Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

Former Brooklyn Assemblyman Roger Green, who served from 1981-2007 and represented the proposed Atlantic Yards footprint when the project was announced and let the push for a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA), is back in the news. As NY 1 put it Dec. 16,  Former Brooklyn assemblyman urges Mamdani to address displacement of Black residents . I'll describe Green's recent proposals below, but first note that, while suggesting various solutions, he didn't mention the promise, albeit fuzzy , of 600 to 1,000 affordable for-sale units in the Atlantic Yards project, on or off site, later updated to a promise of 200 on site . That requires subsidies. Given that the promise was incorporated into the CBA, I wouldn't be surprised if Green revives it. The issue's back At a meeting earlier this month of the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC), Ismene Speliotis, the key architect of the Atlantic Yards Housing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that origin...

The headline news, according to NetsDaily 9/30/18, is that  Longtime Nets scout says NBA talent evaluation often racially based , but there's an intriguing anecdote from a recent podcast that helps fill out the story of how former Bishop Loughlin High School basketball coach Khalid Green got connected to the Nets. As I  wrote  in November 2011, all evidence suggests that Green was qualified to work as a Nets scout, but it sure helped to know the right people, notably his father Roger Green, who served as Assemblyman for the district including the Atlantic Yards site, and was a key political supporter of the project. A nice introduction I hadn't previously cited a February 2004 column for the Courier-Life chain, in which political columnist Erik Engquist noted that the Roger Green had just pleaded guilty to petit larceny and resigned, but might run again later that year, not only to vest his pension but also that "he might want to get his son a job with the New Jer...

I missed this when it was announced, but veteran Bishop Loughlin basketball coach Khalid Green, son of longtime Assemblyman Roger Green, a leading local political backer of Atlantic Yards when it was announced in 2003, got a job two years ago as a scout for the Nets. And his father helped connect him to the job. All evidence suggest Khalid Green, as a successful high school coach, was qualified, but, as with so much about Atlantic Yards, it sure helps to know the right people to nudge ahead on the line. (Remember how former Forest City Ratner point man Jim Stuckey said in 2005 that he didn't know whether railyard contract McKissack & McKissack was chosen by a bidding process?) As No Land Grab's Lumi Rolley pointed out two years ago, "A 'casual introduction' to Bruce Ratner is one of those tangible 'community benefits' of the Atlantic Yards project." The announcement The New York Daily News, in a 10/15/08 article headlined Bishop Loughlin coach Kh...