Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

From a CNBC article yesterday, New Jersey and Brooklyn offer glimpses of what might have been for Amazon in Queens : Small business owners were left bemoaning the Queens economic boom that got away. Perhaps the biggest losers were average New Yorkers, who polled 56 percent in favor of the deal. Um, the poll question was extremely general , and many of the jobs would've gone to newcomers, so it's kind of tough to tease out the "biggest losers." I had offered warnings about Amazon , given the Atlantic Yards experience revising the deal, so it's interesting to see CNBC trying to make more positive analogies: No doubt, many stakeholders share the burden in the deal's death — which stirred memories of another epic development battle in Brooklyn years earlier. Beginning in 2003, developer Forest City Ratner ran into interference from countless interests when attempting to break ground on a huge plot known as Atlantic Yards, now named Pacific Park Brooklyn. I...

Yesterday's DNAInfo reported in  'Fight Club' Outside Atlantic Center Mall Eyed by NYPD : A corner behind Atlantic Center Mall  is home to an organized "fight club" in which dozens of kids gather for daytime brawls organized on social media — including one recently where someone fired a gun, according to police and residents. Hanson Place and South Elliott Place — at the northeast corner of the complex that includes a Burlington Coat Factory and OfficeMax — has been the site of fights between as many as 30 teens for almost a year, resident Stephanie Seto said. Police are closely monitoring the fights organized on Facebook and other social media, and the mall is working with police to stem the violence. ...88th Precinct commanding officer Capt. Peter Fiorillo said officers are trying to thwart the fights. The  88th Precinct  and nearby 77th and 78th precincts are collaborating to stop the fights, the commanding officer said. ..A spokesman for  Forest City Ra...

For those with long memories, the Cop of the Month award announced last night at the 78th Precinct Community Council meeting in Prospect Heights provoked some knowing chuckles. For the 78th and its commander, Deputy Inspector Michael Ameri, it was good news. Since the busy Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center malls were added to the precinct in September 2012 as part of a reconfiguration that also added the Barclays Center, major crimes at the malls were down 25% last year. Still, said Ameri, "I have some issues, some crime, some after-school problems." So the dedicated mall unit--Officers Bash, Butler, Prince, and Sears--together managed 200 arrests, earning them the month's award. Ameri later told me the malls--which, I'd note--are operated by Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner--accounted for some 500 arrests last year, mostly minor crimes. That was congruent with March 2009 statement  by Captain Vanessa Kight, 88th Precinct Executive Officer, that...

There have been few major crimes, and no violent crimes at and around the Barclays Center, according to 2013 statistics described at the bimonthly Atlantic Yards Quality of Life meeting on 9/26/13. New York Police Department Sgt. Angelo Pirozzi, who heads the 78th Precinct Barclays detail described, for the first time to my knowledge, the full list of arrests, summonses, and categorization of Barclays-related 911 and 311 calls for 2013. (The NYPD has not provided statistics for the three-plus months of the arena's opening last year.) Looking at statistics Pirozzi said there were seven reports of grand larceny, none of them violent crimes, at and outside the arena, mainly involving such things as theft of unattended bags. There were 45 arrests outside or inside the arena, such as for illegal scalping, unlicensed vendors, and trespassing. There could have been more arrests, but there were 151 Criminal Summonses  issued for quality of life offenses, including d...

Police overseeing the Barclays Center say things have gone smoothly overall, but some neighborhood complaints still surfaced last night at the monthly meeting of the 78th Precinct Community Council, held at the precinct, located at Bergen Street and Sixth Avenue a block from the arena.. Richard Goldstein, president of the Carlton Avenue Association, said a neighbor had reported that limos and black cars are illegally parked at hydrants regularly on “game nights”--presumably event nights--but not getting ticketed. (The law says there should be 15 foot radius from the center of the hydrant in each direction.) Deputy Inspector Michael Ameri directed Goldstein to speak to the sergeant assigned to the arena and said complainants should call 311. Desmond Atkins of Community Board 8 reported consistent complaints about such hired vehicles idling on streets east of the arena. Community Council President Pauline Blake responded that the such vehicle complaints are the predominant ones e...

Of all the dubious work that the ubiquitous environmental consulting firm AKRF has done on Atlantic Yards, its crime study, aimed to support the conclusion that the Atlantic Yards footprint was blighted, was most clearly bankrupt. Remember, AKRF suggested that a little-populated, railyard-dominated section of footprint, rather than Forest City Ratner's two malls, was responsible for the crime spike in Sector E of the 88th Precinct. But it never checked with the cops to square their observations and statistics with the surely self-serving numbers reported by the malls. From the New York Times's blog The Local today,  Our Crime Epicenter: The Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center Malls : The Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center malls aren’t just hubs for Fort Greene shoppers and commuters — they’re also the neighborhood hotspots for criminals. The adjoining shopping centers, owned and developed by Atlantic Yards master builder Bruce Ratner, have been the site of at least 2...

Oh, remember the Blight Study conducted for the Empire State Development Corporation that concluded that "the relatively low number of crimes reported at the shopping centers indicates that the high crime rate in sector 88E is more likely a result of crimes occurring on the project site than in Atlantic Center or Atlantic Terminal"? I wrote in March 2009 that that was bogus, and a continuing stream of crime reports from those malls confirms that. And there has been at least one major incident at the Atlantic Terminal mall, last November, when large numbers of teens--drawn by an “unauthorized flier being circulated on social networking sites,” according to a Buffalo Wild Wings executive--gathered at the mall and were forced to disperse, with two people being shot. Cracking down However, instead of having the malls declared blighted, mall owner Forest City Ratner (the Atlantic Yards developer) is cracking down with enforcement. The New York Times reports, in an article h...

From the Fort Greene Association's February 2010 newsletter : The FGA along with the Task Force has urged the restoration of Police foot patrols once common in Fort Greene believing that these patrols set Fort Greene and Clinton Hill on the correct course in the early 90’s when they were active. In speaking of his available resources at the 88th, Captain Tasso says that he does not have the manpower for foot patrols except for specific high crime locations. One of these locations is Atlantic Center, which does not have its own security force but drains Police resources from the 88th. From the Atlantic Yards Blight Study conducted by AKRF: The Atlantic Center and Atlantic Terminal shopping centers are located immediately north of the project site, also within the boundaries of Sector 88E. In an effort to determine whether a large proportion of crimes reported for Sector 88E might have occurred on the Atlantic Center/Atlantic Terminal premises rather than on the project site, crime ...

An altercation spilling out of the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant in the Atlantic Terminal (not Center) Mall Tuesday night led to a shooting--and another piece of evidence that high crime in Sector E of the 88th Precinct is related to the malls, not the much-emptier Atlantic Yards footprint. So consultant AKRF, in conducting the Blight Study for the Empire State Development Corporation, was either incompetent or lying: Similarly, while there were 115 grand larceny crimes reported for sector 88E in 2005, the shopping center security force recorded only one incident of larceny that same year. Although crimes catalogued by the Atlantic Center and Atlantic Terminal security staff are not necessarily the same as those catalogued by the NYPD, the relatively low number of crimes reported at the shopping centers indicates that the high crime rate in sector 88E is more likely a result of crimes occurring on the project site than in Atlantic Center or Atlantic Terminal . The police disagree Mor...

We should know within a month whether the case challenging the Atlantic Yards environmental review will, like the case challenging eminent domain, get a hearing before the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals. The Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) and Forest City Ratner have responded forcefully to the request by Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) and 25 co-petitioners, who asked  the Court of Appeals to review the case, questioning whether the "bias and corruption" demonstrated by the ESDC renders the agency's blight findings invalid. The ESDC and FCR say the case is cut and dried, given that courts give agencies much deference. In turn, the petitioners fire back in a final legal memo, charging that the ESDC and the developer mischaracterize their arguments. The Court of Appeals is not required to accept this case.  If it doesn't, however, that would mean that one crucial element in the ESDC's much-criticized Blight Study, the questionable...

The Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, in budget documents ( PDF ) released Friday, revealed a couple of Capital Budget Priorities and Requests related to Atlantic Yards. In neither case does the city appear willing to commit more resources, stating that it would try to build more schools, should AY be built, with existing funds, and would not try to construct a new 78th Precinct stationhouse, despite the impact of an arena that would be built a block away. In the map, the arena would be the larger circle, while the stationhouse is the smaller circle. Note that, while it looks like the 78th Precinct stationhouse is located in the 77th Precinct, according to this map adapted from the Empire State Development Corporation's Blight Study , there's actually a carve-out for the stationhouse to keep it in the 78th. But the map (click to enlarge) clearly shows how the stationhouse is at the end of the district it serves. Each district has several sectors. From Community Board 6 R...

I've long argued that claims in the Empire State Development Corporation's Blight Study of high crime in the Atlantic Yards footprint were dubious, first writing in July 2006. The state's evidence was so weak that Supreme Court Justice Joan Madden, in her January 2008 dismissal of the case challenging the Atlantic Yards environmental review, punted on even addressing the crime issue. Last April, the Daily News, quoted an anonymous source as saying the need for a police presence at the Atlantic Terminal Mall has cut into the ranks of officers policing the rest of the  88th Precinct . Case closed Last night, a police official clarified the issue and closed the case: yes, Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Center and Atlantic Terminal malls are prime crime locations in the precinct. "A large percentage of our crime--particularly grand larceny and petit larceny--occurs in the malls," declared Captain Vanessa Kight, 88th Precinct Executive Officer, at the monthly mee...

Remember the Empire State Development Corporation's Blight Study? Its claims of high crime in the Atlantic Yards footprint were dubious, as I wrote in July 2006, and Supreme Court Justice Joan Madden, in her January dismissal of the case challenging the Atlantic Yards environmental review, punted on assessing the issue. Well, now comes a piece of evidence that further challenges the study's claims. The Daily News, in a story published Tuesday on a "crime wave" in Clinton Hill, reports: The need for a police presence at the Atlantic Terminal Mall is also cutting into the ranks of officers policing the community, the source said. Not the malls Remember, the AY footprint contains sectors from three separate precincts, and the only sector where a rise in crime had been seen--the source of the Blight Study's sweeping conclusions--was Sector 88E, shown at right. (ESDC graphic adapted by Lumi Rolley of NoLandGrab; click to enlarge.) The report tried to assess whether ...

Update 4/20/12: As I've written several times, the crime problem is clearly attributable to Forest City Ratner's malls. Is the proposed 22-acre Atlantic Yards site blighted, a precondition for the use of eminent domain? Of course, says the Empire Statement Development Corporation, in a Blight Study that is part of the General Project Plan . And one of the reasons is a high crime rate--a manipulative allegation that crumbles under scrutiny. Notably, in two of the three sectors studied that each included parts of the footprint, the crime rate was lower last year than in the larger police precincts they belong to. In the third of the sectors, the rate was dramatically higher than in the larger police precinct. That raised the average crime rate of the three sectors high enough to suggest that the footprint as a whole has a crime problem. (At right, the broad boundaries of the three affected precincts. Click on any graphic for a larger view.) But it's a suggestion, not...