Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

The issue of residential permit parking has been on the Atlantic Yards agenda for nearly ten years, and though the New York City Department of Transportation last month issued a report suggesting there are street parking spaces available near the Barclays Center during an event, residents remain skeptical. On 3/4/04, Forest City Ratner's then Atlantic Yards point man, Jim Stuckey, ventured to a public meeting at a Park Slope elementary school, sponsored by the Park Slope Civic Council. "What promise would you make to residents near Flatbush who have no parking now," Stuckey was asked, "and will you have parking permits available for residents?" (Video via producers of Battle for Brooklyn documentary ) "We have been working with the city, and have in fact had extensive discussion with them. Obviously, it’s the city that ultimately has to make this decision," Stuckey replied in his smooth manner. "They are in fact thinking of doing a pil...

Note: I did not attend the meeting but listened to an audiotape and spoke with a couple of attendees. Five nights after a contentious meeting (about rats) in the Soapbox Gallery on Dean Street, Prospect Heights residents gathered in the same space last night to express concerns about parking, traffic, and pedestrian issues in the eastern end of the site, notably the planned 1100-space parking lot in the block bounded by Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues and Dean and Pacific streets. The two-hour meeting was periodically contentious, with residents expressing frustration at vague, incomplete answers, and promises of future solutions. Beyond that, a representative of the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) indicated that developer Forest City Ratner (FCR) was in violation of the Memorandum of Environmental Commitments by not having a daily on-site representative to interface with the community. (Update: see bottom for an ESDC statement, in response to my follow-up question,...

Ezra Goldstein moves on (to the Community Bookstore in Park Slope) after six years editing the Park Slope Civic Council 's Civic News--as good a community publication of its type that you'll find--and, in his final column, admits to some initial naivete about the Atlantic Yards project. In Six Years Before the Masthead , he writes: I am not so hubristic to claim that my more recent articles have attained perfection, but I will give myself credit for getting better over time because I had the good sense to listen to, and learn from, the wiser people by whom I was surrounded in the Civic Council and this community. I even learned a thing or two from people who astounded me with their wrong-headedness. I resist the temptation to use stronger negatives to describe this last group because I find it difficult to give up all pretense of journalistic objectivity. I will, however, drop a broad hint about whom I am so pejoratively inclined by saying that the early articles that make me ...