Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

I recently read the affecting journalistic account of a young single mother's struggle with homelessness, Lauren Sandler's This Is All I Got: A New Mother's Search for Home .  (See the enthusiastic New York Times review , which put it on the newspaper's list of 100 Notable Books of 2020 , and a somewhat more critical take  from the New York Review of Books. More reviews from the author's web site .) Sandler, a Brooklynite, meets the woman she calls Camila at a shelter on the edge of Park Slope and follows her through her quest: to find a home, navigate the city bureaucracy, go to school, explore her roots in the Dominican Republic, and navigate fraught relationships with her family and (ex-)boyfriends. It's a valuable, closely-observed reminder that secure housing is bedrock to our existence, that the bureaucracy can be petty and cruel, and that the "system" makes no allowances for imperfect people who lack safety nets. The Atlantic Yards angle And whi...

700 Atlantic Avenue, former LIRR stables, as noted in this 2006 state document #AtlanticYards https://t.co/SwvwcyiuIQ A " significant adverse impact on historic resources," but conversion to residential would "constrain the goals of the master plan" https://t.co/RWScC15igG pic.twitter.com/2MLfrikkjC — Norman Oder (@AYReport) May 1, 2019 I've barely written about that building, but rather far more about Ward Bread Bakery , a more monumental and significant structure, for which some of the same caveats were offered. But let's go to the 2006 Final Environmental Impact Statement. From  Chapter 7, Cultural Resources : Demolition of the former Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) Stables at 700 Atlantic Avenue and the former Ward Bread Bakery complex at 800 Pacific Street would constitute significant adverse impacts. The potential reuse of these properties as part of the proposed project has been studied, but it has been determined that there is no feasible or p...

For those coming to Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park new, the 2011 documentary Battle for Brooklyn  by Suki Hawley, Michael Galinsky, and David Beilinson (my review ) is a worthy introduction. Though limited in scope at the time (it's just 93 minutes) and now overtaken by events, the film establishes for viewers an enduring taint on the project and its path to approval, with indelible scenes. Indeed, that taint has been borne out since 2011, though not necessarily as anyone--including myself--expected. It's a "never say never project" (one of my five mantras ). What has been consistent has been the lack of accountability, part of what I call the "Culture of Cheating" (another mantra). So much has changed since the film, which, after all, was released while the arena was under construction. (See this FAQ for current statistics on the project and this article for a retrospective on Forest City Ratner/Forest City New York, the company that launched the pro...

At the March 2010 groundbreaking for the Barclays Center, Gov. David Paterson cited an 11.2% unemployment rate in Kings County and declared, "As the buildings rise on Atlantic Yards the joblessness rate will fall right here in Brooklyn." From Comptroller's report He was right--sort of--but correlation is not causation. The unemployment rate has dropped considerably, even as the buildings--an arena and four residential towers--have risen slowly. And while the Barclays Center surely has a direct and indirect role in tourism and hospitality jobs, it's hard to see this project--or any project, frankly--as the main cause. Yes, 64 new hotels have been built in Brooklyn. But most of the job growth in leisure and hospitality--which more than doubled between 2009 and 2017, adding 30,100 jobs--came from  restaurants and bars, presumably serving residents with more disposable income. Rather, as a  June 2018 report  (also at bottom) from State Comptroller Thomas DiN...

My article from The Bridge, How Fixing an Overstressed Region Could Change Brooklyn , subtitled "The tri-state area needs big investments and better leadership, a planning group warns. We highlight 16 ideas, from possible to pipe-dream, that could remake the borough." There's a lot in there, including potential new subways (unlikely), new bus lines (more likely), plans to increase housing supply (partly likely), and even the Brooklyn ripple effects of moving Madison Square Garden. Take a read. (I've already written separately about the Regional Plan Association's proposal to build on suburban train station parking lots, and will write separately about their affordable housing proposals.)

We all hear about "Brooklyn the brand," or casual references to "Brooklyn" in popular culture. Remember, marketing for 550 Vanderbilt claims "Everything you love about Brooklyn." But that "Brooklyn" is only a piece of the larger borough. A new effort to reframe how we think about the borough--all the boroughs--comes from the urban-focused artificial intelligence studio Topos , in this Medium post (and described in FastCoDesign ): With the exception of Queens/Brooklyn, all boroughs are separated from one another by water. The implications and limitations of this physical partitioning of land have changed considerably since the initial formation of the boroughs. New York City is now connected by over 2000 bridges and tunnels , the vast majority of which were built after 1898. ...Furthermore, we were interested in going beyond more familiar demographic viewpoints to capture the personality of a place, and what it feels like to actually be the...

On the heels of this telling Onion piece,  Apartment Broker Recommends Brooklyn Residents Spend No More Than 150% Of Income On Rent , Times columnist Ginia Bellafante reminds us of  Brooklyn’s Food Gap , which is more piquantly headlined, in print on the jump page, as "Brooklyn's Food Gap Widens As Its Foodie Reputation Soars." Bellafante contrasts the hype about hot new restaurants with "a new report from the Food Bank for New York City , which reveals it not only to be the borough with the highest rate of what is known as “food insecurity” — 20 percent — but also the highest percentage increase in the rate of food insecurity from 2009 to 2014 — a time imagined to be one of economic recovery." The "meal gap," which counts the annual number of meals that a household can't afford has grown especially in certain neighborhoods--or at least community districts--that are sites of gentrification, which suggests those who are hanging on spend more mon...

In Brooklyn Magazine's 3/22/16  The Rise and Fall of Smith Street , food writer Sarah Zorn addresses a glaring, if likely temporary, situation: Smith Street, once an inexpensive thoroughfare where chefs and indie businesspeople could stake a claim, has become so trendy and corporate that landlords are warehousing space and waiting for big spenders. “It was a work site, one that neither the city nor the residents seemed in any hurry to fix,” trailblazing restaurateur Alan Harding recalled. “There was literally a big trench down the middle, hastily covered over by metal plates. There was a lot of scaffolding, and of the few retail businesses, many were fronted by full-on bulletproof glass. Because of a lack of interest, the remainder of the ground floor storefronts had been converted into apartments. Seriously, if you peeked behind the privacy plywood that had been put up on the windows, you could see hot plates and shower stalls.” But Betty Stoltz of the South Brooklyn Developme...

The Brooklyn Historical Society is well worth a visit, with a strong permanent collection and a varied lineup of temporary exhibits. However, like a lot of museums, it's not averse to pandering a bit. So it's hard not to sense a whiff of expediency--toward the audience, toward funders--in the slim but much publicized small exhibit Brooklyn Americans: Hockey's Forgotten Promise , which is on view through March 27. The exhibit concerns the justifiably little-known episode in which a team wore the name Brooklyn on its jerseys, practiced in Brooklyn, and played in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden--all in one season, 1941-42, before suspending operations. And when World War II ended, the grand plans for a Brooklyn-based franchise were killed by the New York Rangers. “With the [New York] Islanders coming to the Barclays Center, it is the right time to tell a story most people have never heard before,” exhibit organizer Marcia Ely told the Brooklyn Paper. “And this is ...

There are some interesting--and predictable--responses in Brownstoner's post last week,  Longtime Brooklynites Reflect on a Changing Brooklyn , with the change keyed to 2004, the year Brownstoner began (by Jonathan Butler, who since sold the blog to Blank Slate). In the predictable, see Borough President Eric AdamsEric Adams, Brooklyn Borough President: How Brooklyn Has Changed Since 2004: What has changed is that the secret is out on Brooklyn, and people from Manhattan to Mumbai are coming to be a part of our borough’s experience. The global attraction to our borough has further enriched our diversity while presenting new challenges we must face on ensuring we remain an affordable place to raise healthy children and families. Others reflected on Brooklyn's gentrification (both the increase in prices and the growing map of coveted areas), the borough's "brand," the arrival of tourists, the emergence of Brooklyn Bridge Park (and the views violated by new const...

They're calling it a "participatory art project," but it's really more about neighborhood history, with panels starting tomorrow night and a walking tour on October 17. (See more details below.) Recently launched is Intersection/Prospect Heights , which "uses photographs and oral histories to start a dialogue on the social, psychological, and physical impacts of rapid change in this Brooklyn neighborhood." Translation: it draws on the early 2000s photographs and oral histories of Prospect Heights ( article ,  psychology dissertation ) by Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani, founder of the urbanist studio  Buscada , to stimulate new conversations. At public events, on the website, and in cards inserted in neighborhood guides, residents are encouraged to share their stories about what in Prospect Heights is important to them. The research only obliquely touches on Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park; the dissertation infrequently mentions the project, and the six printed...