Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

From today´s New York Times, in an article headlined A Brooklyn Arena and the Street: What’s the Right Distance? , the news comes in paragraph five (which is better than the original blog post , where the point wasn´t quite made): For weeks, the project’s developer, Forest City Ratner, and its state sponsor, the Empire State Development Corporation, had deflected questions from bloggers about the arena’s location, saying that they could not divulge information related to security. Actually, not just ¨bloggers¨(who might just be legit journalists) but also print journalists. More from today´s article, paragraph nine: After this calculation was published in The Times on Nov. 8, Atlantic Yards watchdogs said that it was not realistic and that the arena was going to be much closer to the street, citing architect’s renderings and language in plan documents. That leaves out the original blog´s link to the explicit corrective information. OK, this is in print, but how about a URL ? Paragraph ...

We are told that the justification for the size of certain projects, like Atlantic Yards and the New Domino in Williamsburg, is the inclusion of affordable housing and other social goals, but another justification is certainly the expected return by the developers—which remains a mystery. But we shouldn’t think that for-profit developers are making a major sacrifice—the social goals are factored in, subsidized by the public, and offset by market-rate units that would bring the expected (yet unspecified) profit. Yes, risk and vision should reap reward, but that deserves some public vetting when there are so many public dollars at stake. By contrast, nonprofit developers—which, it should be said, may not always have the institutional weight and expertise to pull off large projects—can factor in other goals. In her book The University and Urban Revival: Out of the Ivory Tower and Into the Streets , by Judith Rodin , president of the Rockefeller Foundation and former president of the Unive...

So, in the print edition of today's New York Times, is there an article--or a correction--that explains that the Atlantic Yards arena would be 20 feet from the street, as the Times reported online yesterday? Nope. 6-8% vs. 73-87% Consider that, on 9/6/05, the Times published a front-page lead story (in the New York editions) that overhyped a rumored "six to eight percent" cut in the bulk of the Atlantic Yards project. It took a few weeks for the Times to say definitively that the cut would bring the project back to the original square footage announced. Earlier this month, the Times in print estimated that the arena would be set back 75 feet from Flatbush Avenue and 150 feet from Atlantic Avenue. Actually, segments of the arena would be as close as 20 feet. A reduction from 75 feet to 20 feet represents a difference of 73%. A reduction from 150 feet to 20 feet represents a difference of 87%. That's news.

Mystery solved, and compounded: now the New York Times tells us that the planned Atlantic Yards arena would be--at least in part--as close to the street as the Prudential Center in Newark. And, given that city officials in Newark have chosen to close streets outside the new arena for security purposes and city officials in New York vow they won't do so, that raises further questions about the security plans, and the tension between necessary confidentiality and public oversight. In other words, given that Newark has chosen to close the streets, it shouldn't be enough for New York City and state officials, and developer Forest City Ratner, to say "trust us." Some form of independent scrutiny, however confidential, is necessary. (The graphic is from the FEIS --note that the green space is on the rooftop of the arena.) Underplaying some news The news surfaced this afternoon on the Times's CityRoom blog, in an article both substantial and whimsical that was marred b...

Last night I wandered over to the corner of 43rd and Vanderbilt Avenue to see the storefront exhibit set up by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) featuring scale models, videos, and other information provided by the five bidders for the Hudson Yards (aka West Side yards) development project . Frankly, given the information available, it's almost impossible for a layperson to sort through the proposals. Someone should produce a matrix comparing key aspects of the project. Also, though it may have been because I stopped by late in the day, there were only two handouts, such as the brochure unfolded below from Brookfield Properties. Still, the fact that public opinion is being solicited before a developer is anointed offers a distinct contrast to the sequence involving the Atlantic Yards project. And a layperson can at least offer an opinion about the general design of each proposals. That doesn't mean the MTA will listen to comments offered in the brochure pictured a...

The ironies pile up. Just as the process for development over railyards in Manhattan and Brooklyn raises questions about the process behind the Atlantic Yards approval, so does some news out of Coney Island. Monday's night's Coney Island Development Corporation information meeting was canceled because of an overflow crowd ready to criticize the Bloomberg Administration's redevelopment plan, as reported by Omar Robau on Kinetic Carnival . An overflow crowd at the Atlantic Yards public hearing last year meant many interested parties from the immediate neighborhoods were shut out by groups bused in by project supporters. Yes, there were additional "community forums," but they didn't get the same media attention, and many people just gave up. (One forum, of course, was on the day of the primary election.) Kruger's campaign The leader of the opposition to the Coney Island plan was State Sen. Carl Kruger, who even said, according to Robau, "This is a back...

In his mostly approving review of the new Times Tower designed by Renzo Piano and built by the New York Times Company and Forest City Ratner, headlined Pride and Nostalgia Mix in the Times’s New Home , Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff suggests that the building's style reflects some tensions in the evolving practice of journalism. He writes: Architecturally, however, The New York Times Building owes its greatest debt to postwar landmarks like Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Lever House or Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building — designs that came to embody the progressive values and industrial power of a triumphant America. Their streamlined glass-and-steel forms proclaimed a faith in machine-age efficiency and an open, honest, democratic society. Newspaper journalism, too, is part of that history. Transparency, independence, the free flow of information, moral clarity, objective truth — these notions took hold and flourished in the last century at papers like The Times....

What a difference a few years make. The city's market-driven effort to develop the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's West Side yards continues in blinding contrast to its fait accompli with the MTA's Vanderbilt Yard in Brooklyn. Four years ago, the city announced its support of a deal for the 22-acre Atlantic Yards project over and beyond the railyard; crucially, the latter would occupy less than 40 percent of the site. The New York Times offered further anointment with a rapturous review ( A Garden of Eden Grows in Brooklyn ) by architecture critic Herbert Muschamp. But, hey, that's no way to develop railyards, is it? PlaNYC 2030 says there should be much more community consultation . Real estate usually generates a better deal when there's an open bidding process. And the design of megaprojects generally improves when there's a detailed request for proposals and an opportunity for the public and interested parties to weigh in. So today it was big news th...

The new Prudential Center arena in Newark has gotten high marks from those attending concerts and hockey games so far. As the first new arena in the New York area in more than a quarter-century, it offers state-of-the-art amenities—but likely will be surpassed if/when the Barclays Center arena, designed by Frank Gehry, is built as part of the Atlantic Yards project. The larger story of the Prudential Center, however, may have some sobering if unsurprising lessons for Brooklynites. The arena cost the city more than expected, so far contains fewer neighborhood-friendly features than originally promised, and has yet to be accompanied by the development it was expected to catalyze. The rendering from the official web site (above) looking west contrasts with the current view (right), given that the adjacent park and office building are some time away. The Brooklyn parallels Some parallels in Brooklyn are already evident. The price tag for the Atlantic Yards arena has already risen from $43...

Last year, according to Nets spokesman Barry Baum , the Nets averaged home attendance of 17,000. (Actually, 16,972 .) How are they doing this year at the newly-renamed Izod Center in the Meadowlands, capacity 19,990? Even with 50% discount offers , they're not doing that well. The average for the first eight games is 15,105. (Attendance may improve when some more top-tier opponents come to town.) Wednesday, October 31 vs. Chicago Bulls: 17,342 . Friday, November 2 vs. Toronto Raptors: 14,980 . Tuesday, November 6 vs. Atlanta Hawks: 12,336 Thursday, November 8 vs. Washington Bullets: 13,267 Saturday, November 10 vs. Boston Celtics: 18,171 . Monday, November 12 vs. New Orleans Hornets: 12,832 . Friday, November 16 vs. Orlando Magic: 15,115 . Saturday, November 17 vs. Miami Heat: 16,797 . What about the Devils? And what about the New Jersey Devils , gone from the Meadowlands to the new Prudential Center in Newark? Only in the opening game and a game against nearby rivals the New York ...

The New York Times, in today's Long Island section, offers a skeptical editorial regarding Charles Wang's Lighthouse development anchored around a rebuilt Nassau Coliseum. The headline is Back to the Lighthouse : Go to www.lighthouseli.com, pore over the glossy images and watch the video, and you may be forgiven for thinking that Mr. Wang is proposing the mildest, most inoffensive 5.5 million-square-foot development imaginable. The Lighthouse on Long Island is shown as a bucolic, sunlit oasis where people shop, stroll, ice-skate, go to Islanders games, nuzzle their children, get massages and jog with their golden retrievers. The Times's criticism of the vague plans for transit and affordable housing may well be on target. But the newspaper, in its editorials regarding Atlantic Yards, has chosen to see the positive , rather than apply similar skepticism. Remember this 8/6/06 endorsement: After watching the project evolve for the past few years, we feel — with a few caveats —...

Like a lot of sports teams, the New Jersey Nets are doing their best to fill empty seats by offering some deep discounts to various companies and organizations. What's interesting is that some companies, as these screenshots show, get a better deal. For example, employees of Barclays paid $50.50 for a discount seat to last night's game priced at $101, while employees of Starpoint Solutions paid $65. (Click to enlarge.) Then again, Barclays will be paying big-time when/if the Nets move to Brooklyn. Just this week, the Nets offered 50% discounts to games last night and tonight to those holding tickets to Broadway theaters dimmed by the strike.

How journalism gets made... an item on the New York magazine web site (and perhaps coming in the next issue), headlined Housing Advocate Brad Lander to Run for DeBlasio's Council Spot , offers the following line: A savvy political operator, Lander is also popular with the brownstone-bourgeois crowd — the Atlantic Yards Report quotes him approvingly. The link to my blog is from an August 2007 post headlined Beyond gentrification: the contributing factors to the housing crisis , a pretty wonky exploration of housing issues, taking off from a discussion held in June 2006 on housing displacement, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Brooklyn at Brooklyn College. The New York magazine article could just as easily have said that "Lander is also popular with the policy wonk crowd." (Is it brownstone-bourgeois to spend most of your weekend, as I did recently, at a conference about affordable housing titled "Priced Out" ?) The original query The writer of the article...

From Steve Ettlinger's op-ed in today's New York Sun, Against Ratner's Domain : Mr. Ratner's purported public benefits are easily disputed, and they are the key to the court case. The underlying argument was that the arena would be publicly owned and merely leased to Mr. Ratner. Truth is, he expects a 99-year lease for the princely sum of $1. If the public really will own it, why did Barclay's Bank agree to pay Mr. Ratner $400 million so it could be called the Barclay's Arena? It's a little more complicated than that--the public ownership is apparently a way to issue tax-free bonds and gain other advantages, and Ratner would pay more than a buck. But it's still a pretty good deal. Ratner would pay off the bonds issued to build the arena, gains an advantage because those bonds would be tax-free. The ESDC's answer Last January, I raised the issue with the Empire State Development Corporation. Given that the arena would be publicly-owned, should the Loc...

The Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods (CBN), a coalition set up to respond to the Atlantic Yards environmental review, has sent a sharply-worded open letter to Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) Chairman Patrick Foye, asking why the agency has apparently not come through on several promises for greater transparency. The letter, dated November 13, was released to the press yesterday. ESDC spokesman A.J. Carter, asked for a response, told me, "We haven't received the letter. When we do, we'll decide whether we want to comment." CBN Co-Chairs Candace Carponter & Therese Urban wrote that, more than six months ago, after the alarming collapse of the Ward Bakery parapet, "the ESDC made five public promises to allay community fears and concerns. To our knowledge, only one of these promises has been addressed, and this one only partially." Summary of criticisms Below is a summary of the criticisms in the letter. Until the ESDC responds, I'm not ce...

From the New York Times's profile yesterday of developer Sheldon Solow, headlined Towering Vision by Developer Stirs East Side : Months ago, he also cut the height of his proposed towers. His critics, however, contended that Mr. Solow had, in the time-honored tradition of New York developers, requested more than he wanted knowing that he could later shave their size to appear to be willing to compromise. Such wisdom did not appear in the front-page lead story on 9/5/06 about Atlantic Yards, headlined Developer Said to Cut Size of Brooklyn Project , which called the move "A Response to Criticism" rather than a tactic, and failed to point out that the project would remain, in square feet, the same size as originally planned. Instead, the piece put the onus on the "most severe critics": Whatever happens, the planned cutbacks are unlikely to satisfy the most severe critics. “I don’t think the bottom-line community concern is really about aesthetics, which is what s...

It's doubtful that any other megadeveloper has outdone Forest City Ratner in the effort to sway public opinion on a controversial project. But the developers behind the proposed New Domino project in Williamsburg, CPC Resources (CPCR) and its silent partner, Isaac Katan, are pushing the envelope in one aspect of the hard sell. They sponsored their own poll, then ran an advertisement (click to enlarge) based on the poll, offering the unsurprising conclusion that residents in the area around the proposed New Domino site would accept increased density for increased affordable housing. Those polled also said, not unreasonably, that the lack of affordable housing is a bigger problem than overdevelopment. And, perhaps predictably, longer-term residents were less exercised by the thought of development. But we don't know what the questions were and how they were posed. (Forest City Ratner and its supporters have cited third-party, if flawed, polls .) No data about the trade-off The...

Among the many factors affecting the future of Atlantic Yards is the availability of tax-exempt bonds, a citywide "crisis," as Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) Commissioner Shaun Donovan told Congress last May. The federal government limits the amount of bonds a city or state can authorize, because the tax-exemption represents foregone federal revenue. But various cities want more such "volume cap," and Congress may authorize that--but it hasn't. IBO warning The issue came up in a report issued last Friday by the Independent Budget Office (IBO), titled The Mayor’s New Housing Marketplace Plan: Progress to Date And Prospects for Completion . While the IBO offered a mostly positive assessment after four years of the Bloomberg administration's ten-year plan to build or preserve 165,000 housing units, it also noted challenges facing the New York City Housing Development Corporation (HDC), the source of bonds: HDC’s ability to fund all of the expected ...

Sure, universities should aim to be more transparent than private developers, but it's instructive to look at the recent book, The University and Urban Revival: Out of the Ivory Tower and Into the Streets , by Judith Rodin , president of the Rockefeller Foundation and former president of the University of Pennsylvania, in light of the decision by the Empire State Development Corporation and Forest City Ratner to claim confidentiality regarding the setbacks of the planned Atlantic Yards arena. Rodin describes Penn's effort at transforming its community: The values that underpinned the plan we developed in 2001 included connectivity of the University with the neighborhood and the city, celebration of our historical heritage within Philadelphia, and development of community-friendly open space wherever possible. From these values, six goals emerged as key to achieving Penn’s aspiration to become a great urban university connected to its neighborhood and the city... We saw that we...

It's a basic architectural detail that would inevitably become public, but the state agency supervising the Atlantic Yards project won't disclose how far the planned arena would be set back from the street, saying security concerns mandate confidentiality. Meanwhile, though state documents are vague about the setbacks, graphics, though not necessarily to scale , in the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) suggest some parallels to the situation that recently caused alarm in Newark, even though the arena there's a standalone box, while the Brooklyn arena would be enveloped in four towers. (Graphic from the FEIS . Several other graphics attached to Chapter 8, Urban Design , also show segments of the arena along Atlantic and Flatbush avenues fairly close to the street.) Newark comparison unresolved Last month, officials in Newark decided to close streets abutting the about-to-open Prudential Center arena to guard against terrorist attacks. "You can't construct...