March 2010: Gov. Paterson said, "I guarantee that we will be scrupulous in our monitoring... to make sure that, everything we were promised, we receive." Nah.

Let's go back to then-Gov. David Paterson's remarks at the 3/11/10 groundbreaking for the Barclays Center. (My coverage.)

"To those who have supported the project and to those who opposed the project, I guarantee that we will be scrupulous in our monitoring of the contract that Forest City Ratner signed with the state to make sure that everything we were promised, we receive," Paterson said. "In addition to a school, there will be job training. There will also be a day care, youth, and senior facility, and a health care facility to offer health care previously unavailable to people in this area."

These will come late, or not at all, or not with funds from developer Forest City Ratner, I wrote at the time.

Indeed, the school, though finally under construction, isn't due until September 2025. The "intergenerational center," serving youths and seniors, won't be built until towers are built over the railyard, which won't start until an expensive platform is built.

There's no evidence that health care facility at 38 Sixth Avenue, as I wrote in January 2019, does anything to fulfill the Community Benefits Agreement by helping low-income households.

  

More fom Paterson

"As we break ground, we break open new opportunities for a whole new generation of New Yorkers," Paterson said. "This project at Atlantic Yards will yield 16,000 union construction jobs and 5,500 permanent jobs right here on the site."

Um, no. The construction jobs would be in job-years--over 25 years, that works out to 640 jobs a year--and the permanent jobs depend on office space that hasn't been built, and likely won't be.

Citing an 11.2% unemployment rate in Kings County, he declared, "As the buildings rise on Atlantic Yards the joblessness rate will fall right here in Brooklyn."

Not that, either.

"In addition, Forest City Ratner will engage in the development of housing, both rental and ownership, so that thousands of families can come together to thrive and revitalize this community," he said. 

Of course that was before the "affordable" housing skewed to middle-income households earning six figures and before Forest City exited the project, in stages.

"They will also be building the Barclays Center arena," he said. "Our administration has given weekly updates on construction and we want to make sure that this project is transparent and efficient all the way through."

Actually, bi-weekly, and they're provided by the developer--until they're not.

The need for monitoring

There's still a need to be scrupulous in monitoring, since Empire State Development, the gubernatorially-controlled authority that oversees/shepherds the project, seems unlikely to enforce the $2,000/month fines, due after a May 2025 deadline, for each unbuilt unit (876 or 877) of affordable housing.

But ex-Gov. Paterson isn't available to enforce such guarantees, or even endorse them rhetorically. He's now a Senior VP at Las Vegas Sands, which has proposed a casino at the Nassau Coliseum site and, like other applicants, surely wants to curry favor with current Gov. Kathy Hochul.