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Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park infographics: what's built/what's coming/what's missing, who's responsible, + project FAQ/timeline (pinned post)

AY Phase I down to 550 affordable units; more criticism from Tish James

According to a letter released today by the City Planning Commission summarizing the recommendations discussed at Monday's meeting, the number of affordable housing units in Phase 1 of Atlantic Yards, due by 2010, would be 550, not 600 as mentioned Monday.

My article in this week's Brooklyn Downtown Star about that meeting adds some new quotes from City Councilmember Letitia James. She was not pleased:
"I thought some of the comments from Regina [Myer, head of the Department of City Planning's Brooklyn office] were a little over the top. I think [DCP commissioner] Amanda Burden served as a spokesperson for Forest City Ratner, and judge and jury. The fact that they wanted to respect the Williamsburgh bank but did nothing to cut back on Miss Brooklyn is sort of a contradiction. There was no discussion of the overall policy issues, whether the city should be relinquishing its power to state, with a project of this size. They were just tinkering around the fringe."

Also of note

Lumi Rolley of No Land Grab amends today's New York Times article about the Hudson Yards:
Instead, under a new proposal worked out over the past week, the city and the authority would do what critics said they should have done in the first place: rezone the 13-acre railyard on the west side of 11th Avenue between 30th and 33rd Streets for high-rise development and sell it to a developer through a bidding process. In addition, the MTA will be applying the same process to the Vanderbilt Railyards in Brooklyn.

NoLandGrab: OK, we made up the last part. It does make sense though, doesn't it?

And Mary Campbell Gallagher, in Metro, portrays the ghost of Robert Moses visiting Mayor Bloomberg and advising him how to evade the city's strict, post-Moses land use review process.

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