Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

It's always a little fishy when a meeting of the purportedly advisory Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC) is scheduled with little notice , and that meeting date is just two days before a meeting of the parent Empire State Development (ESD). Based on past practice , that suggests the AY CDC is being asked to rubber-stamp (er, endorse) a recommendation to the parent board, a gubernatorially controlled authority that oversees/shepherds the project. Indeed, the belatedly provided Agenda  (below), which surfaced yesterday about 1 pm, indicates that the directcors will be asked to 1) approve the AY CDC's annual operating budget and 2) also be asked to recommend the extension of a contract, signed in June 2007 with the firm Henningson, Durham & Richardson, Architecture and Engineering (aka HDR) to serve as enviornmental monitor for the project. Their job is to ensure that the Memorandum of Environmental Commitments is being met. That extension, in the past...

Besides the $71,000 contract with AKRF regarding Site 5, which I described 11/6/20, the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project has generated an enormous amount of revenue, more than $50 million, for lawyers and consultants, all paid for by the developers. That's a relatively small increase in recent years; as of 2016, as I reported , that total had approached $46 million, with some contracts starting as early as 2005 and 2006. According to the project's guiding  Development Agreement , the developers agree that, for themselves, affiliates and tenants, "all costs and expenses incurred by ESDC under this Agreement or the Project Documentation shall be for the account of, and shall be payable upon demand," by the developers. See excerpt below. Some of the costs are operational--consultants to monitor the ongoing project--but most have to do with getting the project (and project changes) approved, and getting eminent domain accomplished.  It's certainly good revenue for...

( Updated/revised 11/4/20 to clarify and add details regarding STV revision ) Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority overseeing/shepherding Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, last month quietly extended for two years a consulting contract with an environmental monitor, whose job it is to ensure that the Memorandum of Environmental Commitments is being met. The decision was made at the end of the ESD's 3/26/20 ESD board meeting, conducted by teleconference. It came after the scheduled 3/18/20 meeting of the advisory Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC), which was moved from in-person to teleconference, then postponed. No agenda for the AY CDC meeting had been posted. Presumably, the advisory body was expected to advise approval of the extension, as it had similarly at a meeting two years ago. But it didn't have the opportunity to do so. Also, the ESD board voted to extend the contract with STV, the owner's representative, which also was to e...