Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

As  noted , the Final Scope for a Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for Phase 2 of Atlantic Yards contains a lengthy Response to Comments document (bottom), which I will excerpt in several posts. (The Final Scope was issued 2/7/1, but the actual court-ordered SEIS will not arrive until sometime in the spring.) And, as I wrote, Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority overseeing/shepherding Atlantic Yards, does not give much ground to community concerns. Jeff Baker, attorney for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn--one of the two coalitions whose lawsuits led to the court-ordered SEIS--wrote to chide ESD for revising history and omitting the authority's sketchy behavior in extending the project buildout to 25 years. The state responded that he was wrong, but I disagree, as explained below. Charging a misstatement Baker's comment: Comment 7: The Introduction of the Draft Scope of Work misstates the procedural posture of this project and the ...

WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show yesterday featured another shadow debate on the Atlantic Yards project, this time keyed to the release of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), issued Tuesday by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC). While Jeff Baker, attorney for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB), and Jim Stuckey, president of Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards Development Group , didn't address each other directly, and there wasn't enough time for all the questions that needed to be asked, both had a chance to get their talking points on the table. Most notably, Stuckey would not reveal the company's expected profit--a required element in the company's bid for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's (MTA) Vanderbilt Yard--but said that such numbers would emerge after the project is completed. FCR's investment in infrastructure is considerable, he said, and deserves to turn a profit. "It is, after all, America," h...