"What the Builder Built:" a profile of Bloomberg's Deputy Mayor Doctoroff in New York Magazine sends Atlantic Yards down the memory hole.

So I'm late to this, but New York Magazine's big 8/2/23 profile of former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, What the Builder Built is worth a critical read. 

In the magazine's Table of Contents, the subheading is "Dan Doctoroff, the stubborn advocate for a new New York City, reckons with his legacy," while the article is appended with a slightly differnt framing: "Under Mayor Bloomberg, Dan Doctoroff remade the city at top speed. Now, as New York is again mired in crisis, he faces his own."

Architecture critic Justin Davidson is a deft writer, and captures much of what Doctoroff (empowered by Mike Bloomberg, of course) shepherded, including:

On the day I meet Dan Doctoroff, I walk across Manhattan from the Shed, which he created, to the East River Esplanade, which he planned; catch a ferry, which he launched; get off at the Long Island City waterfront, which he reclaimed from industrial neglect; and enter a café overlooking Hunters Point South Park, where he once envisioned an Olympic Village. Eventually, I leave him by Citi Bike, which he dreamed up.

Doctoroff famously was inspired to bring the Olympic Games to New York, using it as a catalyst for rebuilding, which got a huge boost after the 9/11 attacks. 

While Doctoroff gets lots of credit, it's no puff piece; Davidson allows that in communities like the South Bronx, "he and his staff came off as only pro forma listeners."

Illustration: New York Magazine

About Atlantic Yards?

The illustration at right summarizes The Doctoroff City:

Of the dozens of projects that Dan Doctoroff started or championed, a few fizzled and some disappointed, but many more have proved essential: Brooklyn rezoned (2001–5), Barclays Center (2002–12), the High Line (2002–14), Brooklyn Bridge Park (2002–21), Governors Island (2003–present), Hudson Yards (2005–?), Citi Field and Yankee Stadium (2006–9), and Citi Bike (2007–present).

(Emphases added)

Note that, as discussed below, the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning gets short shrift.

Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park goes unmentioned, though Doctoroff, as he acknowledged in his 2017 memoir, thought the project was a "crazy risk"--that seems more clear today--but somehow remained a good soldier.

As to the Brooklyn arena, conceived in 2002 and opening as the Barclays Center in 2012, its legacy is significant--yes, it helped put Brooklyn on the map--but very much contested. 

Consider: the illustration depicts the arena with pieces of two towers, not the more recently build third one, 18 Sixth (B4), which delivers 600 market-rate units and 258 below-market ones "affordable" only to middle-income households. 

The arena and basketball team were leverage for the larger project, the future of which remains very much in question.

Second thoughts

Now, confronting ALS, Doctoroff claims to be nicer, but says his hard-charging ways were necessary. Writes Davidson:

Does he have any regrets? Has he reconsidered any of his Bloomberg-era priorities? He nods. “We could have focused more aggressively on things like child care and minority-owned businesses. We could have been more aggressive in thinking about how to finance entrepreneurs from disadvantaged communities.” He adds in a follow-up email, “My biggest regret is not being more aggressive in building more housing.” But, he implies, acknowledging a mistake doesn’t mean he was seriously wrong. He pivots as always into justifications and exceptions — credit markets! — and lands on an analysis in which, as anti-gentrification progressives acquired more power and stopped more projects, “the city lost faith in growth.”

Davidson finds Doctoroff full of data, though he's not confronted, for example, on the vastly erroneous data regarding the future market for office space in Downtown Brooklyn, which purportedly justified the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning.

That gets a brief note:

Doctoroff had some good failures (the West Side stadium), bad successes (Hudson Yards), and partial accomplishments. Rezoning Downtown Brooklyn did not produce the new office district that he insisted New York needed in order to compete. It did create a high-rise residential neighborhood but whiffed the opportunity to include abundant affordable housing.

Well, not simply "whiffed" but actively resisted, since the Bloomberg administration was too focused on growth to require such affordability when it rezoned Downtown Brooklyn and Fourth Avenue.

As to Doctoroff's big plan, as "CEO of the Google-affiliated smart-city start-up Sidewalk Labs," to redevelop part of Toronto, well, New York-style aggressiveness--even tamped down for Canadian sensibilities--did not go over well.

Other criticisms

In a thread on Twitter, David Schleicher suggested that Bloomber was "the centralizing political force," not Doctoroff; Davidson responded that, while Doctoroff needed Bloomberg, so too did the mayor need his deputy.

Schleicher also said that, while Doctoroff regretted not building, "So many of the Doctoroff era rezoning were downzonings, reducing the building envelope to current uses."

Davidson acknowledged the latter point, but suggested it "was something that fell largely in [City Planning Commission Chair] Amanda Burden's portfolio. Doctoroff never seemed to care too much about that part."

Schleicher agreed that the policies "look like trades -- but maybe not by Doctoroff himself, but instead by the Bloomberg administration broadly."

Dale B. Cohen pointed out that Doctoroff's West Side Stadium was killed not just because powerful Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver opposed it but also because "the neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods were not behind the plan!", which would've been cited by the International Olympic Committee.

More pointedly, sociologist David Madden tweeted, "Agreed that the Bloomberg-Doctoroff era was 'among the most consequential half-dozen years of any city builder's term in New York history'--but IMO their elitist mode of citymaking should be seen as a failure that helped set the stage for current problems."

Responded Mike Eliason, "reading this and it became obvious how different this approach was from bottom-up of places like barcelona, or top-down/bottom-up (paris, vienna) the concept of 'mitmachen' [participation] was just non-existent under that administration."

Another reflection: on inclusive growth

Davidson quotes his subject:

He adds in a follow-up email, “My biggest regret is not being more aggressive in building more housing.” But, he implies, acknowledging a mistake doesn’t mean he was seriously wrong. He pivots as always into justifications and exceptions — credit markets! — and lands on an analysis in which, as anti-gentrification progressives acquired more power and stopped more projects, “the city lost faith in growth.”

In a July 2020 interview with The City, Doctoroff was a bit more willing to second-guess his decisions:

But Doctoroff conceded that the pre-pandemic increase in housing costs, the lack of affordable housing and rising inequality makes the Bloomberg approach out of date.

He said a new approach would take the proceeds of new development to invest massively in affordable housing, possible city-run universal health care and environmental measures.

“We have to do a new model and it has to be inclusive,” he said. “That is particularly true because of COVID. How do you reinvest the profits of growth that is perceived to be more fair than before?”