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Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park FAQ, timeline, and infographics (pinned post)

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Daily News editorializes, vaguely, "Nudge forward Atlantic Yards: Brooklyn housing plan must be completed." Renegotiate fines? Pay for platform?

Nudge forward Atlantic Yards: Brooklyn housing plan must be completed, the New York Daily News editorial board wrote yesterday, offering vague support for an implied compromise, including, perhaps, a waiver of the $2,000/month fines for each of the 876 affordable housing units not completed by May 2025.

In other words, the editorial--which generally praises the project while describing it misleadingly--is a not-so-incisive look at a process that's so far been a black box.

Then again, at least someone's trying to discuss a complicated issue that's mostly been buried. (Here's my recent Atlantic Yards overview, for Urban Omnibus.)

Should state pay?

In response to the editorial, as noted below, an influential advocate, Gib Veconi, suggested that the state should pay for the platform and, implicitly, waive pending fines. 

My take is such a public contribution--the platform, as of 2019, was estimated to cost $240+ million and probably now more than $300 million--must involve reciprocal public benefit, and should be discussed before the developer makes a deal.

Let's go paragraph by paragraph through the editorial.

The need for housing

The editorial leads off:
New York City desperately needs more housing to provide homes and to help lower the cost of living. The Atlantic Yards project, ideally situated near one of Brooklyn’s largest transit hubs, has delivered hundreds of apartments to Prospect Heights already — but nearly 900 affordable units initially promised for 2025 are nowhere in sight. After the third postponement of an auction intended to jumpstart that piece of the project, it’s clear Gov. Hochul needs to step in so that private developers can step up.
Is the Daily News arguing that more market-rate units will, ultimately, help relieve the housing shortage and pressure on affordability?

Or that the income-targeted, "affordable" units are the priority? If so, then it's worth observing that the last four buildings to rise with "affordable" units contain only those for middle-income households at 130% of Area Median Income, or AMI.

Chart by Ben Keel, originally for Urban Omnibus article

If then there should be a priority on deeper affordability, well, how would that be paid for?

An eyesore?

The editorial continues:
Atlantic Yards, sometimes now called Pacific Park, was highly contentious back when it was announced roughly two decades ago with the support of then-City Councilman and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. The idea behind the public-private partnership between developers and the state was to transform the eyesore of rail yards and the fallow surrounding area around Fourth Ave., Atlantic Ave. and Flatbush Ave. into housing, retail, open space and a new venue set to be home to the New Jersey-turned-Brooklyn Nets.
Sure, it's "sometimes now called Pacific Park," because that's its official name, which hasn't fully taken. 

While de Blasio did back the project, he was hardly the key political figure. Rather, Borough President Marty Markowitz, Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and Gov. George Pataki offered crucial backing.

Why was the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Vanderbilt Yard an eyesore, with weeds around it? Was it "blighted"? Or was it poorly maintained.

The fact is: the neighborhood was gentrifying, with residential conversions of old commercial buildings (Newswalk, Spalding, Atlantic Arts), as well as underutilized land and buildings, and that 8.5-acre railyard.

The project's record

From the editorial:
We strongly backed the complicated, 22-acre deal even as many critics said there wasn’t enough affordable housing, and then-Nets-owner Bruce Ratner’s Forest City Ratner was getting a sweetheart deal. We think we’ve overall been proven right by a walk around the neighborhood today.

Eight new apartment houses with more than 6,400 units, nearly 1,400 of which are earmarked for people at various income levels, have brought fresh life to surrounding restaurants, bars and stores. Three acres of open space have been developed. The arena not only hosts the Nets and Liberty (the Islanders departed a few years ago), but top-tier musical acts (Nicki Minaj headlined earlier this month, Billie Eilish last week and Ed Sheeran this week) and as well as lots of family and community events.

Add it all up, and it’s a huge improvement over what was.
Critics said a lot of things, including "sweetheart deal," and Atlantic Yards may prove it's possible to get such a deal but not prosper, as Ratner's firm lost big. (Then again, the city/state accommodations allowed for an arena that houses a stratospherically valuable basketball team, with public parties gaining none of the upside.)

A walk around the project site--not a neighborhood unto itself--does not necessarily prove the Daily News' point. First, a basic error: the eight towers include 3,212 apartments, not the 6,430 units approved.


The phrasing "nearly 1,400 of which are earmarked for people at various income levels" obscures the failure to meet the original goal of "affordable housing," with 40% going to low-income households, as well as the rising AMI, which compounds the cost of delay.

How much have the new residents "brought fresh life to surrounding restaurants, bars and stores" versus the overall growth and gentrification? Does the arena's hosting of "community events"--rentals for graduations?--justify its tax-exempt status?

The phrase "a huge improvement over what was" glosses over the fact that the project has failed to cover the railyards, which was a prime justification for approval.

Moreover, the comparison should not be between the situation today and the circa-2003 progress constrained by a failure to put the railyard up for bid but the situation today and a more rational, buildable plan--or one with more protections for the public.

A sop to the critics

From the editorial:
But in at least one respect, the critics have been proven right: They said over and over that if the Barclays Center got frontloaded on the calendar, much of the affordable housing would probably never materialize. And for a long list of reasons — financing complications, financial downturns including the pandemic — that prediction has come true.
Interestingly enough, the online version of the editorial links to this blog. While I've often expressed skepticism of promises from the developer and government, I didn't myself emphasize that argument that the arena might crowd affordable housing--but I have amplified those who offered that criticism.

The "long list of reasons" might also include developer hubris and broken promises.

A developer's "problems"

From the editorial:
The biggest nail in the tire that’s preventing anyone from taking over the responsibility to build the remaining eight apartment buildings is that the current developer is having problems. A deadline that requires anyone constructing the remaining affordable units to finish by mid-2025 or get slapped with big fines.
That paragraph deserved a rewrite. There's no "tire" hampering Atlantic Yards. The "problem" faced by the current developer, the unnamed Greenland USA, is that it's out of money, and faces a foreclosure auction of its rights to build six towers over the railyard.

In the second sentence, if the word "that" were subtracted, it would make more sense.

An impossible deadline
The editorial adds:
The tight timetable presents a near-impossible deadline to meet no matter what — but it’s a total joke at this point given that completing the remaining buildings depends upon putting a platform across the LIRR tracks, an expensive and logistically difficult project. The engineers at Hudson Yards managed it and so can those working Atlantic Yards, but the schedule simply can’t be met.

Well, it was not intended to be a joke, since 11 years seemed ample to get the affordable units built. Keep in mind that only two or three of the remaining buildings need be built to complete the below-market units, which means that only one block of the two initially requires a platform.

The question then is: if the public sector is not responsible for the delay, what should it get in exchange for any renegotiation?

The contours of what deal

The closing paragraph:

Hochul has made expanded housing production a signature issue. If she’s serious about it, she’ll strike a deal that gets Atlantic Yards unstalled so that long-planned, long-promised housing can make Brooklyn a little more affordable for New Yorkers present and future. Atlantic Yards and Barclays have been a boon to the city, but they can and should be a bigger boost to more people. It’s up to a leader to lead.

What kind of deal? The Daily News seems to be offering a lot of latitude. The "long-promised" housing has never been delivered as promised.

As to making "Brooklyn a little more affordable," well, that's a modest ambition for a project that, according to the 2005 Community Benefits Agreement, was supposed to "encourage systemic changes" in how large projects got done, while the housing could "stem the growing trend of displacement through gentrification."

A specific proposal

Gib Veconi, who as a leader of the BrooklynSpeaks coalition and as a member of the (purportedly) advisory Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation has an outsize role influencing local elected officials, offered a specific solution.

But if the state should fund the platform and, implicitly, waive the fines, what should it get in return? Partial ownership? Participation in the upside?

Moreover, deeply affordable housing requires more subsidies and can't be cross-subsidized, as anticipated at an earlier juncture.

Those questions should get discussed before the governor makes a deal. I followed up:
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