In a Metro section article today headlined Tower’s Foes Never Asked for This, the New York Times tells the story about a stalled building project:
After months of clanging hammers, coughing cement trucks and shouting construction workers, Tulfan Terrace, a leafy dead-end lane in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, has been quiet since 2006. But it has not been a welcome quiet.
The noise emanated from a condo tower that swallows up the southern half of the cul-de-sac. But after the developers fell into financial trouble that year, work on the project stopped. What remains looks like the cast-off toy of a distracted giant: a 12-story skeleton with no exterior walls and a squat blue plywood fence encircling the rim.
And now, the remaining residents of Tulfan Terrace are trying to adjust to the sights, sounds and inconveniences of a real estate boom gone bust.
What about AY?
OK, that story is worthy of coverage. But the Times has yet to notice that Forest City Ratner has stopped work at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Vanderbilt Yard, dubiously blaming litigation.
And the Atlantic Yards story does not merely involve "a real estate boom gone bust," it involves significant public subsidies and questions about when a public thoroughfare, the Carlton Avenue bridge, will reopen. (The latter involves $7 million in city money.)
After months of clanging hammers, coughing cement trucks and shouting construction workers, Tulfan Terrace, a leafy dead-end lane in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, has been quiet since 2006. But it has not been a welcome quiet.
The noise emanated from a condo tower that swallows up the southern half of the cul-de-sac. But after the developers fell into financial trouble that year, work on the project stopped. What remains looks like the cast-off toy of a distracted giant: a 12-story skeleton with no exterior walls and a squat blue plywood fence encircling the rim.
And now, the remaining residents of Tulfan Terrace are trying to adjust to the sights, sounds and inconveniences of a real estate boom gone bust.
What about AY?
OK, that story is worthy of coverage. But the Times has yet to notice that Forest City Ratner has stopped work at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Vanderbilt Yard, dubiously blaming litigation.
And the Atlantic Yards story does not merely involve "a real estate boom gone bust," it involves significant public subsidies and questions about when a public thoroughfare, the Carlton Avenue bridge, will reopen. (The latter involves $7 million in city money.)
Thank you for the coverage of Atlantic Yards - it's a big help to be able to read through the detailed history you have kept.
ReplyDeleteWhile not nearly on the same scale, we also have a (sort of) abandoned development in my neighborhood, near Ocean Parkway in Kensington - "Caton on the Park".
In case you are interested, here is my latest blog post about it:
http://tinyurl.com/6d99sm
The Stable Brooklyn website has also provided detailed coverage.
I think there are some larger issues going on here, which should probably be more widely reported by the major media. From what I have seen the last few years, there is a deeper problem in development projects in New York City, not necessarily related to economic downturns. Meanwhile, many of us are living next to what amount to large dumping grounds.