With the future of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park in question, it all may depend on "abiding by the Project documents" (which might change)

As a potentially meaningful--or, maybe not--meeting of the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC) approaches today, I'm reminded of some notes from the parent Empire State Development (ESD) delivered in December 2022, as a reported in a post citing "belated candor and weasel words."

Does the developer have a plan to meet the May 2025 deadline to start and complete 876 (or 877) more units of affordable housing, or face $2,000/month fines for each missing unit?

In July 2022, Scott Solish, then of master developer Greenland USA, said it was the "same answer that we always have. We're moving ahead with our plans with the platform.... We are working on hitting all of our targets, as we always have." 

Except they hadn't hit their targets--for example, they announced in 2019 that the platform would start in 2020, and it hadn't. 

I asked if ESD would enforce the fines, but didn't get an answer at the time. 

The document, as excerpted above right, offered a little more of a clue: "The Developer and ESD are committed to the delivery of the Project’s affordable housing obligations and abiding by the Project documents."

That's not the same as saying they'll enforce the penalties. That could mean that project documents will be revised to offer an extension of the timeline. 

Or, perhaps, it could mean suspension of the fines, given the "right to refrain" from enforcing various provisions--though it's not certain that right applies to this document.

Today, it's even fuzzier. Solish has since left Greenland, and hasn't been replaced. (In his new position at The Brodsky Organization, he may be interested in the project.) 

The rights to six development sites face a foreclosure auction, which has been postponed twice, so it may not happen April 30, as scheduled.

It all may depend, in the end, on whether and how "the Project documents" are amended.