Atlantic Yards down the memory hole: why most of Block 1128, including Newswalk, was omitted from a "blighted" project footprint

I call it "Atlantic Yards down the memory hole" when journalists/authors, public officials, or government entities misreport or forget details of (or promises regarding) a project that has faced many gyrations since its announcement in 2003.

We shouldn't hold regular people to the same standard, but it's still a learning moment.

That third picture is behind my old apartment complex, the Newswalk, which was formerly the printing plant for the NY Daily News. I think it was the only condo/apartment building inside the Atlantic Yards footprint that was spared.

— Adam Zimmerman (@Adam_Zimmerman) May 16, 2022

(He later clarified that it was the fourth photo.)

So why is this important? As I responded, most of that block, Block 1128, was omitted from the project footprint, rather than included and later spared.

But it's not wrong to presume that the Atlantic Yards footprint would have been a rational shape, rather than one with an odd gap in the center: most of the block between Dean and Pacific streets, and Sixth and Carlton avenues. 

That spared Newswalk and its more modest neighbors: row-houses and four-story apartment buildings.

Dean Street panorama shows Newswalk, 12/8/07, by Tracy Collins. Buildings at far left demolished.

The question of blight

The footprint design is relevant because the project site was deemed blighted, under New York State's generous interpretation of  "substandard and insanitary" conditions, backed by the concept of "rational basis," which judges can easily uphold. 

Or, as eminent domain attorney Michael Rikon memorably put it:

It is an aphorism in criminal law that a good prosecutor could get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.” With regards to condemnations in New York, it can fairly be said that in New York, a condemnor can condemn a Kasha Knish.

Pacific St. east of Carlton Ave.; near building
 became office space; Ward Bakery in distance

But if blight is truly "when the fabric of a neighborhood is shot to hell," to quote academic Lynne Sagalyn, that suggests a contagion that deters investment, rather than a neighborhood that had seen four manufacturing buildings rehabbed, three into condos (including Newswalk), one into office space. 

Moreover, a historic district was designated in 2009 after Atlantic Yards passed, in part contiguous to the project footprint.

A fifth manufacturing building in the footprint, the vast Ward Bakery, awaited potential renovation, as in some other cities. 

Indeed, Forest City Enterprises, parent of the Atlantic Yards developer, embraced similar rehab of factory buildings in cities like Richmond.

Looking at the map

Let's go to photographer Tracy Collins's valuable photo map of the Atlantic Yards footprint, which is bordered and shaded. That gap in the center includes the Newswalk building, a former New York Daily News printing plant turned into condos.

That was an astounding bargain for developer Shaya Boymelgreen, who snapped up the building after Bruce Ratner (unwisely, a colleague later recalled) considered the area unready for development.

Not fitting the plan

Two condo buildings and the office building, plus the bakery, were demolished for Atlantic Yards. Newswalk was spared.

Rehab of existing buildings would've interfered with the developer's ambitious plans for open space and high-rise housing and, given the higher cost of construction, would've deterred affordable housing, according to the 2006 Final Environmental Impact Statement issued by Empire State Development Corporation, the state authority that oversees/shepherds the project.

Those arguments had a rational basis, of course. Then again, there's the "problem of time," as I wrote yesterday. The benchmark calculations for affordable housing have changed, making low-income units far more costly. Also, construction costs have risen significantly. Would a smaller project have been more buildable, and delivered more certain benefits?

Why spare most of Block 1128?

Only a 100-foot wide stretch of Block 1128 was included in the project footprint: the five buildings pictured in the photo at right, from February 2004. Note: the middle house, with the wooden fence, was nicely rehabbed.

Was that a small patch, extending through to Pacific Street, of non-contagious blight? 

The smallest house, though in fine condition, was deemed blighted for not fulfilling 60% of its available development rights, an arbitrary standard that could condemn many other buildings.

The 100-foot wide parcel extended through to Pacific Streets and the three-story gray building, at right below. The two adjacent buildings were omitted from the project footprint, as was the empty lot between them and Newswalk, though such a lot was de facto blighted. (Now there's an eight-story apartment building, 670 Pacific, over the three lots.)

So why did Forest City Ratner want that parcel of land?

The project's initial construction sequence offered a hint, as I wrote in August 2006.

The site, just across from the arena block, would be used for staging and temporary parking for years, and then be the location for the last building constructed, by 2016 (hah!).

In other words, the site was needed to support the developer's plans, not to remove blight.

But "projects change, markets change," as a key project figure once said, and it was no longer feasible to build four towers at the same time as the arena--or, it turned out, to ever build the flagship "Miss Brooklyn" (B1) tower. So that parcel was not needed for staging.

And that parcel would not support the last tower constructed but rather emerge sometime in the middle, now dubbed "Plank Road."

Questioning the developer

During a May 2007 oral argument on the lawsuit challenging the project's environmental review, Supreme Court Justice Joan Madden asked why the rest of Block 1128 not included in the Blight Study.

“They were not needed for the project and many of these buildings are not in such bad shape,” said Philip Karmel, the ESDC's attorney, to some laughter.

His statement, it turns out, conflicts with a claim at a January 2010 oversight hearing on eminent domain from Anita Laremont, then the ESDC's General Counsel, defending the state's use of ubiquitous environmental consultant AKRF.

"AKRF does not find blight. Our board finds blight," she said. "AKRF does a study of neighborhood conditions. And they give us a report, and we make a determination based on that whether or not the area is blighted."

Of course, AKRF, to Laremont's knowledge, had never turned in a report that doesn't lead to a finding of blight.

Well, duh. As I reported, AKRF wasn't hired to do a neutral study of neighborhood conditions. In the case of Atlantic Yards, it was hired to "prepare a blight study in support of the proposed project," as shown in a contract scope I obtained via a Freedom of Information Law request.

Buildings "not in such bad shape”

Karmel's statement that "many of these buildings are not in such bad shape” underplayed a key fact. The largest building, Newswalk, had undergone a costly renovation into condos and not only was far from blighted, it would've cost an enormous amount to condemn.

As Matthew Schuerman reported in the 4/5/04 Village Voice:

Ratner had numerous other reasons to let Newswalk stay. It would cost a fortune to buy back 140 condos that had just sold for six figures each. Forcing residents out would have won him that many new opponents. Boymelgreen, meanwhile, also benefits. He still has about 30 empty units. And an emerging big-time developer like Boymelgreen, who scaled his way from small private projects in the East Village to state-owned ones in DUMBO with the help of non-union labor, can in the future point to Newswalk as testimony of what he's capable of.

But if Ratner could design around Newswalk, he could have spared other properties as well... 

 But not if they were crucial to his "footprint."