Atlantic Yards CDC advisory meeting rescheduled for Aug. 6 in Brooklyn. Same Agenda as before. Will any news re developers and process emerge?

After the scheduled July 15 meeting of the (purportedly) advisory Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation was canceled for a lack of quorum, it has been rescheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 6, it was announced yesterday by the parent Empire State Development (ESD).

The meeting will be held at:

• Shirley A. Chisholm State Office Building, 55 Hanson Place – 3rd Floor Conference Room, Brooklyn, New York 11217
• Wednesday, Aug. 6 at 3 pm

Due to purported building procedures, members of the public attending in-person should RSVP by 4:30 pm on Tuesday, Aug. 5. Members of the press should call (800) 260-7313; Members of the public should call (212) 803-3795.

The public may listen to the meeting via webcast here. (I'll be away, so I'll have to watch the video.)

The Agenda

Members of the public may submit comments on the Agenda items in writing to AYCDCBdMtg@esd.ny.gov by 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 5. All comments received by the deadline will be distributed to the Directors prior to the meeting and will be posted online.

So that leaves a reasonable time before the meeting to file comments. However, the Agenda is the same typically cryptic one as that already released for the previous meeting:

• Approval of the Minutes of the March 25, 2025 Directors’ Meeting
• Updates and Follow-Ups, including Public Engagement Process Planning 
• Public Comments

What they might discuss

As I wrote, while ESD may announce that it has approved a permitted developer--a joint venture involving Cirrus Real Estate and others--for at least the railyard development parcels, it also will discuss "Public Engagement Process Planning." (Note: Cirrus and LCOR just got awarded a big city project.)

That sounds like the outline to a process, aiming to find a way to ensure legitimacy to a project that now faces widely embedded skepticism, given ESD's failure to enforce $2,000/month penalties for each of 876 affordable housing units not delivered by May 31 of this year.

One question, perhaps, is whether the state would shell out for consultants that truly represent the public interest, not that of a gubernatorially-controlled body.

After all, as I wrote, the imbalance is huge, with consultants--environmental, construction, and legal--so far earning more than $63.4 million over the life of the project.