And what are they?

Karmel:

Well, the penalties are not set forth in the record. Obviously it would be a breach of the contract between ESDC and Forest City. If Forest City does not proceed as required by the contract, and the contract does set forth a variety of remedies, including monetary remedies and remedies with respect to forfeiture of development rights, ESDC has the right to demand specific performance of the development obligations set forth in the contract. And there's a series of penalties set forth in the contract. So ESDC does have a contract with Forest City and that really is our [sic] the main thing we're relying on to guarantee that the project will be completed.

But going back to the law, there's nothing that requires such a guarantee...

But those penalties were quite minor.

The Development Agreement in court

The new brief describes the ESDC's arguments before Friedman:

Finally, when the MDA [Master Development Agreement] was at last brought before the Court, ESDC persisted in the denial of its relevance and, in spite of everything, including its acknowledgment that the Project could not be completed in 10 years, continued to assert that the use of that schedule was rational at the time the 2009 MGPP was approved. In this, of course, it had little choice; to have admitted anything else would have been to acknowledge that it acted arbitrarily and capriciously in selecting and adhering to that schedule. The agency was hoisted on its own petard and the only way out was to deny the realities or cover them up. It was for this reason, presumably, that ESDC, going beyond the requirements of the remand order, came forward with the hastily-prepared and totally-wanting Technical Analysis in an effort to patch the hole that its sham conduct had left. That, we submit, was not only too little – it was a continuation of the sham.

The fundamental illegality in ESDC’s conduct, and that on which the Court below based its decision, was the agency’s arbitrary and capricious adherence to the use of a 10-year construction schedule and its consequent refusal and failure to evaluate the environmental impacts of a build-out that would likely extend for 25 years. This is a relatively straightforward issue of administrative law that, as discussed more fully below and as Justice Freedman found, required ESDC to go back and do it right.

....It is one thing for an agency to make a mistaken determination; it is quite another to make a determination that it knows is based on an error or false information. The latter is what the Petitioners believe happened in this case and what they submit should result in this Court’s affirming July 19 Decision. There is precedent for this in the opinions issued by the United States District Court and the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in the lawsuits challenging the Westway megaproject on Manhattan’s Lower West Side waterfront.

Did the approval violate SEQRA?

The other important legal point at issue is whether ESDC's approval of the 2009 Modified General Project Plan, without preparing an SEIS, violated the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA).

The brief states:

In this case, ESDC chose not to do so, issuing the equivalent of a Negative Declaration finding the environmental impacts that grew out of the 2009 MGPP would not be significant. As already discussed at length, the conclusion was reached on the basis of a 10-year build-out that the Petitioners believe, and the Court below found, was arbitrary and capricious....

The Appellants [ESDC and Forest City] contend that a different standard applies when it comes to negative declarations, such as that involved here, made in connection with the modification of project that has been the subject of an earlier EIS. Indeed, the Appellants read Matter of Riverkeeper and the SEIS regulations issued by the Department of Environmental Conservation... as effectively making the decision whether or not to prepare an SEIS lie entirely within the discretion of the agency. But that reading would eviscerate the statutory mandate of SEQRA that actions that “may have a significant impact on the environment” require the preparation of an EIS.

The brief suggests a significant difference between the two cases:

In Riverkeeper, while many years had passed since a previous SEIS and the later determination to approve the project without an additional SEIS and there had been numerous changes in relevant laws and permit requirements, the applicant in that case had modified the project to reduce impacts and included other mitigation measures to meet the changed circumstances.

In contrast, in this case, as more fully discussed below, ESDC went out of its way to deny the full time-frame for completion of the Project and failed to undertake a complete qualitative or quantitative analysis of the new impacts resulting from 25 years of construction (as compared with the 10-year build-out).

(Emphasis in original)

The longer buildout

The state essentially said no new significant impacts would be found, a conclusion emphasized in the ESDC brief, which went to significant length to argue that, in various categories of environmental review, a longer buildout would be no worse--though the question remains as to whether prolonging the impacts changes their nature.

The new brief states:

But as the Supreme Court observed and found, no studies were undertaken to analyze the impacts of 25 years of construction. To the contrary, to the extent that ESDC bothered to address these impacts at all, it was on a subjective basis only, with the undocumented conclusion that any construction impacts would simply be “prolonged” and in any case would be “temporary,” because at some undetermined future date the Project would be complete and the disturbances associated with the build-out would cease.

This was far from the “hard look” that SEQRA required. In some cases, no doubt, the impacts of construction can be passed off as “temporary,” because they are relatively short term and the normal incidents of living in an urban area. But when the subject is the construction of a massive project that is likely to extend over many years, the impacts imposed during the build-out become even more significant that the impacts from the completed project.

Nor is it sufficient to say, simply, that whatever the impacts, they will be “prolonged” by a longer build-out. Impacts accumulating over time can and often do have far more serious negative consequences than ESDC ever suggested, much less identified, in either the SEQRA Technical Memorandum or the belated Technical Analysis.

Forest City's argument

The brief criticizes a "strange theory" promulgated by Forest City:

It takes the position that the 2009 MGPP did not make any changes in the Project; the modifications that it approved were simply the reflection of economic conditions and did not change the Project components. The latter claim is wrong in its own right – for example, creating a huge open parking lot that would be in place for 12 or more years rather than the four years originally promised, or providing publicly accessible open space 10 to 15 years later than had been represented – were certainly changes in the Project components. But more to the point, FCRC’s position runs counter to ESDC’s, which recognized the 2009 MGPP as effecting a sufficient change as to require the modification of the GPP and undertake a SEQRA review of that action. It also completely ignores the reality that the extension of time for property acquisition approved by the MGPP laid the adjoining communities open to an extension (and probably an expansion) of negative environmental impacts for up to 25 years. So, too, did the extension of the construction schedule inherent in the 2009 MGPP but not disclosed by ESDC. However FCRC may characterize the changes wrought by the MGPP, those changes had the potential of inflicting severe and negative environmental impacts. As a result, ESDC should have prepared an SEIS to evaluate those impacts, taking into account, among other things, the examples of project delays and long construction schedules elsewhere....

Unlike ESDC, the brief notes, Forest City argued that the Supreme Court erred by considering the Development Agreement:

FCRC’s position is disingenuous at best and would make a mockery of the role of the courts at worst (which may be why ESDC did not choose to make an issue of the point). To begin with, if strictly applied, FCRC’s position would sanction fraud and lack of disclosure.

Second, it is also disingenuous for FCRC to argue that the terms of the MDA could not be considered, because the crucial one was in fact before ESDC when it approved the 2009 MGPP. That critical term was that construction could extend for 25 years. This was contained in the lease abstract (or summary) that was made part of the MGPP. If, as is the case, it was not called out to the directors, it was nonetheless before them.

What's the worst-case scenario?

ESDC argues that it was reasonable worst-case scenario to consider the impacts of a buildout limited to ten years, and a five-year delay--and that a 25-year analysis would have been criticized for not addressing a concentrated ten-year timetable.

The community groups, however, argue that the agency never initially considered a 25-year buildout:

In fact, however, neither the MGPP nor the SEQRA Technical Memorandum addressed the question of what constituted such a case; nor could they have, given that they denied that there would be a construction schedule possibly extending to 2035.

Moreover, ESDC disregarded the section of the CEQR Technical Manual that explicitly identifies “Duration” as one of the elements that must be taken into account in evaluating construction impacts [CEQR Technical Manual, Chapter 22, pp. 1, 6, 9, 10]. In the case of the Project, the reasonable worst case in terms of duration, as reflected in the MDA, is 25 years (and it could be longer). Thus, even if ESDC had had a rational basis for believing that the Project would be completed in 10 years – and we do not believe it did – it was obligated to analyze and consider the impacts of the longer construction period before it acted on the MGPP. This it failed to do.

"Intensity" vs. "duration"

One of the big questions in the legal battle is whether it is worse, for neighbors, to experience extended, if intermittent construction, or, as the state contends, a more concentrated ten-year buildout. The new brief criticizes the latter position:

The Appellants argue that the “intensity” of construction impacts at a particular point in time is a more appropriate measure of worst case impacts than the duration of the impacts. But there is nothing in the record to support this position or the asserted choice, which clearly was made only in response to the Petitioners drawing attention to the CEQR Technical Manual directives.

What's the "build year"?

The brief notes that the appellants, citing Wilder v. N.Y.S. Urban Dev. Corp. and Fisher v. Giuliani, argue that judges should not "second guess the agency’s choice of the “build year” – the specific point in time when a project is expected to be completed and generate the most substantial operational impacts."

While this is generally true, the choice must still be rational. The brief adds:

The more pertinent point in this case, however, is that the irrational action involved here was not ESDC’s choice of the “build year,” but its failure to take into account the impacts of construction over as many as 25 years. ESDC has never disputed that it was obligated to assess the environmental impacts of construction, but it did so on the basis of a 10-year build-out. If, as we have discussed above, construction is likely to last as long as 25 years, then the agency needed to evaluate the impacts of that much extended build-out. This has nothing to do with the selection of a “build year”...

The issue is whether ESDC acted rationally when it adhered to the 10-year build-out. If, as the Petitioners submit is the case, the 25-year deadline was under discussion (and, more likely, agreed to) at the time the MGPP was approved, that clearly bore on the question.

Was the Technical Analysis legit?

The brief argues that the 2010 Technical Analysis was part of a pattern of concealment, failing "to consider the long-term cumulative effects of 25 years of ongoing construction on the health of the surrounding neighborhoods."

The brief notes:

Expanding upon the approach taken in the 2009 Technical Memorandum, the Technical Analysis dismissed many adverse impacts resulting from the extended construction schedule as simply being “temporary.” For example, in assessing the impact of the extended build-out on open space and the requirements of the GPP and 2009 MGPP that eight acres of publicly accessible open space be provided, the Analysis justified its assertion that no new impacts were involved by stating that “the temporary impact identified in the FEIS would extend longer, but would continue to be addressed by the incremental completion of the Phase II open space.” In this case, however, the “temporary” negative impact would last up to 15 years longer than assumed in the FEIS – 15 years in which the adjacent neighborhoods would be without the promised open space benefits of the Project. Three years without adequate open space is an impact that might be characterized as “temporary;” 15 years is clearly something else.

Similarly, Block 1129, the southeast block of the project site, could remain as an 1100-vehicle surface parking lot not for just three or four years, but 12 years or more.

Current impacts

Does mitigation work? In a footnote, the brief say no:

ESDC lays considerable emphasis on the mitigation plan that it is required to implement, suggesting that this will work to mitigate any additional impacts of the extended build-out. But that plan does not address such impacts as long-term cumulative effects, since these were never identified, nor does the plan consider mitigation that might offset or reduce the loss of open space or the extended duration of surface parking on Block 1129. Furthermore, while not a matter of record, the current mitigation plans as set forth in the Amended Memorandum of Environmental Commitments are not being effectively enforced.

That's clear from a look at Atlantic Yards Watch.

2009 ESDC Atlantic Yards Lease Abstract

Friedman Case Respondents Brief

"Brooklyn Is Set for a Building Boom," as per WSJ? Maybe if you count the delayed Atlantic Yards towers.

2012-01-19T18:36:00.000-05:00

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, Brooklyn Is Set for a Building Boom:

Developers are rapidly running out of space to build new projects in Manhattan, but brownstone-dotted Brooklyn could be poised for a building boom, according to a new report.

Brooklyn has in the early planning stages as many as 14,000 new residential units in the coming years, compared with Manhattan, where just 5,000 new units are in the early planning phase, according to a new report by Nancy Packes, a consultant to some of the city's largest developers.

That's primarily because Manhattan is running out of new sites that are zoned for residential use, according to Ms. Packes.

Developers, such as AvalonBay Communities Inc., Stahl Real Estate and Douglaston Development already have large new projects planned for downtown Brooklyn and the Williamsburg waterfront in the next few year.

Oh, really? No breakdown of that 14,000 figure was given and, as Brownstoner observed, "we’re guessing that the vast majority of those are supposed to be delivered via Atlantic Yards and Domino, so the 'boom' has been imminent for quite some time."

And, I'd add, the apartments towers have been delayed for a while.

In the Real Deal, architecture critic says meh on prefab: "perhaps not better [than Gehry design]... surely not worse"

2012-01-19T17:44:00.001-05:00

In the Real Deal, critic James Gardner asks Atlantic Yards: Can prefab be fabulous? Will the prefab tower at Atlantic Yards look like real architecture, or will it be Lego-like? and comes down toward the latter.

What he doesn't grapple with is whether, in fact, the first tower, B2 (Building 2, not “Barclays Two,” as he writes) would be prefab. It's still in question.

The design and the guidelines

Gardner writes:

The building’s design was in no small degree determined by the guidelines established by the Empire State Development Corporation, the state entity backing the project, which required a complicated series of setbacks.

The design guidelines, actually, were written by Frank Gehry's office.

Gardner writes:

To judge from the renderings, the stiffly geometric results, with their shifting, syncopated planes, recall the same Deconstructivist aesthetic that inspired a number of buildings on West 42nd Street, among them the Condé Nast building at 4 Times Square and the Reuters building at 3 Times Square — both designed by Fox and Fowle.

Perhaps feeling that the pared-down geometry of the structure needed some enhancement, the architects have emphasized the semi-autonomy of each zone by casting it in a different color. In any case, its severe geometry doesn’t look as though, when completed, it will work well with the demonstrative curves of the Barclays arena itself.

The aesthetics

Gardner offers a take rather different than that of the more enthusiastic New York magazine critic Justin Davidson, writing:

Aesthetically, the great question surrounding B2 is whether, when completed, it will look like real architecture, or like something that’s just rolled out of one of the recently unveiled 3-D printers.

Will this development make it possible for good architecture to be produced at bargain-basement prices — or will it prove to be the greatest gift of technology to fans of so-called value engineering? Even more than lackluster design, value engineering is the besetting sin of architecture in the five boroughs, and it produces that sinking feeling that corners were cut, and the cheapest materials were used, to save the most money.

Yet, if anything, New York probably needs its buildings to be more expensive rather than less.

...Surely the project revealed by SHoP looks, from the initial renderings, to be far duller and more conventional — in purely formal terms — than what Gehry had proposed. However, Gehry’s project was overrated, for all the usual mid-cult reasons — adulation of fame and the tendency to associate newness with importance — attendant upon the labors of starchitects. And B2, though perhaps not better, is surely not worse.

Maybe New York needs more expensive buildings. But what Ratner must figure out is how to pay for the buildings he promised, and to make a profit.

Hence the venture into prefab--or the threat of prefab to cudgel the unions.

Local report: still murkiness about reopening of ASI Limited, arena facade contractor; company won't provide info about number of people working

2012-01-19T15:46:00.000-05:00

When Crain's New York Business last week reported that ASI Limited had resumed production of the weathered steel panels for the façade of the Barclays Center, it noted that contractor Hunt Construction was "looking for additional companies to make the steel."

That suggested there was lingering doubt, and a report yesterday in the Zionsville Times-Sentinel, Contractor, Ohio bank assume control of ASI, leaves some additional doubt.

While ASI Limited has apparently reopened, thanks to the role of a bonding company, Employment Plus Inc., of Bloomington, is suing ASI "for nearly $838,000 it alleges is owed in salaries for temporary workers," the newspaper reported.

Moreover, the newspaper reported,"the Indiana Department of Workforce Development has still not been contacted by ASI about the number of persons who have gone back to work," despite email and voicemail messages requesting information.

A softball interview with Ratner on Bloomberg TV's "Sportfolio": success depends on location (not government assistance)

2012-01-19T15:12:00.003-05:00

Last night, on Bloomberg TV's Sportfolio, "Bloomberg's weekly inside look at the business of sports," the first guest was Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner, at whom host Rick Horrow (not a journalist but "a leading facility development advisor") beamed lavishingly and described, at the end of the interview, a "true visionary, quintessential developer."

Horrow pitched a bunch of softball questions. The first:"tell us about progress" on the arena.

"The time has come," Ratner pronounced, in tones more stentorian than usual. "The progress is going great. We're about 60% done with the arena. The last piece of steel went up last week. You can walk around inside... and it's in a great location, right in the heart of Brooklyn, the center of the world, I might add."

If it's "the center of the world," why does he live in Manhattan?

Built for basketball, but

Noting that the Barclays Center will be the first new NBA arena to open since 2008, Horrow asked, "What'll make it state of the art as a basketball facility?"

"It's built for basketball, much like Conseco [now BankersLife Fieldhouse, in Indianapolis]," Ratner responded, not pointing out that the arena was shrunk--from 850,000 square feet to 675,000 square feet--to save money. "The sightlines are better... The other thing is the design of it: it will be highly designed architecture, with a capital A, and that's unusual for our arenas in this country."

What's the brand?

Horrow noted that the first event at the arena would be a concert by "fellow owner" Jay-Z, and asked Ratner how he'd describe the arena brand.

"It's Brooklyn, it's the architecture, it's Jay-Z, a new father, I might add, it's Nets basektball, it's everything," Ratner responded, "everything that you could imagine that you woudl want in the arena. The brand is really all the great events, plus the Nets, plus the architecture, plus the Jay-Z celebrity types, and so on.

Booking events

The Barclays Center has "been aggressive in booking events," Horrow observed, suggesting that the new facility is "going toe to toe" with Madison Square Garden. "What's the attraction for partners to sign on with that new venue?"

"This is a large city and a large region. Brooklyn alone has 2.5 million people," Ratner said, "so we really need a second arena."

That's arguably true, but one arena in the region--the Nassau Coliseum, the Meadowlands arena--will understandably lose out. And there's no reason for federal subsidies to move a team across state lines.

"Whether we're competing with Madison Square Garden isn't really what's important," Ratner said. "What's important is whether we bring great entertainment, great sports."

Actually, what's important is whether the bookings deliver profits. It's still unclear if the number of events, and sponsorship revenue, will meet expectations.

"We wondered when we were building it, whther we'd be a secondary arena, or whether we'd be our own venue. It's clear.. we're our own brand," Ratner concluded.

That's true, but there are a lot of variables we don't know, such as whether Barclays is giving event bookers a significantly better deal than other venues to lock in the events.

Recruiting advantage?

Wearing his grin, Horrow asked Ratner, "Do you see the Brooklyn brand and new facility as a recruiting advantage?

"It's a tremendous advantage," Ratner responded, though there are no results yet to speak of. "First, being in the New York general market is tremendous, whether it be media or advertising or sponsorhip or fans, or just the history of sports in this region. we're already seeing it, that there's a tremendous desire, in the NBA generally, to play in big markets and there's already a tremendous interest by players and fans alike."

The key to making it work

Horrow, in his final question, cited plans in other cities (such as Los Angeles) for new arena plus mixed-use development, and asked Ratner, "What's the key to making it work, especially in an uncertain economy?"

"The first key is obviously location," Ratner said, citing the opportunity for transportation to support residential or office development.

He somehow ignored the more important key: to get government agencies willing to sign on to a project, to revise settled deals to save the developer money, and even to support a dubious effort to raise money from immigrant investors seeking green cards.

Arena as successor to theater district?

Ratner finished with what's clearly a new rhetorical tack, "In the case of Brooklyn, interestingly enough, in that area of Brooklyn, Downtown Brooklyn, going back almost 100 years, was always an entertainment district. There were dozens of legitmate theaters right in the area... for about 30 years, it kinda lost that edge... the reason that it was, I think, was the excellent public transportation... So development has to come from something that has a reason to be there..."

Yes, there was a theater district in Downtown Brooklyn, stretching along Flatbush Avenue and Fulton Street, among others, including large houses like the Paramount (now home to LIU) and the Majestic (now home to a BAM satellite).

Does one heavily branded arena equal the latter-day equivalent of a theater district containing multiple venues?

An imaginary dialogue between Bruce Ratner and Bruce Bender: how talking up transit (vaguely) might distract from the Ridge Hill case

2012-01-19T07:00:00.000-05:00

Last March, after the charges surfaced against (now-guilty) state Senator Carl Kruger and lobbyist Richard Lipsky, including a profane exchange between Kruger and Forest City Ratner executive Bruce Bender, I wrote an imaginary dialogue between Bender and his boss, Bruce Ratner.

Maybe they've had another conversation recently.

BB: I have an idea.

BR: I'm listening--

BB: Did you hear about Richard Ravitch? Last week he said that the city's crumbling transit infrastructure is a huge problem, and business leaders lack public spirit, and I quote, "keeping the Bush tax cuts, keeping the government from regulating them and making sure they’re too big to fail."

BR: And what's wrong with that?

BB: Nothing's wrong with that, of course. (Chortles) That's what we do too, more or less. The last part, at least. (Beat) But we need the transit system.

BR: We're an urban company.

BB: Damn straight. We have offices and malls that rely on the subway. And--

BR: --an arena.

BB: An arena that needs subways and buses running well, more of them, in fact. And the LIRR.

BR: Especially the LIRR.

BB: We're not talking about the Islanders yet.

BR: Who said anything about the Islanders?

BB: So this is what we can do.

BR: I'm listening.

BB: Forest City Ratner comes out for transit.

BR: Of course we're for transit. (Beat) But what does that mean?

BB: We keep it fuzzy.

BR: Are you saying increase the payroll tax? That could piss off the Republicans in the Senate.

BB: I'm not saying--

BR: They could hold oversight hearings.

BB: They're not gonna hold oversight hearings. Marty Golden will manage it. He will be a firewall. (Chortles) Unless someone finally gets him for his catering hall business.

BR: Marty's against residential permit parking.

BB: Are we against residential permit parking?

BR: We're not sure. Tish James is for it, so--

BB: We're not going to back her. She's running for something.

BR: We muddle through one season, see how it goes. If the local electeds are screaming bloody murder, they can overcome Marty Golden.

BB: So this is what you can say.

BR: You're writing my speeches now? I like that.

BB: You say that "Forest City supports a robust transit system and is willing to work with all stakeholders."

BR: I like that. Very statesmanlike. But when do I say this?

BB: Well, that Ridge Hill trial is coming up.

BR: I know. And that Times guy Powell kinda put it back on the agenda.

BB: "Between legal clouds." Nice image. (Beat) But also a little icky. So glad Betsy Gotbaum set things straight: "highest ethical standards and behavior."

(Both chortle)

BR: I wasn't involved in any of that, it was all you.

BB: I know. But we're in this together.

BR: (Mutters) That was what Lipsky and Kruger said.

BB: What did you say?

BR: Nothing. (Beat) Yes, we're in this together. We'll pull through. We didn't get indicted. We didn't do anything wrong. We will say as little as possible.

BB: Except about the transit system. (Beat) Which reminds me...

BR: Yes?

BB: Ravitch, we lucked out there, too.

BR: That we did.

BB: I don't think he really loves Atlantic Yards. I mean, he's never said anything nice.

BR: He's never said anything negative, either. And aren't we lucky that--

BB: --his son worked on the sale of the team to Prokhorov.

BR: He sure did. A very good deal it was, I might say.

BB: Exactly. We got the Russian, and we neutralized Ravitch.

BR: Now he just talks about transit.

BB: And we support transit.

BR: Just not with specifics.

Betsy Gotbaum vs. reality: Ratner "has always demonstrated the highest ethical standards and behavior"

2012-01-18T10:50:00.001-05:00

Former Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum writes an astonishing letter to the New York Times, published today:

Praise for a Developer

To the Editor:

I disagree with Michael Powell (“A Developer Between Legal Clouds,” Gotham column, Jan. 10) that two bribery investigations with ties to the developer Bruce Ratner and his company, Forest City Ratner, suggest misdeeds on his part.

More important, the professional investigators have not found that the company or its employees behaved in an illegal manner.

While I do agree that we have an unprecedented amount of corruption among elected officials, lobbyists and others, you cannot and should not assume that a developer is guilty of the same behavior because, well, he’s a developer.

As a former New York City public advocate and during many years in public service, I have had the honor to work with Mr. Ratner. He has always demonstrated the highest ethical standards and behavior. As consumer affairs commissioner and as a developer, he has worked to improve the city and help those with greatest needs.

BETSY GOTBAUM
New York, Jan. 11, 2012

The highest ethical standards and behavior?

Then why did Forest City Ratner give a no-show job to the consultant charged with bribing the Yonkers council member who changed her vote to green-light the developer's Ridge Hill project?

Gotbaum was endorsed in 2005 by the Times, which cited her opposition to the West Side Stadium with no mention of her record regarding Atlantic Yards. As I wrote 9/7/05:

Conspicuously absent is any mention of Gotbaum's indefensible record on Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards plan (which also would require hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars): in a nutshell (as she even told me when I ran into her on the campaign trail), she's for the project, unless there's eminent domain; then she's against it. But Bruce Ratner told her there wouldn't be any eminent domain, so she trusts him--even though several landowners within the proposed project footprint have vocally indicated their intentions not to sell, and that the Memorandum of Understanding between Ratner and the state includes eminent domain.

Of course, there was eminent domain. Gotbaum kept quiet.

(Also see Eric McClure's criticism in NLG.)

Where's the Independent Compliance Monitor for the CBA? Brooklyn Eagle article elicits evasive response from CBA signatories

2012-01-18T07:00:00.001-05:00

Even though the enormous flaws in the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement--most glaringly, the failure to hire an Independent Compliance Monitor (ICM)--have been manifest for a while, journalists have pretty much ignored them.

So credit the Brooklyn Daily Eagle's Zach Campbell for following up, in an extensive article, headlined Still No Compliance Monitor At Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards, which elicits some curiously evasive responses.

Campbell writes:

The compliance monitor is meant to serve as a community enforcement mechanism, and is the only legally binding tool by which the other CBA groups can make sure the developer plays by the rules. Today, six-and-a-half years after the contract was signed, five years from when the EC began accepting proposals for the job and nearly two years after the site’s groundbreaking, the position of independent compliance monitor for Atlantic Yards is still vacant.

The developer has long disputed its contractual obligations per the CBA. More recently, it has begun to say it will hire the compliance monitor for the second (non-arena) phase of construction. “They [FCR] are going to retain a compliance monitor per the CBA, but they are going to wait until the housing phase,” said Brian Moriarty, a spokesperson for the developer.

But why? Because they can get away with it.

The article cites CBA expert Julian Gross as saying it's usually a conflict of interest for CBA signatores to have financial deal with developers and that "New York CBAs are not written for accountability."

It further quotes me as writing, “If the executive committee hardly meets, hasn’t decided yet [when to hire an ICM], and has members whose groups are financially tied to or dependent on Forest City Ratner, what incentive do they have for an Independent Compliance Monitor?”

Indeed, the absence of an ICM likely helped Forest City, given that the monitor would have reported on the lack of progress experienced by participants in a job-training program, who later filed suit against BUILD (Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development).

CBA signatories' statements

So what do the CBA signatories say?

James Caldwell of BUILD blamed lawsuits for delays.

Lennox Britton of the New York State Association of Minority Contractors, said, “I’m sure they’ll get to it.”

The Rev.. Herbert Daughtry of the Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Alliance doesn't mind: "The point is that I feel, whether they [FCR] have reneged on promises, I’m not concerned about it.

Bertha Lewis, the former CEO of ACORN, did not respond to Campbell's query, while he found three of the other signatories had to find.

Note that Lewis in May 2006 defended the CBA by noting that it calls for an independent monitoring body that “does not have a dog in this fight” to oversee implementation.

Money issues

One "source," perhaps a CBA signatory, said that the ICM chosen back in 2007 balked at the $100,000 payment and that CBA signatories themselves had a reason to avoid scrutiny.

I'd add that Forest City doesn't mind saving $100,000 a year--that's over half a million dollars already.

The promise

The Eagle even unearths a Bruce Ratner quote from a March 2007 press release, associated with the first and only push to hire an ICM:

“Atlantic Yards is setting a new standard for inclusion and community involvement for a development, and the ICM will be everyone’s watchdog to ensure we reach all of the goals and benefits we have agreed to in the CBA."

I wrote in March 2007 about the RFP for such a monitor, part of a promotional effort that included the graphic at right.

A couple of corrections--updated

The Eagle article initially stated that Atlantic Yards was "to be half financed by public money." That's not so, but a good portion of the financing, including tax-exempt bonds, is government-related. It's been revised to say "a significant amount of public money."

Also, the quote from Mayor Mike Bloomberg--“You have Bruce Ratner’s word. That should be enough for you and everybody else in the community”--was originally said to have been uttered last year, but has been corrected to 2005.

Funding of CBA partners

I'll note that Forest City Ratner has funded, in some ways, all of the CBA signatories

“Forest City has funding obligations and commitments to each of the organizations, and they’re reviewed on an annual basis,” executive MaryAnne Gilmartin said at a public meeting in July 2009. “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.”

They have not provided that accounting.

From the latest Construction Alert: continued late-shift work, no mention of problems with the facade

2012-01-18T06:30:00.002-05:00

The latest two-week Atlantic Yards Construction Alert, dated 1/16/12, was distributed yesterday by Empire State Development (after preparation by developer Forest City Ratner).

Notably, it contains no mention of the temporary shutdown of the arena facade contractor, ASI Limited, or any analysis of how that might affect facade work. It contains the same language as in the previous alert:

Façade Installation
• The façade erector will continue the installation of erection clips and panels on the Flatbush Avenue elevation and along the west elevations during this reporting period. The installation of curtain wall and curtain wall/lattice panels will continue on the Flatbush Avenue elevation during this reporting period. In the interest of public safety, and as approved by the New York City Building Department,
pedestrians using the east side sidewalk of Flatbush Avenue next to the arena may be temporarily diverted to across the street by Hunt flagmen during high level work. The façade erector will continue with installation of erection clips along the 6th Avenue elevation this reporting period. Installation of the erection clips will continue on the Dean Street elevation during this reporting period.
• The façade subcontractor will continue to work a second shift as needed throughout this reporting period. Work may be performed on the Flatbush Avenue and 6th Avenue elevations on this shift.
• The installation of façade panels at the street level and at the Upper Concourse levels on Atlantic Avenue has been substantially completed. Contractor will return to install the façade panels at the uppermost elevation and in the area of the material hoist at a later date.

Late-shift work

As in the previous alert, there will be double-shift and weekend work at the Long Island Rail Road/Vanderbilt Yard/ Carlton Avenue Bridge:

All weekdays all locations in the yard: 6:00AM to 11:00PM
Saturdays as required: 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM
Sundays and Holidays as required: 8:00AM to 11:00PM

And there may be late shift and overnight shift work at the arena site:

Subject to receipt of permits, a second shift shall be continued throughout this reportingperiod, from 3 – 11 PM, Monday-Friday only. Also subject to receipt of permits, a third shift may be instituted during this reporting period, from 11 PM – 7 AM, Monday –Friday only.

Changes noted

The text below is excerpted from the latest document (bottom), with the bolded text indicating what's new compared to the previous alert.

Arena site: Excavation

• Excavation for the “C” line (which circles the basketball court and ice floor) and inner bowl footings that support the precast rakers for the lower bowl seating is expected to begin during this reporting period.

Steel erection

Primary (truss) roof steel erection has been completed. Secondary roof framing will continue during this reporting period.

Waterproofing & Fireproofing

Phase 1 of the permanent roofing has started and will continue throughout this reporting period as weather allows. The lower roofs temporary protection is substantially complete and the west elevation high roof installation (Denglass Board, Insulating Board, Vapor Barrier and Rubber Membrane) will continue.

Mechanical, Electrical, & Plumbing

• The boiler is being piped and electrical service to the boiler is being installed during this reporting period. The initial boiler permit inspection has been performed. At the inspector’s direction, several small revisions are to be performed in time for a second boiler inspection. Revisions and inspections are to be performed during this reporting period so as to secure approval for the use for temporary heat during the week of 1/16/2012.

ConEd has mobilized at the site and started the installation of the service provided by the utility. Permanent power is projected to be available during the late February/early March reporting periods.

Elevator and escalator installation will continue this reporting period. Some second shift work is expected to be required for elevator/escalator installation throughout this reporting period.

Interior Build-out

The installation of applied finishes is expected to start during this reporting period at the Event Level restrooms and showers.

Subway entrance

Finish work and lighting will continue at the IRT southbound staircase in the next month.

Concrete

Construction of the reinforced concrete staircase structure is substantially complete with steel treads and tiled risers to follow. The two new escalator trusses from the fare array area to the new plaza have been set and final assembly continues. The new elevator enclosure has also been erected and elevator installation continues. Elevator enclosure will now be installed.

Waterproofing

• Waterproofing for the station is now substantially complete.

Erection of Interior Walls
Masonry walls for the fire doors are now substantially complete and minor work at the BMT mezzanine will continue in January. Tile work will now commence with the station.
Carlton Ave. Bridge

• MPT has been in place at Carlton Ave. and Pacific Street for work on the new south abutment. Excavation to the subgrade for the South Abutment foundation has been completed and the reinforced concrete footing poured. During this reporting period the contractor will continue to form and install rebar for the stem wall of the new South Abutment. In the event that noisy equipment (i.e. generators) is required to be used at street elevation for this work, then noise attenuation blanketing will be utilized.

Traffic mitigation site work

Work related to the closure of the northbound lanes of 4th Avenue at Atlantic Avenue is essentially complete except for installation of two permanent poles and signage to replace temporary installations. The poles and signs are on order from DOT. Later next year [sic], the MTA will replace bollards in the area and install other improvements. Our contractor will return to the site to replace the area once the MTA work is complete. Work will be performed at night if lanes have to be taken out of service for access to the site.

Arena site work

Installation of the underground drainage has commenced within the plaza area located at the tip of the site and is substantially complete. The balance of the drainage will be completed as the work at the tip of Atlantic and Flatbush is completed in the Spring and Summer. A temporary asphalt working surface has been placed throughout the plaza.

AY Construction Alert 1-16-2012

Latest Nets promotion suggests that arena site in late 2012 would feature three towers

2012-01-17T11:41:00.001-05:00

The Nets really want to hang on to their superstar guard, who's not yet signed for next year.

A press release from the Nets, headlined Deron Williams Featured in All Access Marketing Campaign: Multi-Faceted Marketing Campaign Launches Today--Last Opportunity to Secure Best Locations for the NETS at Barclays Center in Brooklyn:

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—NETS star point guard Deron Williams is the centerpiece of the team’s final phase in its All Access season ticket campaign for Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

With tickets already sold out in several premium locations, the NETS are launching a multi-faceted marketing campaign today, Tuesday, January 17, for the final stage of their All Access season tickets beginning for the 2012-13 NBA season. Tickets are available at www.BarclaysCenter.com or by calling 877-77-BKTIX.

The comprehensive advertising campaign will include outdoor, such as on 300 taxi tops, several billboards, and kiosks in Brooklyn and Manhattan, as well as direct mail.

“Opening night for the NETS in Brooklyn is less than 10 months away, and the excitement is resonating at an all-time high throughout the marketplace,” said NETS CEO Brett Yormark. “Our All Access season tickets are selling even faster than we expected due in large part to the unique benefits and value offering. We are excited to celebrate our superstar Deron in the new campaign as we prepare for the team’s move to one of the most anticipated sports and entertainment venues in the world."

Note that Yormark hasn't actually announced sales numbers.

Regarding the graphic (via NetsDaily), NetsDaily thinks there's a not-so-veiled message to potential new Net Dwight Howard (aka D12), the itching-to-leave star Orlando Magic center.

I think there's a not-at-all-veiled misrepresentation of what the arena site will look like when the Barclays Center opens in 2012: there won't be three finished towers in the slightest. One tower may be under construction.

An industrial site for sale on Dean Street across from the planned arena parking lot promises change

2012-01-17T07:00:00.001-05:00

An industrial building on the south side of Dean Street a bit east of Carlton Avenue--across from the future surface parking lot for the Atlantic Yards arena--is for sale, and the broker suggests it could be high-density residential, while offering a rendering (below left) that suggests, at minimum, ground floor retail serving arena-goers.

The site offers a substantial 65,000 square feet, which would support not just a restaurant but a small multi-store complex.

The 1951 building, which offers two stories above ground and one story below ground, is zoned M-1, aimed for light manufacturing, but in which "[o]ffices, hotels and most retail uses are also permitted." Residential is more iffy. (Photo above and below right are from Google Street View)

It offers a 140-foot frontage and a significant potential footprint, according to the advertisement from Winick Realty Group:

16,500 Square Feet Ground Floor (ceiling 11½ -12 feet)
21,370 Square Feet Second Floor (ceiling 11½ –12 Feet)
26,722 Square Feet Lower Level (12-14 Feet Lower Level)

No price is listed, but a previous sales effort, via another broker, priced the building at $5 million.

Winick also promotes an "all glass front," parking for 90 cars, and cites, as neighbors, "Nets Arena, Barclays Arena, Atlantic Terminal, Atlantic Yards, Atlantic Center."

An industrial facility, a residential block

Actually, the neighbors are more residential, with some manufacturing. For more than a decade, the building has been home to a facility operated by the Ulano Corporation, which has its headquarters on Third Avenue in the Gowanus district and, according to its website, "specializes in the manufacture of stencil-making products and chemicals for screen process printing."

Unlike some industrial facilities across the street, which were fallow, there have been industrial operations there until recently, one neighbor told me, and they may even be ongoing. (I'll update this when I learn more.)

It has co-existed on a block with both residential and industrial spaces. (Here's a photo by Tracy Collins of some ball playing outside.) As the top photo indicates, to the west, closer to Carlton, there are more residences. The Prospect Heights Historic District, as this zoning map indicates, is just a few doors away.

And, as the photo at right indicates, to the east, there's an industrial facility--a laundry operated by Primo Uniform Services--and another building, with a seemingly industrial lower level and residences above. That building--behind the "No Parking" sign--is occupied by artists' workspaces and live/work lofts, and is also owned by Ulano.

Beyond that, there are several residences that have been converted from manufacturing spaces, including one that graced a recent Corcoran mailing.

The AY connection

The south side of Dean Street is not part of the Atlantic Yards footprint. But Atlantic Yards is clearly part of the pitch,, as are the numerous new residential developments detailed on the map at left, prepared by Winick Realty Group.

This map emphasizes the retail potential of the site.

It also mistakenly delineates the Atlantic Yards site as "Barclays Center/Atlantic Yard," without acknowledging that Block 1129, bounded by Dean and Pacific streets and Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues, is also part of the project site.

Some documents

Below, the sales brochure from Winick, as well as some documents regarding the history of the site. They indicate a bond issue from the New York City Industrial Development Agency (NYC IDA) as of 1999, for Ulano to renovate, and the sale of the building by the NYC IDA in 2010 to Ulano, which had made advanced payments on the outstanding bonds.

594DeanWinick

594 Dean

594 Dean A

594DeanB

594DeanC

Some "Truth Vigilantism" toward a 2005 New York Times account of AY arena costs

2012-01-16T07:00:00.001-05:00

I didn't start writing about Atlantic Yards until late 2005, so I'll apply some retrospective "Truth Vigilante" treatment to Stadium Games: Give and Take And Speculation; What the Teams Want And What the City Gets, a 1/16/05 New York Times articles about the proposals then in play:

Nonetheless, the mayor and Gov. George E. Pataki are on the verge of approving three new sports sites -- a football stadium for the Jets, a baseball stadium for the Yankees and a basketball arena for the Nets -- that will require a combined public investment of at least $1.1 billion.

It is not easy to assess precisely what the taxpayers will get out of their investment, which is equivalent in cost to a major Manhattan skyscraper or 25 schools with 600 seats each. In part, that is because the economic benefits are based on studies commissioned by the teams themselves, and promoted by the government sponsors of the projects.

What about AY?

So, what did it say about Atlantic Yards?

The Nets arena in Brooklyn will require a public investment of about $200 million and the condemnation of several blocks of housing and stores. New York will get a basketball team back from New Jersey and an arena with a public garden on top that is intended to serve as an anchor for a residential and commercial development. The arena could also be used for high school or college games.

Well, the public direct investment is nearly 50% higher now, while there are numerous other subsidies and opportunity costs, leading the New York City Independent Budget Office, in 2009, to pronounce the arena a net loss for the city.

The public garden? Long gone.

Arena as anchor for residential and commercial development? Not so much. Maybe leverage for subsidies.

The curious Zimbalist mention

The Times's Charles Bagli wrote:

Sports economists have long said that stadiums and arenas often enrich teams but are relatively poor public investments.

''There's no intrinsic economic benefit from building a sports facility,'' said Andrew Zimbalist, a leading sports economist who teaches at Smith College. ''You have to look at the details of the financing, the facility and the location.''

All true, but the Times did not mention that "leading sports economist" Zimbalist was the author of the promotional study regarding Atlantic Yards.

More on the arena

The Times reported:

The Nets' $430 million Brooklyn arena, in the Long Island Rail Road yard at Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, is an eye-catching but ultimately modest element of a larger $2.5 billion residential and commercial development next door. The developer Bruce Ratner bought the New Jersey-based team for $300 million last year, intending to use it as a lever to build the arena, 4,500 apartments and 2 million square feet of office space on a 21-acre site in downtown Brooklyn.

The project has won considerable support in Brooklyn, but some local residents and others object to the state's willingness to condemn land on behalf of a private developer, especially in an area that is finally enjoying a revival. They also say that the level of subsidies outweigh the benefits of the project.

OK, were they right? The Times didn't help much.

The article continued:

Mr. Ratner's initial request for $450 million in subsidies and infrastructure work has been whittled down to $200 million to $215 million in negotiations with the city and the state, according to officials involved in the talks.

Whittled down? Maybe Ratner, as is his pattern, started with a simply outlandish request, and then moved closer to a mutually acceptable number. After all, he figured out a new way to save--thanks to federally tax-exempt bonds.

The Zimbalist fig leaf

The article continued:

A newly revised analysis by Mr. Zimbalist, the sports economist, estimated the net fiscal impact of the entire project at $1.06 billion over 30 years. Proponents argue that the principal benefit is the housing, about half of which would be for middle-, moderate- and low-income tenants. Of course, those apartments would benefit from an as yet undetermined level of tax breaks and other incentives.

Um, why does Zimbalist get described merely as "the sports economist" rather than "Ratner's hired consultant"? I don't think the phrase earlier in the article--"economic benefits are based on studies commissioned by the teams themselves"--is sufficient disclosure.

A hint, and a question

The article continued:

Real estate executives in Brooklyn said that Mr. Ratner was considering a sharp reduction in the amount of office space, and an increase in the number of apartments.

Sifting out the value of the arena alone is difficult, but based on Mr. Zimbalist's original analysis, it would appear to be a modest $107.5 million over 30 years, after deducting the cost of the public investment.

Real estate executives in Brooklyn? How about Forest City executives who didn't want to be quoted by name? The implication, which the Times didn't pursue--and not until much later that year--was that there'd be fewer jobs.

And why should Mr. Zimbalist's original analysis be considered credible? Even though there was no IBO report yet, or one from the Pratt Center for Community Development, at the least the Times should at least have taken seriously the Kim/Peebles critique of Zimbalist. Which it didn't.

Looking beyond the Brooklyn Brand(s)

2012-01-15T06:30:00.000-05:00

In Time for Brooklyn (and its Fans) to Go Beyond the Brand, in City Limits' new Brooklyn Bureau, Marilyn Gelber of the Brooklyn Community Foundation wrote 1/5/12:

But justifiable pride of place should not make us reluctant to look deeper and examine serious challenges to Brooklyn's well being.

...Right now in the media there are two Brooklyns: the Brooklyn of artisanal cheese shops and the Brooklyn of murder and mayhem.

While we love that there's no shortage of ink on how “cool” Brooklyn is, there's an egregious lack of reporting dedicated to civic and social issues in what would be the nation's fourth largest city. We're not comfortable with the idea of Brooklyn being split apart by income disparity and selective investment, and the general media paying attention to just a sliver of what's happening here.

So the Brooklyn Bureau will not only offer new reportage across Brooklyn put also publish a series of Neighborhood Profiles for each of Brooklyn's 18 Community Districts, produced by the Center for the Study of Brooklyn at Brooklyn College.

In the spring, that will lead to "the first ever Borough-wide Brooklyn Trends Report, examining the strength of our collective local economy, housing stock, health and healthcare, public safety, education system, environment, and the arts."

In the New Yorker, a dissection of plans behind a new stadium (and some AY echoes); also, a look at the modest study of the Staples Center economic impact

2012-01-14T06:30:00.077-05:00

Connie Bruck's New Yorker profile of Philip Anschutz and the Anschutz Entertainment Group, The Man Who Owns L.A.: A secretive mogul’s entertainment kingdom., is subscribers-only, but it's well worth reading, especially for the machinations behind plans for a new football stadium in Los Angeles.

[Graphic by Mark Ulriksen for the New Yorker]

Anschutz owns the Staples Center and L.A. Live, and via key lieutenant Tim Leiweke, has proven quite adept at getting city and state legislators on their side.

Getting going

Bruck writes:

For the nation's second-largest city, L.A.'s downtown was shockingly underdeveloped. By the late nineties, many of its biggest firms... had been bought by other companies and their headquarters moved elsewhere. It was the perfect place for Anschutz, a confirmed bottom-fisher, to buy low and build a new empire.

Of course, L.A. is a more sprawling, West Coast city, and it had a large downtown, not a small piece of land, as in Brooklyn, designated for sports facility development.

The impact of a ballot threat

Success involved eminent domain and some interesting horse trading. Bruck writes:

Leiweke was especially deft at recruiting every political group he needed. "In the end," [former Councilman Joel] Wachs said, "we were fighting the unions, the business community, the L.A. Times, the Cardinal." But polls showed that, if the issue went to a ballot, A.E.G. would likely lose, and after a battle that lasted nearly a year Wachs got what he wanted from A.E.G.: the funds to pay off the city's bonds would come out of A.E.G.'s pocket.

In other words, it's always possible to recruit prominent supporters, but the public is wary--as it was with the Atlantic Yards subsidies, until a poll managed to frame the issues in the most advantageous possible way. With Atlantic

Claims for the new plan: "repetition did not make it true"

Now A.E.G. aims to build not only a new football stadium, but also a new convention center, one that would replace an antiquated space that leaves L.A. 15th in the nation in convention cities. Bruck writes:

Leiweke vowed that the project would rescue the ailing city economy, "for our children's children." And even though the city would have to issue about three hundred million dollars of tax-exempt bonds, he said that "it won't cost you a penny." Leiweke made this argument countless times, and soon politicians like Villaraigosa and City Council woman Jan Perry were echoing him. But repetition did not make it true.

Repetition did not make it true. Connie Bruck is a Truth Vigilante!

In New York, however, the local press did not challenge, for example, the statements made by Gov. David Paterson and Mayor Mike Bloomberg at the Atlantic Yards arena groundbreaking.

Bruck quotes the city's financial analyst as pointing to several pitfalls in the deal. The NYC Independent Budget Office's skeptical reports came in 2005 and 2009, well after Forest City Ratner had locked in significant support.

Dissing academics

Bruck describes Leiweke's public pitch to neighborhood and civic groups, and what happened when a questioner asked about the need for an academic study to validate the claims:

"I'd be more than happy to show you that," Lewiweke responded. "And I'll make you a deal. I'll buy you dinner one night at L.A. Live, and we can sit there, look at three billion dollars in development, and we can question whether the professor that came in and said there would be no economic development that will come from Staples Center was right. I can show you studies--but how about I show you brick and mortar?" His questioner pressed about the research, and Leiweke, raising his voice, replied, "You bring your professor, who never has invested one penny in this community, and then I will bring all the union guys, who are sitting here with forty-per-cent unemployment, and you ask them, Do they want to let those people that have never spent a dime of risk in this community sit there and preach that there's no economic development and impact that's going to come from stadiums and arenas?"

That's probably a powerful speech, but if A.E.G. had learned from Atlantic Yards, they would know to get your own professor, like Andrew Zimbalist, to say everything will be fine.

A study in L.A.

As it happens, the Los Angeles City Controller commissioned a 2003 study by sports economist Robert Baade, which aimed to "address the issue of whether the City of Los Angeles derives revenue sufficient to justify their $71.1 million investment in the Staples Center." The report says yes, but the claims are modest, not outlandish.

Baade notes that the investment--which likely involved lower exposure to taxpayers--was quite low in the general realm. And Staples houses five professional sports teams.

Why facility owners in big cities can pay more

Baade writes:

Theoretically, all else equal, one would expect an inverse relationship between the
size of the subsidy for a playing facility and the population and size of the metropolitan economy. The reason for the inverse relationship relates to the relatively greater revenue that the largest urban areas command through a larger fan base, naming rights, the sale or lease of luxury seating, and greater media revenue....

Municipalities in the United States on average contributed 11 percent of the
construction costs for venues that jointly accommodate NBA and NHL teams. In an
effort to make this comparison more valid for the Staples Center, the 11 percent figure
reflects the average public contribution for arenas built through 1997, the year before
ground was broken for the Staples Center. The maximum public contribution of $71.1
million for the Staples Center represents about 21.5 percent of the reported $330 million construction cost. Taxpayers, however, as indicated in the previous section of the report, may have contributed only $12.6 million, or 3.81 percent, of the cost of the project if the cost was $330 million. If the smaller percentage applies, clearly the Staples Center qualifies as exceptionally taxpayer friendly, which conforms to the theory that large markets require less taxpayer support in building sports facilities.

As I noted, moving to a new arena in the nation's media capital was a very good deal for Forest City.

What L.A. traded

Baade writes of the Disposition and Development Agreement (DDA):

In essence the DDA’s assurance that the City of Los Angeles will not incur any debt service came at the expense of the Developer receiving virtually all of the significant revenue streams the new arena generated. Specifically the arena naming rights ($116 million), revenues from luxury seating revenues (luxury loges and club seats), membership fees for the Grand Reserve Club, sponsorship deals, and $9.6 million per year in parking revenues go to the Developer. It would not be misleading to say that the City of Los Angeles traded some uncertain revenue for the certainty of not having debt service expenses.

What were the direct costs and benefits to Los Angeles of the Staples Center as
articulated in the DDA? As previously noted, the City of Los Angeles provided $71.1
million for the construction of the Staples Center. The annual debt service payment for the $38.5 the City borrowed amounted to approximately $3.8 million. The author has not been able to identify a complete description of expenses the City incurs to operate the facility (additional police protection, transportation, garbage collection, etc.), but all operation and maintenance expenses, to include set-asides for capital improvements, have to be considered in accurately assessing the net, direct financial contribution of the Staples Center to the City of Los Angeles.

In other words, if naming rights were counted as a subsidy--and only in a few jurisdictions (I believe) do municipalities keep a share--the equation might be different.

The direct benefits

Baade cites direct benefits, including the lease of the Staples Center site (there's a $1/year lease for the AY arena) and debt-service for City-owned property; taxes from ticket sales; the City’s share of parking revenues; and net additional property taxes (the payments in lieu of taxes in Brooklyn go to pay the arena construction); and incremental sales taxes, business license taxes, and utility taxes.

He writes:

Summarizing this information, the City has received or will receive $3,850,863.35
in benefits in excess of direct costs per year over the life of the agreement with the
Developer according to the various agreements between the City and Developer.

The indirect benefits

He writes:

Indirect benefits emanate primarily from increased sales tax receipts induced by the operation of the arena. The Staples Center may account for some increases in property taxes through increased property values in its environs and utility taxes may increase through greater utility use, but experience and the conventional wisdom argue that stadium-induced changes in income-insensitive revenues are relatively small. The estimation of indirect benefits, therefore, focuses on changes in sales tax receipts.

...The .3 percentage point increment can be crudely identified as the contribution from the Staples Center, and in absolute dollar terms a .3 percent increase equals $1.04 million. This figure approximates the taxable sales increase presented in Table 4 of $35.56 million multiplied by the city’s portion, 2.0 percent, of the 8.25 percent rate governments impose collectively on taxable sales. The 2.0 percent tax imposed by the City on the $35.56 increment in taxable sales yields a value of $.711 million.

...If it is assumed that all other taxes would increase by .3 percent as a consequence of the Staples Center, then completing an arithmetic exercise using these crude statistics, it is estimated that the Staples Center annually contributes $6 million to the City of Los Angeles coffers. Of course, as noted previously, there is no reason to expect that property taxes in the Staples Center environs or other relatively income- insensitive taxes would increase by a percentage that equals the increase for income-sensitive sales taxes.

The costs

He estimates new costs:

Projecting for the entire year, increased costs for transportation workers to provide for the increased demand induced by Staples Center activities equaled approximately $180,000. A crude estimate for incremental police, sanitation, and transportation expenses to service events at the Staples Center was set at $540,000 or three times $180,000. The incremental expenses were projected to grow by 3.91 percent per year, the rate of growth of the Employment Cost Index from 1983 through 2001. It should be noted that in estimating the net present value of benefits from the Staples Center, it has been tacitly assumed that the City would not have generated property taxes or rent from the property, which the Staples Center utilizes, over the life of the agreement. For each incremental increase of $100,000 in property taxes or rent the net present value of the Staples Center declines by $1.2 million.

A conservative conclusion

Baade concludes that there is likely a benefit, but it depends which numbers you use, which means more analysis is needed:

[T]he present value of the estimated increases in tax revenues... less incremental operational costs to the City of Los Angeles is $49.234 million over the twenty-five year life of the agreement. If the money generated from the City’s portion of parking revenues and ticket sales is all net new revenue to the City, then the discounted present value of net benefits represents a 290.7 percent return on an investment of $12.6 million ($49.234 - $12.6/$12.6 x 100 = 290.7 percent). On the other hand, if all the parking and ticket surcharge revenues claimed by the City simply represent revenues that would have been generated at other venues, then the subsidy is $71.1 million, which exceeds the present value of revenues collected by $21.87 million. Furthermore, an increase in the estimated incremental operating costs of $100,000 per year results in a reduction in the net present value of the facility of approximately $2 million per year. A more accurate accounting and monitoring of City-borne costs of operation, particularly as it relates to security post 9/11 is critical for determining the economic efficacy of the Staples Center and other such projects. The same sort of exacting analysis needs to be applied to the incremental indirect benefits.

It depends on the assumptions

Baade recognizes that some numbers are still tough to pin down:

In summary there is ample reason to believe that the Staples Center has generated a positive return for the City’s investment. The size of the return from the perspective of the taxpayers depends once again on the extent to which the City’s share of parking fees and ticket tax revenues are new, and the extent to which the value created through the operation of the Staples Center remains in the City.

For the first question, however, there's more evidence:

There are reasons to expect that a large portion of the incremental parking and ticket tax revenues were new to the City when the Staples Center began its operation. Four of the five professional sports tenants (Lakers, Kings, Sparks, and Avengers) are new to the City of Los Angeles. The Lakers, Kings, and Sparks relocated from the Great Western Forum located in the City of Inglewood, and the Avengers began play in the Staples Center during their inaugural 2000 season.

Policy implications

What does this mean for other cities? Baade writes:

The policy implications are clear. Cities have to be very conscious of how projects they subsidize promote or discourage local value added. The key to development has to do with the ability of the project to sustain spending in the local community rather than simply having the spending that occurs pass to hands outside the area. Residency requirements and taxes on local earnings are two ways to promote local development. If these methods are viewed as too likely to discourage development, then methods for encouraging developers to partner with the community more intimately should be undertaken explicitly in fashioning the memorandum of understanding between the developer and the community.

Why is that important? Because the area was depressed (unlike the AY site). Baade quotes another author, Matthew Parlow:

The South Park neighborhood which hosts the Staples Center, was blighted and in need of economic revitalization. The seventy block (sic) area of downtown Los Angeles was marked by empty parking lots, boarded-up warehouses, and “For Lease” signs which adorned most office building in the neighborhood. Twenty-five percent of this area, which one local reporter described as “predominantly sleepy and often seedy,” was comprised of parking lots, while another 25% of the land remained vacant and undeveloped. Moreover, although 90% of the 270 apartments were rented, much of the ground retail space was empty. Given these dilapidated conditions in South Park, City officials sought to revitalize the area.

Wait, there were empty buildings and lots on the Atlantic Yards site, weren't there? Yes, but it was a six block area. Now with an adjacent historic district.

A lingering warning

Baade offers some guidance to those who present gauzy projections regarding sports facilities:

If prospective estimates are to be used in assessing the merits of subsidies for sports facilities, then they should, at the very least, be filtered through retrospective analyses for cities of a similar economic character to lend some context or supportive evidence.

Regarding Atlantic Yards, we could do that already. All the optimistic studies--from the developer's consultant Andrew Zimbalist, the NYC Economic Development Corporation, the Empire State Development Corporation--depend on a full buildout of the project in a decade. No alternative numbers were offered, based on a slower, or less complete, buildout. Thus the extant numbers are all suspect.

Another columnist enraptured by the Jay-Z & Beyonce baby: "it’s a nice diversion to think about a child born with a silver spoon"

2012-01-14T06:00:00.000-05:00

The notorious Stephen Witt, opening in his Our Time Press column on Blue Ivy Carter, writes:

Although I don’t shoot at the same baskets or pay the same taxes, I’m as bubbling over with joy as the average schmo over Jay-Z and Beyonce finally having a little bundle of joy.

Did the average schmo (beyond faux schmo Denis Hamill) really care? Or just the schmo who hugged Bruce Ratner?

Witt concludes:

And I’m not immune to feeling happy about the blessed event myself. After all, Jay-Z is a modern day rags-to-riches story.

It doesn’t matter that so many of our poor never make it. That they are thrown under the collective bus in the guise of not being the right color or not being able to go to the best schools or afford college entrance exam fees.

What matters is that someone from the underclass made it out and because of that so many of us live vicariously through them. When you’re struggling to keep your job or find one or to pay the rent, it’s a nice diversion to think about a child born with a silver spoon, whose parents once knew poverty up close.

Here's a "nice diversion": social mobility between generations is dramatically lower in the U.S. than in many other developed countries, as noted by the HuffPost and the Times.

But we have more impressive celebrities.

The Times? An advocate for readers, or a stenographer for politicians (and others in power)

2012-01-13T13:53:00.001-05:00

Clay Shirky, in the Guardian, has a wise follow-up to the "Truth Vigilante" question:

The immediate fallout from [Public Editor Arthur] Brisbane's question will be minor – no paper in the United States, not even the Times (as its editor partially concedes), has enough staff to express continuous skepticism about political speech – but there may yet be a lasting effect to be reckoned with. Having asked, in a completely innocent way, whether the Times should behave like an advocate for the readers, rather than a stenographer to politicians, the question cannot now be unasked. Every day in which the Times (and indeed, most US papers) fail at what has clearly surfaced as their readers' preference on the matter will be a day in which that gap remains uncomfortably visible.

And that includes when politicians are talking about Atlantic Yards--and when developers do so, as well.

Why no press conference for the topping-out ceremony? Maybe to avoid questions about the schedule

2012-01-13T11:06:00.002-05:00

John Brennan of the Bergen Record writes, in Nets top off-quietly:

One of the staples of major sports venue construction is the “topping off” ceremony – almost as much so as the “shovels-and-hard-hats” groundbreaking event that formally kicks off construction. I’ve been to plenty of these in the last decade in this metropolitan area – heck, even dormant Meadowlands Xanadu had a topping off ceremony for its parking garage (back in 2005, when that entertainment and retail project was supposed to open a mere two years later).

But for whatever reason, Forest City Ratner celebrated the Barclays Center’s topping off on Thursday with a mere press release.

Whatever reason, I suspect, is that they didn't want to answer questions about how the schedule has slipped, with a very tight deadline to finish site work before the first Jay-Z concert in September, and what the plan is to ensure that the exterior cladding, produced by closed-and-reopened ASI Limited, would get done.

Brennan points to a cautionary tale across the river:

The Nets will just have to hope that they don’t run into similar deadline challenges to the Devils when they opened the Prudential Center in 2007. The team had to play its first nine games of the 2007-08 season on the road, and when it did open, many of the upper-level seats were suitable only for the sub-200 pound crowd – a dwindling demographic in the U.S. in recent years. The Devils eventually settled a lawsuit with the seating company for undisclosed terms.

The press release

Here's the press release:

FOREST CITY RATNER COMPANIES, HUNT CONSTRUCTION GROUP, INC. AND MORE THAN 500 WORKERS CELEBRATE TOPPING OUT OF BARCLAYS CENTER

Thursday, December 2, 2011
BROOKLYN, NY – Forest City Ratner Companies, Hunt Construction Group, Inc., Banker Steel, J.F. Stearns Company, Onexim Sports & Entertainment, and NETS Basketball celebrated the topping out of Barclays Center in a ceremony today at the arena site in Brooklyn.

The event marked the significant milestone of the completion of the 10,400 pounds of structural steel for Barclays Center, the major sports and entertainment venue opening at Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues in September 2012. Erection of steel commenced in November 2010.

Forest City Ratner Chairman and CEO Bruce Ratner, the arena developer, visited Barclays Center today and congratulated the more than 500 workers on their momentous achievement.

"From Day One, I said I want to develop great things that create jobs, and that's what we're doing by building this spectacular arena," said Mr. Ratner. "In just eight months we will open Barclays Center and bring many exciting events here, where your hard work will be appreciated by millions of people for years to come. I can't thank you enough for your dedication. And, most importantly, it's all union, union, union as we continue to build important projects for the city and the state."

"Hunt Construction wants to thank Forest City Ratner Companies and NETS Basketball for the opportunity to participate on this landmark project," said H. Mark Gladden, Project Executive for Hunt Construction Group, Inc. "We also congratulate our partners Banker Steel, J.F. Stearns Company and Ironworkers Local 361 in topping out the Barclays Center steel framing. We look forward to the grand opening and ribbon cutting this fall!"

The NETS thanked the workers by providing 1,000 tickets to upcoming weekend games, and Hunt Construction provided the workers with celebratory Barclays Center Topping Out long-sleeve t-shirts.

From AYW: Two Atlantic Yards on January 26: District Service Cabinet and transportation group

2012-01-13T10:28:00.000-05:00

From Atlantic Yards Watch, Two Atlantic Yards Meetings January 26th:

There will be two meetings addressing Atlantic Yards issues taking place at Brooklyn Borough Hall on Thursday, January 26th.
The next Atlantic Yards District Service Cabinet will meet from 9:30 am to 11 am. Members of the public may observe the meeting. The agenda has not yet been announced, but given the meeting's timing, it is likely to focus on the transportation demand management plan for Barclays Center.
The second meeting is a follow-up to the December 12, 2011 meeting on traffic issues related to Atlantic Yards. The meeting has the format of a roundtable discussion in which invited community groups can each appoint one representative to participate. Representatives of FCRC and NYCDOT will join the group. The meeting will begin at 6 pm.
Both meetings will be held in the Community Room at Brooklyn Borough Hall, 209 Joralemon Street.

I'd add that there was considerable concern at the meeting last month over the content and timing of the much-promised Transportation Demand Management plan.

Forest City Ratner's designated lurker, the powerful Rapfogel family, and the developer's ties to Sheldon Silver

2012-01-13T07:00:00.011-05:00

Forest City Ratner's designated lurker at certain public events is easy to spot, a round-faced young guy who wears the kipah of an observant Jew: Michael Rapfogel, who comes from a family thisclose to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

Rapfogel, who works in FCR's government relations department, was taking notes outside an April 2010 courthouse interview after Atlantic Yards opponent Daniel Goldstein settled and agreed to move--the latter's attorney called it spying.

Rapfogel was, curiously enough, at Brooklyn Borough Hall just before the 12/12/11 meeting concerning a Transportation Working Group, though he didn't stay for the event.

And Rapfogel was across the street (with basketball coach/political consultant Thomas "Ziggy" Sicignano) on 11/15/11 watching the press conference held by Council Member Letitia James announcing a lawsuit filed by seven people who said they were promised construction jobs and union cards after going through an FCR-paid training program.

The Rapfogel connection

Rapfogel holds the title of Vice President--relatively low on the totem pole where such titles later get prepended with "Senior" and "Executive"--but I doubt he's a random hire. Sure, he's got a law degree, so he's competent, but he's also part of a family with crucial political ties. And he's survived while Forest City Ratner has downsized its staff.

His father William Rapfogel serves as the head of a major charity, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, and is an old friend of Silver, and his mother Judy Rapfogel is Silver's chief of staff.

This week Fake Sheldon Silver Tweeted a request to Judy Rapfogel to crack down on New York Times columnist Michael Powell for writing critically about Forest City Ratner, and included a link to an August 2008 photograph excerpted at left, showing Bruce Ratner (l.) and key aide Bruce Bender--mentioned in Powell's column--flanking Silver at a Met Council event.

The importance of Silver

In November 2008, I wrote about the ties between Silver, the Met Council, and Bruce Ratner. Ratner has directed campaign contributions to Silver's Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee, the legislature has assisted Ratner, and Ratner has been honored by the Met Council. (I didn't mention Michal Rapfogel because, as far as I know, he wasn't yet working for Forest City.)

Silver might well be an Atlantic Yards supporter even without these connections. But they surely help cement that support. Indeed, more than one person involved in Brooklyn politics has indicated to me that Silver serves as legislative firebreak for Ratner, and I'll continue to contend that Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a vocal critic of Yankee Stadium, steered clear of Atlantic Yards because of his desire to stay in Silver's good graces.

Silver, who of course approved state funding via the Public Authorities Control Board, either actively or simply because of Assembly hierarchy has stymied legislative investigation into Atlantic Yards on the Assembly side. Remember the public hearings in 2009 and 2010 that focused or touched on Atlantic Yards? They were run by state Senator Bill Perkins, taking advantage of temporary Democratic sway in that body.

In a 6/20/07 profile of Silver, the New York Times reported:

Among the most favored beneficiaries in the last fiscal year was the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty and its affiliated organizations, which received nearly $1 million. The group’s chief executive, William E. Rapfogel, is the husband of Mr. Silver’s chief of staff, Judith Rapfogel. The council is widely acknowledged to provide useful services to all ethnic and racial groups throughout the city, and has long received generous public financing.

Though government watchdog groups criticize member items as unregulated pork, Mr. Silver says they are a legitimate way to finance worthy causes that do not get into the state budget. “Those who look at process are naïve,” he said of the system’s critics

New scrutiny

William Rapfogel has recently been in the news, cited in a 9/9/11 article by the Wall Street Journal headlined Charity Probe Questions: State Inquiry Could Scrutinize Pay at Nonprofit Overseen by Governor's Sister:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's probe of executive pay at nonprofits is bumping up against some of the state's best-known charities with strong ties to the most powerful people in Albany, including the speaker of the Assembly and the governor himself.

Two weeks ago, a state task force named by Mr. Cuomo began asking nonprofits to submit detailed information to the Cuomo administration about their executive pay levels and compensation policies. The task force said it is collecting information on a rolling basis from all nonprofits that receive funding from the state.

...Meanwhile, one of the first groups to get the request was the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, a social service group run by William Rapfogel, the husband of the chief of staff to Democratic Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver. Mr. Rapfogel received a $435,000 pay package in 2009, tax filings show.

The Rafogels' back story

In a friendly 6/29/11 article headlined Power Couple Also Powers Down, Our Town reported on the Rapfogels:

Judy and William Rapfogel got married at age 18 and have spent their whole adult lives together. They went to different colleges in the city, ran a newspaper together and eventually settled into demanding jobs. She is the longtime chief of staff to an Albany powerhouse, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and he, the CEO of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. They’ve had jobs that have taken them out of their beloved Lower East Side neighborhood and they spend most of their time working, but one thing has kept them together for 38 years.

In separate telephone interviews, both said their Judaism is a key to staying together. Observing the Sabbath every week means their jobs don’t completely consume their lives.
...The next year the Rapfogels started running their own newspaper, Jewish People.
“We were young and more idealistic about the journalism than we were interested in the business end,” William said. “You can’t pay the bills that way.”

It's much easier to try to work the press, apparently

William Rapfogel worked in city government before the Met Council, while Judy Rapfogel started with Silver as a campaign volunteer and has been there more than 30 years.

The next generation

The article noted:

Michael, 26, is raising his two daughters with his wife, Ora Rapfogel, in the same Grand Street Houses building as his parents, who somehow find the time—occasionally—to baby-sit. He works on government relations at Forest City Ratner, a Brooklyn-based developer whose projects include a Spruce Street school and a residential tower about to open on Lower Manhattan’s East Side.

That, by the way, is the same building: 8 Spruce Street (aka Beekman Tower), more accurately described as part of Lower Manhattan.

There was no mention of Michael's work, or lurk, in Brooklyn.

He hasn't been in the press much, but he was quoted in this 9/18/10 New York Times article about Forest City Ratner's policy of preventing groups of four or more young people under 21 to hang out: “When kids gather in groups, they can get kind of rowdy; they can cause trouble."

Catching up: topping out ceremony; Islanders game possibility; Prime 6 becomes Woodland

2012-01-13T06:18:00.002-05:00

Courtesy of NLG:

Barclays Center Holds 'Topping Out' Ceremony

Report: Islanders in talks to play a preseason game in Brooklyn

Controversial Slope sports bar to open as farm-to-table eatery

Rethinking the role of news ombudsman: "aggregate, curate, debate" (which would mean linking to sites like AYR)

2012-01-12T23:11:00.000-05:00

Journalist and author Dan Gillmor, in What a 21st Century News Ombudsman Should Do: Aggregate, Curate, Debate, responds to the Times's "Truth Vigilante" dust-up and a Washington Post column by commenting:

These pieces highlighted how strange the ombudsman’s job has become, and why I think it needs to be updated in this networked age. Here’s how I’d change it, and I hope both of these men will consider at least adding some of these ideas to their portfolio. There would be two main approaches: aggregation and conversation.

The best media criticism of every news organization is being done outside its walls. I would stop writing my own critiques, and then:
Make it a core part of my role to aggregate every responsible critique of the organization’s work that I could find;
Call bullshit when the critics are wrong; and thank them when they are right;
Encourage the best critics cross-post on my page.
Strongly encourage newsroom staff to participate in these debates. UPDATE: Brisbane got a reply from the Times’ editor, Jill Abramson, and replied to that; good to see…
Ask readers to flag mistakes of fact and analysis, and put the corrections (easier with facts) into a database with or without the cooperation of the newsroom
Create a robust, open forum about the organization’s work.

Sure, I think that's a wise idea. After all, it could mean that someone inside the building takes seriously critiques like the one I posted of the Times's bizarro decision to fold in coverage of the lawsuit against BUILD into an article about a promotion for the Nets.

The Times, the "Truth Vigilante" uproar, and the journalism of verification

2012-01-12T22:34:00.000-05:00

Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante? wrote New York Times ombudsman Arthur Brisbane, occasioning nearly universal shouts of "yes," including from his colleagues, all dissected interestingly by Jay Rosen on his Press Think blog.

No one mentioned, as far as I can tell, former executive editor Bill Keller's useful formulation of "the journalism of verification," which is the newspaper's job. And while most of the discussion today concerned political coverage, we should remember that the Times has fallen short so many times regarding Atlantic Yards, such as:

Borough President candidate Scissura raises $126,765; yes, there are developers on the list (and auto dealers, bakers, etc.)

2012-01-12T21:07:00.000-05:00

The heir apparent in the Brooklyn Borough President's race is doing pretty well. The New York Post reported today, in Markowitz’s top advisor off to record start in 2013 Brooklyn Beep race:

Carlo Scissura, senior advisor to Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, last night said he’s hauled in a whopping $126,765 for the latest filing period for the campaign to succeed his term-limited boss. The total, which includes more than $123,000 cash on hand, represents the largest inaugural filing for any new Brooklyn Borough President candidate in city history, officials said. The warchest was raised in only 100 days.

...“Brooklynites need a borough president who can create jobs, increase access to affordable housing, and make sure our kids are getting the kind of top-notch education they deserve. “Brooklyn has changed and evolved in incredible ways over the past decade. With my experience working for Marty and in the private sector, on issues from job creation to education, I know I can help Brooklyn move forward in the years to come.”

So who contributed? The press release, according to the Post, said the filings "will show 250 donors, including 198 Brooklynites, with 193 of the Brooklyn donors believed to be eligible for matching funds – nearly doubling the 100-donor threshold required to qualify for public matching funds.”

And the list is out

Among those giving the largest amount, $3850, were four principals in a Bay Ridge auto dealership, from four people in Villabate-Alba Bakery, and Joseph Douek Chief Executive Officer and owner of Willoughby’s Camera.

Among those involved in development, there was $250 each from David, Jane, and Jed Walentas of Two Trees Management, plus $1000 each from three other Two Trees employees. He also got $1000 each from three members of the Chera Family (Crown Acquisitions) and from three members of the Laboz family (United American Land).

I didn't see any contributions from those associated with Forest City Ratner. Scissura, who stepped down from Chief of Staff for this race, co-leads the Atlantic Yards District Service Cabinet, among other AY-related duties.

Who'll run against Scissura? Maybe state Senator Eric Adams or Council Member Dominic Recchia. Or maybe Council Member Letitia James, should she decide not to pursue a citywide run for Public Advocate.
Carlo Scissura Campaign Finance Report

Bloomberg, in State of the City address, says "we’ll open the new Barclays Center at Atlantic Yards" (who's "we"?)

2012-01-12T15:19:00.001-05:00

From Mayor Mike Bloomberg's State of the City address today, according to prepared remarks:

In every borough in 2012, we’ll bring new jobs on line and make investments that will attract more visitors.

In Queens, Jet Blue will open its new headquarters in Long Island City and an expansion of the Queens Museum of Art will double its size. On Staten Island, we’ll create a new blue-collar-friendly industrial business zone, we’ll redesign the zoo’s aquarium, and we’ll help break ground on a major apartment and retail development at the Homeport, creating more than 1,100 construction jobs.

n Brooklyn, more good blue-collar jobs will come to the waterfront both in Sunset Park and at the Navy Yard. We’ll bring new jobs to Coney Island, with new rides and attractions. And we’ll open the new Barclays Center at Atlantic Yards – bringing big league sports back to the borough where they belong.

These new attractions will also help bring even more tourists to our city – and last year we hit a record 50 million, but we can do even better.

Let's just parse that for a moment. Barclays Center seems to be placed into the category of "attract more visitors" rather than "bring new jobs on line."

Let's see how often he keeps saying, as he did at the March 2010 groundbreaking, "“The world-class arena will bring the Nets to Brooklyn, and the entire project will bring with it more than 25,000 construction and permanent jobs, thousands of units of affordable housing, and tremendous economic activity."

And who's the "we" in "we'll open the new Barclays Center"? More Mikhail Prokhorov and Bruce Ratner than the public

In new briefs, ESDC and Forest City ask appeals court to overturn decision ordering new environmental review for Phase 2 of Atlantic Yards

2012-01-12T08:00:00.000-05:00

The battle over the last remaining Atlantic Yards lawsuit continues in court, with new briefs from the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) and developer Forest City Ratner.

The state agency, decrying an "unprecedented judicial usurpation of agency discretion," slams state Supreme Court Justice Marcy Friedman for imposing what it says are her views on how to analyze the potential impact of an extended project buildout lasting 25 years, rather than the officially announced ten years.

Similarly, Forest City denounces "an unprecedented expansion and distortion of SEQRA [State Environmental Quality Review Act], and an improper substitution by the court of its judgment for that of ESDC."

Thus, contends the agency, her decision, which required the ESDC to conduct a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) regarding Phase 2--the eleven towers outside the arena block and Site 5--should be reversed both because judges should defer to agency decisions, as well as "the record here, which makes clear that ESDC took multiple SEQRA 'hard looks' at the impacts of the Project under various construction schedules."

The briefs by ESDC and Forest Citywill get a response from the two coalitions (led by Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn and the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council/BrooklynSpeaks) that brought the (now-combined) lawsuit.

The twist

But the whole thing's a bit surreal.

Why? Because statements made outside the record by developer Bruce Ratner make a mockery of the agency's longstanding claims the project would last ten years. Moreover, a regular pattern of construction-related abuses means that the mitigation plan created by and cited by the state is less "robust" than asserted.

The ESDC is fighting Friedman's decision to order an SEIS, it is nonetheless conducting one, as a spokeswoman explained last September, "to ensure that the impacts to the surrounding community are minimized to the maximum practicable extent."

Or, perhaps, the agency is hedging its bets; if the appellate court does not overturn the lower court's decision, at least an SEIS will be in place.

And if the decision is overturned, then there will be no need to hold the public hearings associated with an SEIS. Nor would it have to make “further findings on whether to approve the MGPP [Modified General Project Plan] for Phase II of the Project.”

The back story

The case was initially argued 1/19/10 and decided 3/10/10 (a day before the arena groundbreaking). In that decision, Friedman criticized the ESDC’s “deplorable lack of transparency” and acknowledged that the ESDC’s use of a ten-year timeframe for the project buildout in the Modified General Project Plan (MGPP) was supported “only minimally.”

In that case, the main ammunition against the decade-long promise was an agreement with the MTA that allows 22 years to pay for Vanderbilt Yard development rights.

However, there was much more reason for skepticism. The Development Agreement, signed in late December 2009, was not released until January 25, after oral argument in the case.

Friedman did not allow it to be entered into the record for the case. It showed a clear contradiction with the professed time frame.

So, both sets of petitioners asked Friedman to reopen the case, which she did, acknowledging a misapprehension--though not quite a mistake on her part--about the Development Agreement.

In November 2010, Friedman remanded the proceedings "to ESDC for findings on the impact of the Development Agreement and of the renegotiated MTA agreement on its continued use of a 10 year build-out for the Project, and on whether a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement is required or warranted."

The ESDC responded by issuing findings that said no such SEIS was needed. Friedman, after hearing oral arguments on 3/15/11, issued her ruling 7/13/11.

The court ordered ESDC to prepare an SEIS “assessing the environmental impacts of delay in Phase II construction of the Project” and make “further findings on whether to approve the MGPP for Phase II of the Project.”

Friedman wrote that the ESDC's Technical Analysis does not provide technical studies of the effects of "significantly prolonged construction" but "appears to take the position that it is a matter of common sense that less intense construction will result in lower impacts for conditions such as traffic, noise, and air quality. "

Last September, an appeal was announced, and the ESDC and FCR filed briefs on 12/5/11. Response briefs are due tomorrow, 1/13/11.

The case and the issues

Did the ESDC act arbitrarily or capriciously or abuse its discretion in not preparing an SEIS with respect to Phase II of the Project? Did ESDC act irrationally in its assessment of environmental impacts in light of the uncertainty that existed with respect to the Project’s construction schedule?

No, says the agency.

As noted by the ESDC, after Friedman initially questioned the construction schedule analyzed by ESDC in the 2009 Technical Memorandum, the agency performed a 2010 Technical Analysis, "which affirmed the determination of the 2009 Technical Memorandum that a delay in the construction schedule would not result in new environmental impacts not previously disclosed in the FEIS."

The agency says it also explained "its discretionary decision not to prepare an SEIS."

However, the court "did not identify any specific errors in ESDC’s environmental analysis or any new information that an SEIS would yield that would have been pertinent to ESDC’s decisionmaking." Thus, it "exceeded the proper scope of judicial review."

The 2009 revisions: who "commenced a process"?

There's a curious use of verbiage in the ESDC brief:

In June 2009, two and a half years after the Project was approved, ESDC and MTA commenced a process to modify the 2006 approvals to allow the Project to move forward in the face of a serious downturn in the real estate market. The principal change to the plans was that instead of requiring FCRC to pay for the acquisition of the entire 22-acre Project site up front – in some cases years before particular development parcels were needed – ESDC and MTA agreed to allow the property to be acquired in phases. A

(Emphasis added)

I'm pretty sure the agencies didn't commence the process on their own; Forest City Ratner requested the revisions to save money: it had to put up only $20 million of the $100 million promised for the MTA's Vanderbilt Yard and, rather than pay for condemnation of all the footprint properties it didn't own, it got the ESDC to agree to pursue eminent domain in stages.

The 2010 process

In late 2010, the ESDC issued both a "Response to Remand” and a “2010 Technical Analysis.
The ESDC board, on 12/16/10, approved a resolution finding (i) that the Development Agreement and MTA Agreements did not have a material effect on whether it was reasonable to use a 10-year construction schedule to assess environmental impacts; (ii) that it appeared unlikely that the Project would be constructed on a 10-year schedule, because of delays and the economy; and (iii) that the analysis of a potential 25-year buildout confirmed the 2009 conclusion an SEIS was not required or warranted.

Taking a "hard look"

ESDC argues that it took the appropriate "hard look" at the issues raised by construction. But there's a curious description of what's happened:

As a result of its extensive analysis, ESDC found that construction of the Project would result in a number of significant environmental impacts, particularly with respect to traffic, noise and neighborhood character in the immediate vicinity of the site. To address these impacts, the FEIS identified a robust mitigation program, which was included in the SEQRA Findings Statement and imposed upon FCRC in an enforceable “Memorandum of Environmental Commitments”...

Robust? Not so much, as Atlantic Yards Watch indicates.

Could it get built in a decade?

ESDC, with the help of an independent construction consultant, first reviewed whether the project could be constructed in ten years, by 2019, and was told it was viable.

The brief adds:

ESDC also took several additional factors into account, including FCRC’s financial incentive to recognize a return on the substantial investment it had made in the Project as soon as possible, the current severe housing shortage in Brooklyn, projected population growth and the need for additional affordable and market-rate housing in Brooklyn in the coming decades and the Project’s transit-accessible site. Moreover, prior to affirming the 2009 MGPP, ESDC was advised by its independent financial consultant (KPMG LLP) that it would not be unreasonable to assume that the Brooklyn market would absorb the Project’s residential units over a 10-year period.

Well, that financial incentive is now diminished, thanks to a $249 million low-interest loan from immigrant investors that gives the developer a seven-year grace period, meaning that it could take 19 years to complete the arena block, without penalty.

And the KPMG report os notorious for its dubious (and secondhand) work.

Looking longer

The 2009 Technical Memorandum looked at a five-year delay, to 2024, with respect to traffic, transit, pedestrian and parking conditions upon completion. That, to the ESDC, was sufficiently thorough, but, in response to Friedman's Remand Order, ESDC and its technical consultants examined a scenario lasting until 2035.

For example, ESDC "examined seven successive stages of Project completion" and found "that significant new construction-related impacts would not arise" because, among other things, construction would be spread out and less intensive.

So the same conditions would continue on a number of development sites.

Did ESDC consider duration?

The brief states:

The keystone of the court’s Final Decision is its conclusion that ESDC failed to consider the duration of construction-related activities in its assessment of the potential impacts of a delay in Project construction. Thus, the court held that ESDC failed to consider the duration of impacts resulting from prolonged construction with respect to: neighborhood character (Final Decision at 11-13, 18), air quality (id. at 11-12), noise (id. at 11-12), traffic (id. at 11-12), open space (id. at 11, 14), socioeconomic conditions (id. at 11-13) and land use (id. at 11). The court also emphasized this holding in its summary at the end of its opinion, stating that the “Technical Analysis assumes, without any corroborating studies, that the environmental impacts will largely be independent of the duration of construction.”

That's not so, says ESDC. The FEIS noted that “[c]onstruction activities would be disruptive and concentrated on some blocks for an extended period of time” but "no portion of the project site, and thereby the immediately adjacent neighborhood, would be subject to the full effects of construction for the entire 10-year period.”

Yes, that would affect adjacent Dean and Pacific Streets "through the prolonged construction period,” but that “[a]s with the FEIS, these impacts would be experienced in a small area adjacent to the project site and would not affect the character of the larger Prospect Heights neighborhood.”

In other words, if you live nearby, you're out of luck.

Similarly, ESDC did consider duration regarding air quality, with respect to specific periods of time (3-hours, 24-hours, one-year), the agency said.

Noise

The agency, it says, also modeled noise and "imposed, numerous measures to mitigate, to 'the maximum extent practicable,' the noise from construction activities."

Not quite. In recent months, noisy and disruptive generators and jackhammers have prompted complaints, leading to new and better techniques to be identified after the fact.

The ESDC brief states:

In preparing the 2009 Technical Memorandum, ESDC was aware that the FEIS already had identified any receptor location that would experience significantly elevated construction noise for two or more years as within the area that would experience significant adverse noise impacts and thus require mitigation. Accordingly, the 2009 Technical Memorandum reasoned that stretching out the construction period for more than 10 years would not result in any new significant adverse noise impacts. ESDC noted that “[t]he effects of [the] delayed construction scenario on … noise would be spread over a longer period of time but the level of impact would not be greater than that presented in the FEIS.” The court did not discuss this analysis and did not explain why new noise modeling should be performed in light of the extensive noise modeling already performed in the FEIS.

However, the court did speak to the issue of whether duration, in itself, has a higher level of impact: "the duration of construction activities is a factor that is required to be taken into account."

Traffic and timing

The ESDCC brief states:

Because construction activity generally begins at 7 AM and ends at 3 PM, the FEIS construction traffic analysis considered three peak hours (weekdays 6-7 AM and 3-4 PM and Saturday 3-4 PM). A quantitative analysis was performed for three peak construction periods (Phases 1A, 1B and 2B) and concluded that “significant adverse traffic impacts would occur at numerous locations throughout the construction period.” The analysis identified 19 specific intersections that would experience significant adverse impacts from construction activity and prescribed mitigation.

That's already out of date. Construction activity has begun at 6 am since April 2011.

Vacant lots

While the "court also held that ESDC failed to consider duration in assessing the impacts of vacant lots, the surface parking lot on Block 1129 and construction staging," the FEIS did so, according to the ESDC; the traffic and noise impacts would be no worse than that after a larger, underground parking lot was created.

It states:

In the 2009 Technical Memorandum, ESDC considered whether the construction period impacts identified in the FEIS would be materially different if they were to be extended as a result of Project delay. It determined that the nature of the impacts would not change, but that they would be prolonged.

Essentially, the question is whether prolonging the impacts changes their nature.

The brief states:

In the Response to Remand, ESDC synthesized the information provided in the 2010 Technical Analysis with reference to vacant lots, surface parking and construction staging, and explained the basis for its decision not to prepare an SEIS on these issues. It is clear from that discussion, which the court did not cite in its decision, that ESDC did consider duration in its decision-making very carefully. The discussion focuses on each of the Phase II building sites, specifically examining how they would appear in the event of a construction delay. In general, ESDC found that a delay would either (as in the case of the rail yard building sites) perpetuate long-standing conditions or (as in the case of the surface parking lot on Block 1129) perpetuate site conditions that had already been thoroughly analyzed and addressed through screening, landscaping and other mitigation measures. ESDC’s discussion acknowledges that these conditions would be in place “for a longer period of time” but explains why an SEIS would not be likely to provide information that would be helpful either in limiting the extent of any delay or mitigating its impact.

In other words, maybe it'll be worse, but there's nothing more to say about it.

The precedents

The brief says Friedman was off base:

Citing three reported cases, the court stated that SEQRA determinations will be set aside “where the agency’s review of the environmental impacts is unsupported by studies and data or is conclusory.” But in two of the cases, the court identified specific environmental impacts that the agencies had failed to acknowledge or address in any way. In the third case, the agency failed to undertake any environmental review at all.

The build year

The brief states:

In preparing the 2009 MGPP, ESDC recognized explicitly that adverse economic conditions gave rise to uncertainty as to the timetable for construction of the Project. Consequently, ESDC looked carefully at whether it was reasonable to continue to assume that the Project would be constructed over a period of 10 years, going so far as to retain construction and financial experts to provide advice on construction logistics and the economic factors that would affect the pace of the development. Ultimately, based on such independent expert advice, ESDC concluded that it was reasonable to consider, as one important component of its assessment, a 10- year build-out as the reasonable worst-case condition, as it had in the FEIS. At the same time, ESDC acknowledged that the Project could be delayed for years beyond the 10-year period, and took a hard look at the potential impacts of such a delay.

The impact of the Development Agreement

Does the Development Agreement, which has outside dates giving Forest City 25 years to compleate the project, necessarily mean a 25-year buildout? The ESDC states that "the Transactional Documents are entirely consistent with the two-track approach ESDC took with respect to the build year. " It states::

ESDC explained that the Transactional Documents were not intended to extend the construction schedule but to: (i) require construction to proceed towards completion of the Project at a commercially reasonable pace, with the goal being completion in 2019; and (ii) in addition, establish deadlines to define the outer allowable limits for Project completion ESDC noted that “FCRC has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the Project and has a significant incentive, separate and apart from ESDC remedies, to pursue it to a successful and speedy conclusion because undeveloped land, the acquisition cost of which has been borne entirely by FCRC, does not earn any substantial return.”

Actually, the cost of acquiring land has been borne significantly by the city, which contributed $100 million. Moreover, Forest City's capacity to replace a high-interest land loan with low-interest immigrant investor funds--and seven years to repay it--gives them much less incentive to move quickly.

What was the right time frame?

ESDC states:

Indeed, had ESDC simply relied upon the 2035 build year favored by the lower court, it would be subject to criticism for failing to analyze the “reasonable worst-case scenario” that the FEIS had identified as having the greatest potential to result in concentrated traffic, air quality, noise and certain other quantitative impacts. ESDC’s consideration of both a 10-year schedule and a delayed schedule in the 2009 Technical Memorandum was reasonable under the circumstances and should not have been second-guessed by the court in the Remand Order.

Note that the 2009 Technical Memorandum addressed a 15-year buildout, not a 25-year buildout. Only a 2010 Technical Analysis assessed the latter.

Were technical studies needed?

Beyond mistakenly saying ESDC failed to take the issue of duration into account, the court should not have rejected the 2010 Technical Analysis "for an unspecified failure to present 'any technical studies' to further corroborate those findings," because no such level of detail was necessary, according to the agency.

There was no need to conduct an SEIS to yield new information:

ESDC concluded, in light of the extensive analyses that had already performed, the extensive mitigation measures that had already been imposed, and the fact that the potential construction delays would be due to economic conditions rather than Project changes under the parties’ control, that an SEIS would not yield such information and that the delay and expense of preparing another massive environmental review document would not be helpful to agency decision-making

Forest City case

According to the brief from Forest City Ratner:

the motion court twisted a partial change in the timing of property acquisition for the Project into a change in the Project itself, and used it as the basis for requiring further environmental study of part of the Project notwithstanding the exhaustive FEIS completed in 2006, and notwithstanding the fact that the change in property acquisition did not modify any actual components of the previously approved Project and merely resulted from the intervening deterioration in global economic conditions.

In addition, although ESDC performed a robust environmental review of actual Project changes in 2009, the motion court improperly used post-review contractual documents to second-guess and impeach the hypothetical “build year” that had been used by ESDC in its environmental review. Having been directed to reconsider its prior determination that no supplemental EIS was required, on remand ESDC conducted a further environmental review of the adverse impacts that reasonably could be expected if the Project was constructed over 25 years rather than 10 years. This review was thorough and well-reasoned and led ESDC to adhere to its prior determination that no supplemental EIS was warranted.

A derelict swath

While the ESDC and FCR briefs largely cover the same ground, the lawyers for Forest City sometimes push the envelope, such as this rather tendentious description of the project site:

These proceedings are the latest of numerous legal challenges to the Atlantic Yards Project, an ambitious public-private undertaking to transform central Brooklyn by redeveloping a derelict 22-acre swath of underutilized land.

Black's Law Dictionary defines derelict as "Forsaken ; abandoned; deserted ; cast away." Chuck Ratner, then CEO of parent Forest City Enterprises, called it a "great piece of real estate."

What were key changes?

FCR attorneys write:

Although couched otherwise, the motion court’s requirement that ESDC prepare a supplemental EIS for a project that previously was approved in compliance with SEQRA is based on changes in the general economic climate, not changes to the Project. The court’s decision is an unprecedented – and entirely wrong – expansion of SEQRA’s scope, because it uses the approval of inconsequential changes to the Project as a pretext to require a supplemental EIS that examines the impact of changes in over-all economic conditions. The motion court’s decision also cannot be reconciled with this Court’s decision in Wilder v. N.Y.S. Urban Dev. Corp.... The change in property acquisition reflected in the 2009 MGPP is essentially identical to a change in ESDC’s Times Square redevelopment project that was considered by this Court in Wilder. There, similar to here, project opponents claimed that a change in plans for the project’s implementation that substituted “phased acquisition and construction of building sites” for “simultaneous acquisition and construction” necessitated the preparation of a new EIS. This Court disagreed, and held that the change did not warrant further environmental review.

Is there a difference?

The motion court sought to distinguish Wilder by asserting that the “directive to ESDC to prepare an SEIS” in these cases “is not based on the mere fact [of] phased acquisition” or even “routine delays in the construction process or delays occasioned by the SEQRA review process,” but because “the phased acquisition” and the Development Agreement “made a major change to the construction schedule for Phase II of the Project”. This distinction is a false one, because the “change” in these cases is not a change in the Project and is not different from the change from simultaneous to sequential acquisition in Wilder. In fact, the change in Wilder was more substantial than the change at bar, because, while acquisition of the entire site for the Atlantic Yards Project initially had been contemplated as simultaneous (like the Times Square project in Wilder), actual construction of the Atlantic Yards Project (unlike the project in Wilder) always had been expected to be sequential.

The Development Agreement

What about the changes in the Development Agreement? FCR says it was improper to use it:

So far as we are aware, the motion court’s use of the terms of subsequent contracts for project implementation to impeach the assumed build year that previously was used in the project’s environmental review is without precedent under SEQRA.... Furthermore, the use of subsequently negotiated business terms to impeach the build year previously used in an environmental analysis is inconsistent with a fundamental goal of SEQRA, which is “to incorporate environmental considerations into the decisionmaking process at the earliest opportunity ....”

A real incentive?

FCR states:

The contractual obligation imposed upon FCRC to use “commercially reasonable effort” to complete the Project within 10 years is a real one, and encompasses both Phase I and Phase II of the Project. While the motion court denigrated this provision, the parties to the Agreement negotiated it at arm’s length and considered it to be important. A review of New York case law shows that the phrase “commercially reasonable efforts” is commonly used in contracts in a wide range of contexts.

(Emphasis added)

I've already questioned, in a 1/26/10 post, whether the Development Agreement was truly negotiated at arm's length, especially when the developer pays for the agency's outside lawyers and consultants.

FCR adds that it was unprecedented for a court to require proof of Forest City's intent and capacity to "comply with its commitment to use commercially reasonable effort to complete the Project in 10 years."

What's missing

FCR adds that "neither the motion court nor petitioners ever identified any “technical studies” that might be performed as part of an additional analysis of the impacts of prolonged construction on a neighborhood," nor were any "significant adverse impacts, not previously examined, that should be studied in a supplemental EIS."

Federal agency not yet ready to deal with EB-5 gerrymandering, as new draft memo still defers to state's mapmaking

2012-01-11T18:14:00.001-05:00

A revised draft memo on EB-5 Adjudications Policy, issued today by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to further discussion of policy regarding immigrant investors, makes no attempt to deal with issues of gerrymandering the map to help those promoting projects to claim they are in areas of high unemployment.

Gerrymandering is crucial, because areas where unemployment is 150% of the national average qualify as Targeted Employment Areas (TEAs), where the minimum investment--for an immigrant investor who seeks green cards for his/her whole family--is $500,000, rather than $1 million.

That issue came to the fore last month after the New York Times published a front-page article describing the odd maps approved for New York projects and an editorial calling for reforms. (I had written previously about the "Bed-Stuy Boomerang" involving Atlantic Yards.)

In the Times, USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas expressed concern whether the spirit of the law is being followed. If he's urging reform, though, his agency apparently will wait until legislative renewal of the regional center program--the investment pools through which immigrants invest--rather than via regulation.

From the draft memo

The document states:

The regulation provides that a state government may designate an area within its boundaries as a targeted employment area based on high unemployment. Before the state may make such a designation, an official of the state must notify USCIS of the agency, board, or other appropriate governmental body of the state that will be delegated the authority to certify that the geographic or political subdivision is a high unemployment area. The state may then send a letter from the authorized body of the state certifying that the geographic or political subdivision of the metropolitan statistical area or of the city or town with a population of 20,000 or more in which the enterprise is principally doing business has been designated a high unemployment area. 8 C.F.R. § 204.6(h)(3)(i).

Pursuant to the regulation, USCIS is to give deference to the state’s designation of the physical boundaries of the geographic or political subdivision that will be the targeted employment area. However, USCIS must ensure compliance with the statutory requirement that the proposed area designated by the state in fact has an unemployment rate of at least 150 percent of the national average rate. For this purpose, USCIS will review state determinations of the unemployment rate and, in doing so, USCIS can assess the method or methods by which the state authority obtained the unemployment statistics. Acceptable data sources for purposes of calculating unemployment include Local Area Unemployment Statistics produced by a government agency, U.S. Census Bureau data, and data from the American Community Survey. State unemployment determinations should be based on the most recent publicly available data from the source relied upon.

(Emphasis added)

And that deference leads to gerrymandering.

Bloomberg: "I don’t like the idea of one state bribing a business to come" (except when he does it)

2012-01-11T16:34:00.002-05:00

Mayor Mike Bloomberg loves talking up the free market, as I've written, and hasn't stopped.

Today's New York Times reports, in New Jersey Tries to Lure Fresh Direct From Queens, that there's a battle of subsidy packages to attract and retain the online grocer Fresh Direct:

New Jersey’s siren call to Fresh Direct comes only eight months after the Christie administration dangled a $200 million incentive package in front of the Hunts Point Terminal Produce Cooperative to move roughly 3,000 jobs to the New Jersey Meadowlands from the Bronx. Stephen Katzman, co-president of the co-op, told The Herald News in June that Governor Christie had called him offering “pretty much whatever it would take to get us to go there.”

That prompted Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to accuse New Jersey of trans-Hudson bribery. “I don’t like the idea of one state bribing a business to come,” the mayor said last spring. “The trouble with that is the next state can do it, too. Anybody can get in that game, and pretty soon, it’s a race to the bottom. I don’t think anybody benefits.”

Many economists and urban planners question the wisdom of giving away tax revenues by the millions for individual companies, instead of investing in public services and transportation that would benefit all companies and citizens.

But Bloomberg was willing to commit hundreds of millions of dollars in city resources to assist Forest City Ratner in building Atlantic Yards.

One justification: it would bring new revenues--though the New York City Independent Budget Office calls it a bad deal for the city.

Who gains from new arena

What's clear, especially in retrospect, is how good a deal it was for the arena operator and, likely, the team.

This won't be simply an online grocer moving to a newer building. This is a team moving to a new building in a new media market, with many more luxury suites, an opportunity to sell naming rights and sponsorship opportunities, and a chance to reap much higher TV revenues.

And no, each state can't simply bribe a sports team to move, because major media markets have extra power and the leagues are cartels, with finite membership.

The Village Voice's "100 Most Powerless New Yorkers" includes Markowitz, de Blasio, AY-area car owners, and, I'd argue, should include the Voice itself

2012-01-11T14:43:00.000-05:00

The Village Voice has been getting some deserved play for its admittedly arbitrary list of "The 100 Most Powerless New Yorkers," including:

8. Bill de Blasio, Public Advocate

De Blasio is the holder of the most useless office in the city, a position so powerless, it was first held by Mark Green. Since it was created, its budget has been cut nearly in half, and there are repeated calls to abolish it altogether. And though second in line to succeed the mayor, no former occupant has yet to move into Gracie Mansion.

64. Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn borough president

Brooklyn beep Markowitz fancies himself the Most Important Ambassador from Brooklyn the World Has Ever Seen. (Indeed, he has told the courts he needs to promote the borough as far away as Turkey, and we've personally witnessed the aftermath of his glad-handing in Haifa, Israel.) But Markowitz is so powerless, he can't get Apple to build a store in the borough with perhaps the most concentrated population of Mac users in the universe outside of California, and his decision to bring his wife, Jamie (or, as he calls her, "The First Lady of Brooklyn"), abroad with him cost Markowitz $20,000 in fines.

.87. Car-owners in Fort Greene

It's not easy to park a car anywhere in New York, but it has gotten especially difficult in Fort Greene. Once the Barclay's [sic] Center opens next fall at Atlantic Yards with a mere 1,100 parking spots to accommodate its 19,000-seat capacity, expect streets in Spike Lee's home 'hood to become gridlocked with cars looking for nonexistent parking spaces during some 200 planned events a year. A plan to grant street-parking permits for residents is considered dead on arrival in Albany.

Well, the point is that people shouldn't be driving, so we're waiting to see the much-promised Transportation Demand Management plan. And car owners in Prospect Heights and Park Slope will fare similarly.

Note: the Voice also cited 31. Press-pass-less members of the press and 32. Press-pass-carrying members of the press, but let's also acknowledge the Voice itself, which is a lot more powerless after losing investigative veterans Wayne Barrett and Tom Robbins, and then hiring and laying off successor Harry Siegel.

How many Nets fans from NJ will cross the river (and bring new tax revenues)? "You’re not going to have a lot of people from New Jersey following us," CEO Yormark acknowledged in 2009

2012-01-11T06:40:00.000-05:00

Despite claims from fellow boosters of the Nets' move to Brooklyn, team CEO Brett Yormark, in a moment of candor, more than two years ago acknowledged that relatively few Nets fans from New Jersey would make the move to Brooklyn.

That won't necessarily affect the bottom line of the team and arena, since new fans from New York surely will buy seats and suites.

But it does diminish the argument for city and state arena subsidies, which were based in part on expectations of new tax benefits to the city and state from out-of-state visitors.

In other words, poaching a team may not be worth what it's cracked up to be.

How many current fans will go to Brooklyn?

Analysts of the team's move have assumed that about half of those attending Nets games at the team's previous home at the Meadowlands would attend games in Brooklyn, thus representing new activity in the local city economy.

However, the fuzziest piece of that cohort involves estimating how many current fans from New Jersey--as opposed to those from New York--would make the trip. And that estimate is suspect.

Sports economist Andrew Zimbalist, in his June 2005 report for Forest City Ratner, Estimated Fiscal Impact of the Atlantic Yards Project on the New York City and New York State Treasuries, asserted that 30 percent of New Jersey fans of the Nets will also attend games in Brooklyn.

In a 2/26/09 article, I explained why Zimbalist's figure was questionable. Among the reasons: arena attendance figures were likely overstated and the long goodbye may have soured a larger percentage of the fan base.

The implication? More New York-based fans would be needed to fill the new Brooklyn arena, thus driving down local tax revenues.

The evidence from suite sales

On 11/4/11, the Bergen Record's John Brennan, in New Jersey left behind when Nets move to Brooklyn?, suggested that preliminary numbers from suite sales at the Barclays Center pointed to a lack of interest from New Jerseyans.

Brennan recalled how Bruce Ratner, then the team's principal owner, said "he thought he could retain a good portion of the New Jersey Nets fans once they move to Brooklyn."

However, only 36% of suite sales so far come from outside Brooklyn and Manhattan, including those from other boroughs, Connecticut, and Philadelphia, as well as New Jersey. No statistic for New Jersey alone has been announced.

Now suite sales are not necessarily a complete proxy; after all, there are many more suites to begin with. The interim move to Newark surely has reconfigured the fan base somewhat, with a larger percentage of New Jersey fans living closer to New York City and more habituated to use public transit.

And the Nets, Brennan noted, can always draw New Jersey fans on weekends, and recruit new fans in New York.

So it's not their worry. But it should be on the minds of New York City and New York State officials.

Yormark's pessimism about New Jersey

In a 4/16/09 session at the Argyle Executive Forum, before the Atlantic Yards eminent domain case had been resolved and the Nets had announced an interim move to Newark, Yormark took a question about whether season ticket holders would be expected to follow the team.

His response:

I think the reality of the situation is you’re not going to have a lot of people from New Jersey following us just because even though it’s twelve miles from the IZOD Center, it’s a very challenging trip. I mean it could take you twenty minutes or two hours. But I do think those old time season ticket holders will buy partial plans. Maybe it’s a weekend plan because hopefully we’ve given them enough reason to follow us. Obviously the people in the five boroughs on this side of the river –I mean our trading area of influence is massive. I mean we have ten subway lines and the Long Island Railroad converging at the foot of our new building, the Barkley [sic] Center in Brooklyn. So we can market those season tickets to a lot of people.
So hopefully that answers your question but we’re doing everything we can to get the folks from Jersey to follow us. If they do, great and if they don’t, that’s okay.

Yormark didn't put a number on it, but I'd bet that "not... a lot" is somewhat less than 30 percent.

What a booster says

Yormark's remarks also contrast with one of the team's most unswerving fans, the pseudonymous Net Income (aka Robert Windrem), chief editor of Nets Daily, who wrote 5/14/11:

A lot has been made in some circles about the Nets' move to Brooklyn being a dramatic shift, geographically, for the franchise, but the reality is different. The team will cross two rivers, the Hudson and the East, the former a state boundary, but the move is similar to, and often a lot less dramatic than, a number of others made during the 28 years the Nets spent in the Meadowlands.

His examples: moves made in the regions of Los Angeles, Cleveland. Detroit, and Baltimore/Washington. He has similarly made that contention in comments like this and this.

Yormark, who presumably has access to better survey data, apparently disagrees.

Somewhat similarly, another Nets official commented 1/8/12 on the travel distance between the interimthome in Newark and the new home in Brooklyn:

“It’s about 10 or 15 miles, but it can take about an hour driving,” Nets general manager Billy King said.

Now, public transportation would make it easier for New Jersey fans who, for example, work in Manhattan and would have a one-seat ride to Brooklyn. But it would be a two-seat ride home to New Jersey, via a bus or train, and thus less attractive.

Nets CEO Yormark on strategies: a press release a day, never talk publicly about ticket giveaways

2012-01-11T06:35:00.000-05:00

The 4/16/09 session at the Argyle Executive Forum, in which Nets CEO Brett Yormark acknowledged few New Jersey fans would follow the team to Brooklyn, also included a frank description of the team's public relations strategy (pump out a press release a day) and veiled practice of distributing free tickets.

Keep in mind that this was the end of the last season at the Meadowlands, before the team was clearly moving to Brooklyn and before the announcement of the two-year interim move to Newark.

The p.r. strategy

What do you do without a big marketing budget? You rely on free publicity, which you steadily stoke. Yormark said:

Now, we’ve defined ourselves I think, hopefully with respect to the All-inclusive experience, the value proposition, the best-in-class service but the question is, without huge marketing budgets, how can you tell the world? How do you let them know who you are and what differentiates Nets basketball from the Garden or from the Yankees or the New York Giants? And if you know anything about the Nets, we drive business PR. That’s what we do. We’ve got a young man who runs our business communications department and his responsibility is every day to get a press release out. Let everyone know who we are and what we’re all about and if they can’t buy now, that’s okay but pre-dispose them to the culture and to what we do and why we think we’re different and over the course of the last year or so, we have been everywhere from USA Today to local newspapers, to Wall Street Journal, to CNN Fox, to CNBC, ESPN Fox. Not only are you building your fan base, but you’re building your brand at the same time. So for some of you, you know that play on both sides, this has been a terrific way for us to truly elevate a halo over Nets basketball and get people a reason to buy us.

Yormark on comps

Here's how Yormark danced around the question of ticket giveaways.

He was asked:

What percentage of your business is, are season ticket holders versus transient and you talk a lot about customer and rewarding current customer and branding and loyalty but is there an opportunity like in the hospitality business to integrate the Nets, and extra tickets or… do you spend much time – is it very profitable for you in the transient seats that aren’t sold?

His response:

Well, for us, well that’s a great question. We – couple things. About half of our attendance is, are your full season seat holders and partial plan holders and then we rely on, on individual tickets, group programs and projects, much like you. And then other community related programs to fill that house every night, or at least try to fill it. But for us, it’s about safeguarding the brand. So even if we have to discount to get people in, we need to do that because if you walk around Manhattan, and for many of you who live here or for that matter come here to visit you typically don’t find yourselves in restaurants where there’s no people. Okay, you gravitate to people, to restaurant where you know people go to; they’re having fun; it’s a vibrant atmosphere. And we feel the same way. We can’t discount to the point of compromising you know what a season ticket holder has paid. So we’ve made a little bit of a shift. You’ll never see us in print or just verbally discuss discounting; it’s more about value. Value versus discounting, I think there’s a differential between the two so we’re going more towards value than discounting because I think based on our advisory board, our, some of our full time season ticket holders, people that are paying you know the ticket price, they were somewhat taken aback by some of the discounting they were reading about or hearing about. So we changed that and it was a great comment by our season ticket holders and – so that’s, hopefully that answers your question.

A huge number of comps

That last season at the Meadowlands was particularly tough. Here's what Forbes reported in December 2009:

Talk about losing fans in a hurry. The Nets handed out 5,200 comp tickets per game last season to try and get fans to show up at their current home, the Izod Center.

in Brooklyn, there's a cap on issuing "complimentary tickets representing more than 15% of the Arena’s aggregate seating and standing room capacity," according to the bond offering statement.

In this last season in Newark, they're still pushing discounts. I got a call the other day offering two tickets for $30, including $20 in concessions credit (I may yet buy some), and a significant break for higher-end seats.

And StubHub has lots of tickets for cheap. See for example:

How Yormark talks

That Argyle Executive Forum transcript is worth a look to see how Yormark employs business buzzwords. They include:

"the value player"
"I'm going to top-line a couple of things"
"our value proposition"
"It's truly about the touch points"
"it’s been a terrific ‘feel good’ and hopefully later on, we can monetize it"
"a great value creation"
"a best-in-class experience"
"insulate yourself if the product goes south"
"mandate buy-in from top to bottom"
"Live out of the box"
"Value creation, that is the buzz word"
"it’s all about hiring on the court now in the product cycle, character guys"
"We’re going to investment spend in all the right areas"