AY CDC meeting today: approve budget, advise extending environmental monitor contract (what about Site 5?), project updates. Comment extended to 10 am.

It's always a little fishy when a meeting of the purportedly advisory Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC) is scheduled with little notice, and that meeting date is just two days before a meeting of the parent Empire State Development (ESD).

Based on past practice, that suggests the AY CDC is being asked to rubber-stamp (er, endorse) a recommendation to the parent board, a gubernatorially controlled authority that oversees/shepherds the project.

Indeed, the belatedly provided Agenda (below), which surfaced yesterday about 1 pm, indicates that the directcors will be asked to 1) approve the AY CDC's annual operating budget and 2) also be asked to recommend the extension of a contract, signed in June 2007 with the firm Henningson, Durham & Richardson, Architecture and Engineering (aka HDR) to serve as enviornmental monitor for the project.

Their job is to ensure that the Memorandum of Environmental Commitments is being met. That extension, in the past, has been questioned, as noted below.

Timing, and other Agenda items

The posting of the Agenda seemingly left only 3.5 hours to meeting the originally scheduled deadline for public comments to be submitted before the meeting. Yesterday afternoon, the deadline for comments was extended until 10 am today--which suggests there's no justification for day-before deadlines. Comments can be sent to AYCDCBdMtg@esd.ny.gov.

There's no evidence that any big news--regarding the affordable housing deadline, the platform start, the construction of the B5 tower, the start of the Site 5 project--might surface, but who knows. 

The agenda includes information on changes to the AY CDC board (?), as well as updates on construction and a recap of the bi-monthly Quality of Life meetings. See presentation below.

More details: operating budget

The AY CDC Operating Budget proposes a total of $211,953 in personal services (salaries and fringe benefits for two employees) and a total of $38,047 in non-personal services (primarily insurance and occupancy expenses). 

That buget "will be funded in its entirety from an imprest account funded by project developers and maintained at and by Empire State Development."

That's long been known. But it should be noted that Tobi Jaiyesimi, hired as the AY CDC's Executive Director, later took over the job of Atlantic Yards Project Director within ESD. 

That saves the state money on in-house salaries, but also means that, well, the developer is funding the bureaucrats who help manage/ease the way for the project.

More details: consulting contract

The HDR contract would have a 2-year term with a one (1) year option at a cost not to exceed $500,000 per year. The amended contract would extend to May 2024, with a total cost of $8,145,000. And yes, this too is funded by the developer. 

On the one hand, that's good, right--the project doesn't add costs to the state? On the other hand, every time those monitoring reports are delivered late--six months after they were due, as reported in 2016--or seem inadequate, it looks questionable.

At the beginning of the pandemic, in March 2020, as I reported, ESD quietly extended the HDR contract.

It came after the scheduled 3/18/20 meeting of the AY CDC, which presumably had been expected to advise approval of the extension, as it had similarly at a meeting two years earlier. 

As reported 3/28/18, the AY CDC had agreed to recommend that the parent ESD extend consulting contracts for HDR and for an owners’ representative, STV, whose job is to make sure that the developer is in compliance with design and construction documents.

The essential logic was that the catalyst for new contracts would be the "next phase of construction, namely Site 5," then uncertain, said ESD official Marion Phillips III. 

Hasn't the situation changed? ESD is expected to soon launch a year-long process to transfer bulk from the unbuilt "Miss Brooklyn" (B1) tower, once slated to loom over the arena, across Flatbush Avenue to Site 5, enabling a giant project.

So construction work might start before the end of the proposed extension to the HDR contract.