Does Atlantic Yards simply need "a new push," as former state official suggests? Or, as Brooklyn BP Reynoso warns, might a state bailout be coming?

The lesson of my recent coverage of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park is that the state officials who should know the most don't know much (or aren't telling), and the official advisory board hasn't been told. See:

• Brooklyn’s Stalled Atlantic Yards Plan Faces More Questions Than Answers from City Limits 
• State officials say they expect a new developer to emerge. But without a new plan, will they pursue damages on June 1 for absent affordable housing?, from this blog

The lesson from some other coverage and events is that other people know even less. Consider, as detailed below, an op-ed from a former state official, comments from one candidate for Brooklyn Borough President (though the incumbent had a better grasp), and a friendly interview with a city official who worked on the project.

Blaming the NIMBYs

It’s time for New Yorkers to embrace YIMBYism, wrote Elizabeth Fine, former counsel to Gov. Kathy Hochul and now principal of Liz Fine Advisory, wrote in Crain's New York Business March 25.

Her target: New Yorkers against growth. She writes:

We saw this with Westway in the 1970s and more recently with the Amazon HQ2 project. Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn faced years of delay from lawsuits and protests. Twenty years in, multiple residential buildings still are waiting to be built. Governor Hochul’s 2022 proposal for Transit Oriented Development and housing growth in the suburbs met an impenetrable wall of opposition. The unbuilt and blockaded projects would create a dazzling and modern city, and improve housing and our economy around the state, had they been given the chance.

(Emphases added)

Wait a sec. Wasn't Atlantic Yards also delayed by unrealistic plans and the recession? Moreover, it's not just buildings that are waiting but expensive infrastructure--a platform over the MTA's Vanderbilt Yard--as a precursor. 

Fine served as Executive Vice-President and General Counsel of Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority that oversees/shepherds the project. She should know better.

A "new push"

She suggests the City Council’s approval of City of Yes rezoning augurs well. She writes:

What kinds of projects and possibilities could take advantage of this new emerging consensus for growth?

Developers could make another go at Industry City, Atlantic Yards needs a new push, and New York City is making its third attempt to develop the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx. In Queens, Sunnyside Yards can provide ample housing.... 

So, Atlantic Yards just "needs a new push"? She acknowledges that "Every project deserves scrutiny, and not all should go forward." So Atlantic Yards surely deserves scrutiny for the content of the "new push," perhaps a huge increase, as has been proposed, in buildable square footage.

A Brooklyn BP challenger

On March 10, the organization Our Communities Count, along with the Crown Heights North Association (CHNA) and the Brooklyn Chapter of the NAACP hosted a Brooklyn Borough Candidates Forum 2025 at the Brown Memorial Baptist Church Fellowship Center in Clinton Hill.

I submitted a question: "The Atlantic Yards project is barely half complete. How do you expect renegotiations to go regarding the future of the project? What do you recommend?"

The first answer was not too helpful.

Challenger Khari Edwards--Vice President of External Affairs at Brookdale Hospital and now Head of Corporate Responsibility at Ayr Wellness--wasn't too informed. "I don't think that they will be keeping to the Community Benefits Agreement," he said of an agreement that was, in the main, abandoned long ago. "That's an agreement that I was here working with Assemblyman Roger Green on."

He said the issue was for the mayor and the governor. "The concern really is that again, once you start to build homes, again, you start to price you guys out, and then that's where we're going to get into a very tricky conversation," he said, assuming/presuming that construction of market-rate housing would not be matched by affordable units.

Bailout coming?

Incumbent Borough President Antonio Reynoso had a bit more of a grasp."I don't think the... accountability portion of the state was real," said Reynoso, who attended the July 2022 BrooklynSpeaks press conference on the missing Urban Room, which was supposed to trigger penalties. 

"Right now they're supposed to be getting fined every single day" they don't build an affordable apartment, he said. Actually, that monthly penalty, $2,000/month for each missing unit, is supposed to start June 1, but, as I reported, the state does not seem bent on enforcing it.

The state, Reynoso said, is "scared that the next person that wants to build here is not going to be able to afford it, if they got to pay off these fines."

"So we're getting to a point where we've dug ourselves in a hole that is so deep that the only way to get out is through a bailout, which is the state putting billions of dollars into this just to make it break even, so we can see the development that we want to see there," he warned. 

That's a complex issue, and one elected officials have to grapple with: if the state does bail out the project, for example, by finding public funding for the platform, what should the public get in return?

As I wrote, Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation Director Ron Shiffman has suggested the state budget for a consultant to assess the viability of the remainder of the project--not just the six parcels (B5-B10) facing foreclosure, but also the two-tower project planned for Site 5, catercorner to the arena.

"And if we don't want to do that, then I agree with Khari that it's going to be hard to see anything being built there," Reynoso said. "This is a tricky one. I don't want to say it's above our pay grade--but the state needs to figure this out. They got us into this mess. They need to get us out."

He's not wrong. But the BP, among others, has some voice. Shiffman, for example, is the BP's appointee to the AY CDC. Shiffman has argued:

"The state needs to enforce the agreement as is and not allow for any changes. If the developer is unable to deliver than the contract should be abrogated and a new plan developed by the AYCDC in concert with relevant city and state housing and community development entities...."

Real-estate cheerleading

On March 31, the Commercial Observer published Melissa Román Burch On Building Big in Brooklyn, DEI and the City’s Economy, with the subheading "The Forest City and Lendlease alum arrived at the New York City Economic Development Corporation nearly three years ago."

A partial summary of her career:

Prior to that, Burch was an executive vice president for developer Forest City Ratner. There she oversaw the $5 billion development of Pacific Park in Brooklyn, a public-private partnership anchored by the Barclays Center that brought new housing, office space, mass transit and parks to the area (never mind the arena itself).

Well, not quite. It brought about half the housing promised, and far less affordable housing than projected. No office space. No new mass transit capacity, though there is a worthy new entrance to what's now the Atlantic Ave-Barclays Ctr transit hub. 

No new parks, though 2.7 acres of publicly accessible, privately (and opaquely) managed open space, about a third of the 8 acres promised--so well behind schedule.

The article quotes Burch:

I’m so proud of the work we did on the transformation of Atlantic Yards, now known as Pacific Park. I helped lead that project through its acquisition, entitlement stages, financing and building the Barclays Center, which, I think over a decade later, we’ve realized how transformative that has been for Brooklyn, for growth in the borough, for investment and for quality of life.

Well, yes and no. The Barclays Center has stimulated growth and investment, yes, but, crucially, not to complete the project--and transform the below-grade, purportedly blighted, railyard-- which is purportedly anchors.