Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

In a 12/8/14 Noticing New York column, With Big Bucks Out To Hijack Truth and Broadcasting Integrity- The Daily Show and Bill Moyers Set Models for WNYC Radio , Michael D.D. White describes a visit to a board meeting of WNYC, where he queried CEO Laura Walker about the appointment of Forest City Ratner CEO MaryAnne Gilmartin: I was told that Ms. Gilmartin’s appointment had been in the works for more than a year . Although I pressed for an answer, Ms. Walker would not say whether anyone had raised the obvious likely objections to Ms. Gilmartin’s appointment other than to let me understand that there had been discussions about Ms. Gilmartin's qualifications. I asked, and Ms. Walker said that she had known Ms. Gilmartin for a number of years . At the meeting, and outside of it afterwards, there was discussion about a gala (including what to wear) and, outside the board meeting room, there was also some discussion about how there was a lot of money in the borough of Queens, as in ...

The belated backlash to the unwise decision to continue with the Nets-Knicks opener scheduled for tonight--until Mayor Mike Bloomberg yesterday stopped it--continues. Still, no one has challenged the unfounded explanation, as accepted by the New York Times, by Brooklyn Nets CEO Brett Yormark and NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver that they didn't know how bad the subways were when they made the decision to reaffirm the plan. In fact, the Times devotes  far more resources  to an article about Knicks fans becoming Nets fans. Nor has anyone tried to figure out how and why Mayor Mike Bloomberg--whose office, according to Yormark , coordinated with the decision to keep the game--changed his mind. (I speculate that the cops might have protested.) Michael D.D. White, in his Noticing New York blog, captures the mayor's unseemly, boosterish tone : In the course of two back-to-back news conferences on the extraordinary disaster accompanying hurricane he twice embarrassed hims...

Legendary singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen 's coming to the Barclays Center on December 20, sure to attract a large if not sold-out house. After all, he's a legend. As the promo describes it, Cohen's "a master songwriter, musician and poet whose stunning body of original work" cites "W.B Yeats, Irving Layton and Walt Whitman as literary influences." But the Cohen lyric most appropriate for Brooklyn's glistening but tainted new arena is this, from the song "Everybody Knows" : "Everybody knows the fight was fixed: the poor stay poor and the rich get rich." Flashback: September 2009 On 9/17/09, as I reported , the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) re-approved Atlantic Yards on developer Forest City Ratner's preferred terms, allowing--in ways we didn't fully learn until later--a 25-year project buildout, deferred payments for land needed via eminent domain, and payments for the developer's "soft cos...

The Empire State Development Corporation's (ESDC) approval yesterday of the revised Atlantic Yards plan was predictable, which is probably why a number of news outlets--including even the Brooklyn Paper and the Courier-Life, both on deadline--didn't bother to send a reporter. But there was news, both in the statements made at the ESDC board meeting and in the board documents distributed later, which indicated a significant effort to advance government funding to Forest City Ratner, a hedging defense of the official ten-year project timetable, an acknowledgement that Forest City Ratner would only be required to build a project at 65% of announced square footage , and an "economic benefit analysis" that, even by the ESDC's lax standards, fails to come clean about the net tax revenues. Moreover, as I'll detail below, the Response to Comments issued to the board evaded or disregarded some important questions. And while there were renderings of the arena, in co...

The Partnership for New York City (PFNYC), which exemplifies the business community, is sure straining in its support for Atlantic Yards, dropping previous enthusiasm about Frank Gehry and affordable housing to focus on the goal of building an arena, while misleadingly suggesting that the project as it stands would generate many permanent jobs. The PFNYC is essentially the city's Chamber of Commerce , a nonprofit membership organization with some 200 CEOs (“Partners”) from New York City’s "top corporate, investment and entrepreneurial firms." Given that Forest City Ratner, Nets Sports & Entertainment, and Barclays Capital are among the partners , it's hardly surprising that the PFNYC supports Atlantic Yards, but testimony from PFNYC President Kathryn Wylde opening the June 22 Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Finance Committee meeting was notably thin, clocking in at half the allotted two minutes. The testimony Wylde said: I'm Kathryn Wylde, presid...