Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

The Dean Street Block Association (DSBA), which represents residents on Dean Street between Sixth and Vanderbilt avenues, is considering expansion, forming "a single neighborhood organization to represent northern Prospect Heights." (Presumably, the name would change.) Shadowing that, it seems, is response to the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project. DSBA members have absorbed significant project impacts, and have led efforts to monitor the project. According to a post on the group's web site, a meeting Monday will address the possibility of including St. Marks, Carlton, and 6th Avenues, as well as Bergen, Dean and Pacific Streets. The meeting will be held at 7 pm at the Community Room at the Latin Evangelical Free Church, 506 Bergen Street . "This is a special area with shared issues," the post states. "We have a history of working together successfully." The DSBA has held public meetings nearly every month since 2004. "The area we are p...

Yesterday’s belatedly-scheduled Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC) was over in an about hour, without any big news. (See my separate article with some updates.) Perhaps the most important thing was that a body set up to add outside voices and accountability to a problematic megaproject seemed to bow to expediency and the status quo. Barely any members of the public attended the 3 pm meeting at Empire State Development (ESD) offices in Manhattan, which had been announced less than a day earlier, after a meeting scheduled for last Friday fell through for lack of a quorum. This meeting drew five six AY CDC board members, three of whom work in ESD offices, and a quorum was apparently possible because the 14-member board has several  at least two vacancies. ESD, the state economic development authority, both oversees and shepherds the project, a potentially contradictory goal. The Executive Director of the AY CDC, Tobi Jaiyesimi, since her hiring also to...

From the Dean Street Block Association , 1/8/18, the 16-foot fence, with those large murals, was being dismantled, after neighborhood pressure  : By two nights ago, it looked as in the photo below, with a jersey barrier in front.

This is among several articles regarding the 10/17/17  meeting  ( video ) of the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC). Also see the  timetable  for 38 Sixth (and the issue of middle-income units going begging) and the  project's uncertain schedule . At the meeting, board member Linda Reardon asked the developer if they'd make arrangements to restripe Dean Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues, where bicyclists and vehicles share a narrow street that's been constricted by the giant green wall guarding the project site, and then further constrained by illegal parking. "This is current striping," responded Ashley Cotton, representing Greenland Forest City Partners. She pointed to a screenshot in her slideshow that showed two cars illegally parked on the right side of Dean, "which is an ongoing problem for all of us." "I find it confusing," Reardon said, because when "you turn from Carlton, on the left side i...

I'll be part of a panel Wednesday,  Learning from Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park , associated with the exhibition . The exhibition is at CUNY's James Gallery , 365 Fifth Avenue, ground floor, through Oct. 28, open 12-7pm Tuesday-Thursday and 12-6pm Friday and Saturday. Outside the gallery During last Wednesday's program,  Unintentional Community, from Shared Experience to Action , associated with painter Peter Krashes' project-related exhibition  Block Party , one visitor asked Krashes about the relationship between work and his activism, as a leader of the Dean Street Block Association (DSBA). (Krashes has been so involved in block issues that one neighbor said, "I have had Peter mistaken for my husband.") It relates, Krashes said, to what others had just been discussing regarding their relationship with Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park: "There’s a component of frustration here… there’s mediation in all of this work.. it’s remote." (Also see cov...

I'll be part of a panel Wednesday,  Learning from Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park , associated with the  exhibition . The exhibition is at CUNY's  James Gallery , 365 Fifth Avenue, ground floor, through Oct. 28, open 12-7pm Tuesday-Thursday and 12-6pm Friday and Saturday. ( Updated and clarified ) The discussion at last Wednesday's program, Unintentional Community, from Shared Experience to Action , associated with painter Peter Krashes' project-related exhibition Block Party , was fairly gloomy, if punctuated with the bitter humor of resiliency. Outside the gallery After all, the three dozen or so people present, most of them close Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park neighbors associated with the Dean Street Block Association, had many stories of watching their blocks overrun by construction or arena activities. Perhaps the most telling story involves Taniya Gunesekhara, who's endured disruptions like the Video Music Awards  and once told the state agency ...

From Dean Street Block Association; left photo Sept. 14,  right photos Sept. 18. OK, the hole in the sidewalk outside the B15 site was fixed recently , but weeds, garbage, and rats persist just east of Sixth Avenue between Dean and Pacific streets, given an indifferently maintained, long-stalled site. After complaints from neighbors last night at the bi-monthly Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Quality of Life meeting, even Ashley Cotton, Forest City New York's External Affairs EVP, acknowledged "you’re right, it’s disgusting" and announced partial progress. Because the joint venture Greenland Forest City Partners is still negotiating with a site neighbor about construction protections--the issue in a lawsuit from another neighbor, which was resolved--"we’re in a tricky place," Cotton said, with no construction start imminent. From Dean Street Block Association; photos Sept. 18 The building design was announced in December 2015, but delays surfaced in ...

The July 18 bi-monthly Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Quality of Life meeting, held at 55 Hanson Place, also aired updates about the murky status of future construction. The giant green fence on Dean Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues, which encroaches significantly on the travel lane, bunching bikes and vehicles together and further constrained by illegal but unticketed parking, was again a topic for criticism. Part of the fence has been lowered, but not moved back. Another section, not pictured, has been moved back. As Prospect Heights resident Gib Veconi pointed out, the 16-foot-high fence, twice the height of typical fences and moved into the street to accommodate bracing, were required as mitigations for construction impacts, notably dust and noise. But there's no construction going on, he said, echoing critiques made by the Dean Street Block Association. "It's not a mitigation, and it really ought to be moved," he said. "It was never ant...

And see the Twitter exchange here . Since January, residents of Dean Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues have been frustrated by postal trucks parked at the Dean Street curb, late-night deliveries and workers parking illegally, which stalls traffic, compounding hazards, and causes noise. The proximate cause is the siting of a postal carrier annex--moved from Atlantic Avenue at Times Plaza--which requires significant deliveries on a block that has become more residential than commercial. But a fundamental factor is the giant green wall that encroaches south onto Dean Street to enclose part of the Pacific Park site, which has eliminated street parking on both sides of the street and narrowed traffic lanes. via Dean Street Block Association  Given a limited turning radius, that also means that only smaller delivery trucks can be accommodated--which means more frequent trucks. Frustrated residents "We've spent six months working with the post office,"...

I'll have more reports from last night's meeting in a separate article. Will the scenario below on Dean Street between Flatbush and Sixth avenues, as detailed just last week, change? According to officials at a meeting last night, yes. But the proof will be in the pudding. Last night, at the bi-monthly Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Quality of Life meeting (fka Community Update meeting fka Quality of Life Committee), Department of Transportation representative Abigail Ikner said that the multiple construction projects on Dean are "getting in each other's way." Do the DOT "had a construction coordination meeting Friday just to work out the amount of construction in that area," she said, indicating representatives of the 461 Dean modular building, part of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park (on north side of the street), and the project involving the former Bergen Tile site (on the south side of the street). She didn't say anything, however, about are...

The next Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park  Quality of Life Community Meeting , on Nov. 1 at 6 pm, is supposed to "present an overview of the upcoming construction activities surrounding the project." But it also serves as an opportunity to ask question, and for neighbors to tell representatives of the developer, Greenland Forest City Partners, and the state agency overseeing/shepherding the project, Empire State Development, how it looks from their end. For those closest to the project, it's not pretty. View of dust stirred up by 535 Carlton construction Though  concerns  about the operations of the planned middle school at 664 Pacific were a key part of last week's Dean Street Block Association (DSBA) meeting, threaded through was frustration about the overall impact of Barclays Center operations (such as  rowdy hockey fans  or a blocked Dean Street ) and Pacific Park construction, and the attendant lack of accountability. As one resident put it, the int...