Skip to main content

Featured Post

Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park FAQ, timeline, and infographics (pinned post)

Agreement says Forest City Ratner must reinforce subway supports on its own dime, but does anyone know how much it would cost?

It looks, at least at first blush, like a good deal for the public, given that the Atlantic Yards developer has pledged to repair deteriorated subway structures in critical condition, as described in a confidential report that I wrote about last August

Among the voluminous documents that were part of the Atlantic Yards master closing, first made available today, is a Transit Improvements Agreement signed by Atlantic Rail Yards, LLC (an affiliate of Forest City Ratner) and the New York City Transit Authority.

And it says--as noted below--that the developer will, at its sole cost and expense, "repair all Subway support structure within the load path of the Construction Work that exhibits a 25% or greater section loss."


Questions remain

As I pointed out last month, the Barclays Center Official Statement noted that the amount of damage, and the cost of repairs, was unknown:
In addition, as part of the Transit Improvements, RailCo is obligated to reinforce and repair at its own cost and in accordance with standards and procedures set forth in the Transit Improvement Agreement any subway tunnel structural support members that are found to exhibit a twenty-five percent (25%) or greater section loss and that are in the load path of the Transit Improvements. The Arena Developer has performed some preliminary testing on the support members within the subway tunnels to determine their structural integrity, and such testing indicated that some columns had deterioration in excess of twenty-five percent (25%); however, neither the final quantity of columns with more than twenty-five percent (25%) deterioration nor the level of deterioration of untested columns is known.
And, as I pointed out, there's only $8.1 million available for Infrastructure Contingency in the arena budget.

That raises lingering questions about whether the contingency funds would be sufficient. And, perhaps, whether the "load path of the Construction Work" might include a lesser amount of territory than the structures described in the original report.

Comments