Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

Like a game of telephone, facts recede and Atlantic Yards falls down the memory hole. So maybe it seems like quibbling, but it's worth getting right. From the Commercial Observer yesterday, Bill Would Require NYC to Be Notified of Certain Vacant Property Sales : Kallos added that the legislation might help the city use eminent domain to build more important public projects, like schools, rather than projects like Brooklyn’s Barclays Center , which was built on 22 acres of land taken through eminent domain , CBS reported. But, using eminent domain is a last resort, he added. “I’m hoping this legislation will remind folks that the city, though [it] can speak softly, still carries a big stick,” he said. “The City of New York used eminent domain to build Barclays Center and to basically remove an entire city neighborhood, but we don’t use eminent domain to build schools. That seems strange to me. My hope is that this legislation will really put the screws to the city and make sure that...

This is the second of two articles on recent work by two scholars regarding Atlantic Yards. The first addressed their book What the Signs Say . Let's take a look at  When the Street Disappears: Eminent Domain, Redevelopment, and the Dissociative State , published in the May 2018 issue of  PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review .  It makes the intriguing--and, to me, largely convincing--argument that the deployment of eminent domain for Atlantic Yards was portrayed as detached from the government, thus diminishing public oversight and responsibility. The article is by sociolinguist Shonna Trinch and cultural anthropologist Edward Snajdr, a married couple who both teach in the Department of Anthropology at John Jay College, CUNY, and are pursuing a larger study of Atlantic Yards. Their conclusion: Despite the state’s dissociation from the developer during the negotiations with residents, the successful assemblage of land was implicitly guaranteed by New York S...

As I wrote yesterday , there's a glut of office space in Brooklyn, though that still doesn't rule out the chances for Site 5, which could deliver significant office space in 3-4 years (in a best-case scenario). But is Site 5--currently home to P.C. Richard and Modell's across from the arena, but long slated for a significant development, including office space--moving ahead? As I wrote 11/20/19, more than four years after big plans surfaced for Site 5, construction seemed more likely. Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority that oversees/shepherds Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, issued a statement 11/19/19: “Later this week, ESD will file papers to condemn a property in Downtown Brooklyn, allowing an important part of the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project to move forward. This condemnation was always envisioned in the original project documents. We will continue to work collaboratively with the developer and the community to deliver an exceptional mixed-us...

Update 6 pm 11/15/19: I received an appraisal that was originally omitted, for Pacific Street between Flatbush and Sixth avenues. I had estimated that the appraisal would be for no more than $500,000. Indeed, it was for $360,000. I have updated this article accordingly. Pinsky photo: Adrian Kinloch We finally have some answers to a tantalizing statement by Seth Pinsky, then president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYC EDC), at a May 2009 state Senate oversight hearing on Atlantic Yards. “Finally, the city has committed to contribute to the project at agreed-upon discounts certain real estate assets for which there are unlikely to be other opportunities for monetization," Pinsky said , without describing the discounts or the deal. It sounded like the city was desperate to dispose of those assets--a building, a piece of undeveloped land, and three streets, as far as we knew then--rather than use them as leverage. After all, they were key to original ...

Over several posts in an occasional series, I'll revisit various Response to Comments documents in separate environmental review or project approval processes, pointing out, with the asset of hindsight, unwise or unfounded assessments by either commenters or the Empire State Development Corporation (now called Empire State Development), the state authority overseeing and shepherding the project. I previously wrote about the lack of institutionalized oversight  and the wobbliness of project promises . Project opponents and those facing displacement criticized a developer-initiated process: ESDC has never solicited proposals from other developers. The project was initiated by [Forest City] Ratner and Ratner presented the project to ESDC. It was beyond a doubt that Ratner would be the primary beneficiary before the plans for the project were formulated or a substantial commitment of public funds was made. (468; representatives of several potential eminent domain plaintiffs) Th...

When I wrote recently  about blight, the removal of which was a purported rationale for Atlantic Yards and which is the subject of a March 6 panel sponsored by the Municipal Art Society, I neglected to point to the glaring failure to remove the "blight" of the Vanderbilt Yard, used to store and service Long Island Rail Road trains. For a project announced in December 2003, approved in 2006, and re-approved in 2009, well, it may not be done until 2035. Flashback: those reading a 4/16/12 New York Times article, Impact of Atlantic Yards, for Good or Ill, Is Already Felt , focusing on new retail, might have been led to think the issue was resolved: For Forest City Ratner, the developer of the project, which was strongly backed by many city leaders, the changes are evidence that the arena has already met its goal of transforming a dreary section of Brooklyn — the Long Island Rail Road’s rail yards and surrounding industrial buildings, which the company’s spokesman describ...

The long-gestating film Little Pink House , dramatizing the 2005  Kelo v. New London  Supreme Court decision that galvanized opinion nationally regarding eminent domain--and unsettled eminent domain defenders --is screening Friday April 20 through Thursday, April 26 in Manhattan. It's playing at the Village East Cinemas  in the East Village and  AMC Empire 25  in Times Square. At the Village East, director Courtney Balaker and real-life protagonist Susette Kelo (played by Catherine Keener in the film) will be doing a Q&A after the 7 pm screening on Friday April 20. (Here's one early--and mixed-- review . Here's columnist Jeff Jacoby's supportive take , noting that the project for which Kelo's house was taken never panned out.) The film is getting a boost from the libertarian Institute for Justice (IJ), which supplied lawyers for and drove publicity in the case, which, while a loss of Kelo and neighbors, spurred many but not all states to tighten e...

Catching up on some 2011-12 eminent domain reading... The Fordham Urban Law Journal hosted a debate between NYU Professor Roderick Hills and Ilya Somin on the eminent domain decisions by the New York Court of Appeals in the cases of Atlantic Yards (aka Goldstein ) and Columbia University (aka Kaur ). Somin's 2011 article   “Let there Be Blight” , which I covered here and here , argued that these takings violated both the New York state and federal constitutions, especially, he said , because of the contrast between the court’s broad definition of  blight and the state constitutional provision limiting blight condemnations to “substandard and unsanitary areas.” Hills responded with  a critique  and Somin posted a  reply . Somin's argument I quoted Somin's argument: the New York Court of Appeals erred badly, by allowing highly abusive blight condemnations and defining pretextual takings so narrowly as to essentially read the concept out of existenc...

An important Atlantic Yards eminent domain valuation has just been validated by an appellate court. I wrote in May 2014 how a condemnation judge, in valuing and empty lot off Atlantic Avenue within the project footprint, denied the state's claim that there would have been no rezoning. Kings County Supreme Court Justice Wayne Saitta agreed with the property owner's argument that the site, without the project, could have become a 12-story hotel, concluding, "Most probably, the entire M1-1 [one-story manufacturing] district in the Atlantic Yards footprint would have been upzoned." Why is this important? Because Empire State Development Corporation (aka Empire State Development, or ESD), in the 2006 Atlantic Yards environmental review, claimed the project site would not "experience substantial change in the future without the proposed project... due to the existence of the open rail yard and the low-density industrial zoning regulations." When the very reas...

We all know that, in New York eminent domain cases, the condemnor often low-balls owners of the subject property-- whether residential or commercial --as a way to nudge them into negotiation. Of course they might get more money after a trial, but some are less willing to wait. A case in point: the astounding offer of $15.1 million that Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority overseeing/shepherding Atlantic Yards, made in February to P.C. Richard, which owns one of the two buildings at Site 5, across Flatbush Avenue from the Barclays Center. (I found the letter looking through the court file; I've had no contact with the parties.) That's well below the value of stated development rights, much less what is currently permitted (or might be permitted in the future) on the property. Western flank of Site 5, where taller of two-tower project would be, at Atlantic and Fourth Avenues Looking at the math From Forest City to A.J. Richard Consider. The site is 2...