After nearly nine-month hiatus, advisory Atlantic Yards CDC set to meet (virtually) next Monday. Big questions loom.

Nearly nine months after its most recent meeting, in March, an announcement yesterday from Empire State Development: there will be an Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation Directors Meeting Monday, Dec. 13, 2021 at 12 noon.

The advisory AY CDC is supposed to meet quarterly, but has often not met that schedule. Nor has it been much of a check on the parent authority, though occasionally issues get ventilated--and/or rubber-stamped. It has new members and should have a new chair

In accordance with recently passed Legislation, this meeting will be conducted via video conference and teleconference. The public may view and listen to the meeting via webcast.

Members of the public may submit comments on the agenda items in writing to AYCDCBdMtg@esd.ny.gov by 4:30 pm on Friday, Dec. 10, 2021.

Update: here's the agenda, But no agenda has been posted yet, and agendas are typically anodyne. I'm told the board materials will be posted by Thursday.

Issues for discussion: updates

Presumably a good portion of the meeting will consist of ESD staff, and representatives of the developer(s) and arena, updating the directors on what's happened in the last several months.

Some important issues have surfaced. 

Items for discussion: affordability

First, we now know that the affordable units at the recently opened 662 Pacific (Plank Road) and the soon-to-open 18 Sixth (Brooklyn Crossing) will all be aimed at middle-income households earning 130% of Area Median Income, or AMI.

Also, they will not--because of the Affordable New York tax break--offer any community preference. (That said, community preference, which reserves half the units for people living in the four local Community Districts, is far more meaningful when it prevents displacement of lower-income people.)

What about the upcoming B12/B13 towers, expected to open in mid-2023? They also have the Affordable New York tax break. It's likely that they too will be aimed at households earning 130% of AMI. But we haven't been told. The developers know. They should come clean.

Items for discussion: the platform and the deadline

What about plans for the platform, which in two phases, will support six towers over the Vanderbilt Yard? The platform was supposed to start in early 2020, but did not.

How will the project meet the requirement of 876 more affordable units--beyond those already under construction--by May 2025? That seems ever less possible, despite consistent pledges from the developer and the state.

What's the plan? They should tell us. 

And if the plan is to get an extension of that deadline, or some kind of exemption, they should let us know. Remember, the briefly-serving AY CDC chairman in March mused about the possibility of a legislative "fix" which--who knows--might extend the Affordable New York tax break, which expires next June.

Items for discussion: plans for Site 5

What about plans for Site 5? The developer intends--and is no longer blocked from--a process that transfers the bulk from the unbuilt "Miss Brooklyn" tower planned for what is now the arena plaza. 

Will that get started? What's contemplated?

Items for discussion: accountability

Would you believe that, on the AY CDC page, we still don't have meeting notes from the 9/14/21 Quality of Life meeting.

What's the reason for the delay? Shouldn't the standard be a lot faster than three months--at minimum, with lead time before the subsequent Quality of Life meeting (held 11/16/21)?

And though it seems like a small thing, why can't ESD staff spot-check the developer-provided bi-monthly Construction Updates? For the last several examples, the After-Hours Variances approved by the Department of Buildings do not conform to the ones disclosed in the updates.