Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

From Hey Honeys! 'King of Brooklyn' Gersh Kuntzman heads off to academe, to instruct young gumshoes , in Capital (tagline: This is How New York Works), about the Gershification of the Brooklyn Paper: It also meant transforming what was already a well-respected community publication, with its informative re-caps of local board meetings and dutiful coverage of provincial affairs, into the type of scrappy news product that could command the interest and respect not only of its neighborhood constituents, but of those media elites across the river. “What I did,” said Kuntzman, more modestly, “was, I took a very, very strong paper, I cut the story length in half, and I added a kind of tabloid brashness." And nothing was lost? What about AY? Writes Joe Pompeo: Apart from the bottled water wars, some other classics from Kuntzman’s Brooklyn Paper canon, outside its signature beats like bike lanes and local development (it got massive mileage out of the Atlantic Yards saga),...

On watching Battle for Brooklyn   yet again, I notice things I didn't emphasize the first time around in my review ,  things that make the movie both more frustrating and more valuable. For example, the term "community" is a slippery concept in multiple ways. The movie portrays tensions over the Community Benefits Agreement, ginned up by developer Forest City Ratner to create the appearance of responsibility to the community. But the "community" of opposition to Atlantic Yards--portrayed, though not sufficiently explained--depends less on those living/working in the project footprint than on those in the surrounding neighborhoods, those who must bear the brunt of the project's impacts. The film has a neat narrative arc, following the path of activist Daniel Goldstein, but it can leave the impression that the fight is over. Yes, the fight to stop the project is over, and the amount of activism diminished, but, community concerns continue, such as over t...

In an editorial today headlined Million-Dollar Visas , the New York Times opines: The federal government’s investor visa, created in 1990, gives foreigners a chance at green cards if they invest $1 million to build a business in the United States that creates at least 10 jobs. Investing in an area with high unemployment would cut that price in half. The program, known as EB-5, has led foreigners to invest in projects around the country, like factories, resorts, shipyards and other enterprises in designated poor areas in need of jobs. A report in The Times last week found that EB-5 applications have nearly quadrupled in two years, to more than 3,800 in the 2011 fiscal year. But the program has spawned cynical practices that are stretching the rules and violating the spirit of the law. Some participants in New York, the report found, are pouring money into development zones that are misleadingly labeled as high-unemployment areas to qualify for the lower $500,000 investment thresh...

Given that states and cities benefit when local developers and businesses get cheap foreign capital, it's no surprise that states have begun to assist efforts to establish regional centers that recruit green card-seeking immigrant investors. According to a 12/8/11 article in The (Albany) Business Review, State plan includes $125K to create EB-5 visa program in Albany The state will pay $125,000 [see p. 59 of this awards list ] to help establish a federal visa program in the Albany, New York, area that would match wealthy foreign investors with local developers. The funding is among the $62.7 million awarded to the Capital Region today through a competition set up by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to promote economic development. The money was requested by the Center for Economic Growth to create the EB-5 visa program. There are significant start-up costs to a regional center, including a lengthy application and an economic analysis--apparently funded by the grant--that must be submitted ...

The front-page 12/19/11 New York Times article on EB-5 abuses, Rules Stretched as Green Cards Go to Investors , generated a defensive and somewhat naive commentary by EB-5 practitioner Scott Barnhart, who serves an an EB-5 economic consultant via his firm, Barnhart Economic Services . Given that Barnhart's 12/22/11 commentary appeared on a very popular EB-5 web site, Brian Su's EB-5 News Blog: Regional Centers in the USA , it's worth a careful look as an example of industry thinking. Too much regulation? First, Barnhart suggests that the article "illustrates the problems encountered when regulators, developers and regional center owners must comply with the myriad regulations set forth by Congress surrounding the EB-5 immigrant investor pilot program." However, the problems are not caused by over-regulation; they've been enabled by (take your pick) poorly drawn regulation or under-regulation. No one has blown the whistle on such problems previously, b...

In the memoir My Korean Deli: Risking It All For a Convenience Store , published this past March, Ben Ryder Howe describes how, not long after 9/11, he and his Korean-American wife decided to buy and run a bodega in Boerum Hill as partial repayment for the sacrifices her parents made. It's an entertaining and charming book, especially as Howe juxtaposes descriptions of bodega travails (including working with his indomitable mother-in-law) with the culture of the Paris Review, the venerably eccentric literary magazine, run by the iconic (yet fading) George Plimpton, where he also worked. The reviews were mostly positive , and I agree, though I usually find "remembered" dialogue in memoirs just a little too pat. The AY mention But I want to point to the inevitable Atlantic Yards mention: Brooklyn is changing. Just down the street... developers from Cleveland have signed an agreement with the government to build one of the largest properties to come to New York...

In his 12/22/11 Grantland article, A Week With the New Jersey Nets: Our man in the Tri-State Area spends some time with Avery Johnson and his team , Jonathan Abrams explains: Everything about the Nets is targeted toward the future: next year's move to Brooklyn, the retention of Deron Williams past this season, the luring of Dwight Howard, even majority owner Mikhail Prokhorov's bid to become the future president of Russia. Looking over the current roster, it is hard to imagine who, exactly, might be present after the move. Williams, certainly and hopefully. Rookie guard MarShon Brooks will probably be there as well. The rest of the roster is subject to being traded at a whim, having their contracts expire, or being cut before the end of camp. How's that going? In recent weeks, there have been more than a few stories and tweets indicating that the Nets were Magic center Howard's first choice, part of a trade that had to include Nets center Brook Lopez. But Magic brass c...

Below, the cover  (Goodbye to Hurricane Irene) and the inside of Borough President Marty Markowitz's holiday card. (Here's some Brooklyn Paper analysis of Markowitz's "gay marriage" theme.) He's so excited, he states, "We got the Brooklyn Nets," even though they won't arrive til next year. By the way, Steve Buscemi, shooting for an Emmy, is no fan of Atlantic Yards.

Dear Ms. Lolita Jackson  (Director of Special Projects at the NYC Office of the Mayor), You've apparently just started working on Atlantic Yards issues as the city's new sort-of-ombudsperson, just as you've been doing on the Second Avenue Subway, as you say, "bring[ing] together city agencies to address quality of life issues for businesses and residents that are adjacent to large infrastructure/construction projects." I hope you don't mind a bit of unsolicited advice. You haven't had a chance to issue what has become a common mantra from both Forest City Ratner (FCR), the developer, and Empire State Development (ESD), the agency in charge: Sorry, it won't happen again. That's what FCR and ESD said after neighbors (via Atlantic Yards Watch) blew the whistle on generators that were making an infernal racket. That's what ESD said --more or less; they later issued a letter--after neighbors (via Atlantic Yards Watch) cited widesprea...

Chinese millionaires are closer to owning a piece of the Atlantic Yards project. Immigrant investors now own a $24.7 million mortgage on the 1.24-acre site for B12, the first of seven development parcels promised as collateral for a low-interest loan to developer Forest City Ratner. More such mortgages are coming, a state official says, indicating that proceeds from the $249 million low-interest loan garnered through the EB-5 visa program are being delivered. Forest City Ratner is thus transferring portions of a longstanding high-interest loan to the cheaper capital raised via Brooklyn Arena Infrastructure and Transportation Improvement Fund, an affiliate of the New York City Regional Center (NYCRC), a private investment pool authorized to recruit immigrant investors. It looks like the large majority of the cheaper capital will replace that existing loan rather than be used, as Forest City officials once said, to build a new railyard. (Map from promotional material...

Prospect Park's $74 million  Lakeside ice rink project  was put under a cloud when state Senator Carl Kruger got indicted for--and just  pleaded guilty to -- directing $500,000 in state funds to a client of lobbyist Richard Lipsky, part of a suite of charges. (It was a cause championed by Forest City Ratner executive Bruce Bender, whose wife sits on the Prospect Park Alliance board, though it's hardly clear that Forest City lobbyist Richard Lipsky, charged with bribing Kruger, was doing so for that specific cause.) But it turns out that Lakeside does just fine getting state funds in the conventional way, untainted by bribery allegations or much publicity. ( Construction update at right from Prospect Park Alliance.) Money for a green roof According to the Strategic Plan and Regional Project Awards , announced 12/8/11 by the Cuomo administration, the Prospect Park Alliance  got $2.687 million via the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Histor...

Sixteen-year Southern Brooklyn state Senator Carl Kruger pleaded guilty yesterday to accepting at least $1 million in bribes--thus supporting his over-the-top residence in Mill Basin and a Bentley--and resigned from the Senate. The news coverage ( Times , Daily News , Post ), the more entertaining editorials ( Daily News , Post )  and Michael Powell's Times column ,  emphasized Kruger's self-pitying, pathetic, tearful apology, while the Daily News (as did the Observer ) pointed to a culture of corruption in Albany. Indeed, Kruger gets to keep his pension. Neither Kruger's brief allocution nor any of the news coverage mentioned Kruger's interaction with "Real Estate Developer #1" (as detailed beginning on p. 21 of the the 3/9/11  complaint ), aka Forest City Ratner. However, Kruger's guilty plea apparently included admitting that he helped deliver state funds to a cause championed by Forest City Ratner executive Bruce Bender, part of the legislator...

You'd think that the myriad of incidents reported on Atlantic Yards Watch would be easy pickings for the press, but too many press outlets suffer from AY fatigue, indifference, or a willingness to follow the announced narrative . But last night WPIX-TV's Monica Morales followed up on the story of noisy generators in the Vanderbilt Yard and got the same response from developer Forest City Ratner that I got from Empire State Development: it won't happen again, because noise-attenuating blankets will be used. The lingering question: why weren't they used in the first place?

So, was there any response to the Atlantic Yards Watch posting that explained how noisy generators at Pacific Street and Carlton Avenue were annoying neighbors. I quered Arana Hankin, Director, Atlantic Yards Project, for Empire State Development, who responded: The contractor will not be using the generator again in this area in the near future. The generator was placed on the street because there was no space in the yard where the generator could have been placed to do the necessary work on the south abutment of the bridge. If there is a need to use the generator in this area again, the contactor will be required to use noise attenuating blankets. That doesn't quite answer why the contractor didn't use such noise attenuating devices the first time.

As I wrote yesterday , it seems quite possible that floodlights at the railyard will be illuminated until 11 pm for many months, through next summer. That leads to scenes ( via Atlantic Yards Watch ) such as the illumination (at 7 pm) as seen from the Newswalk building on Pacific Street between Sixth and Carlton avenues.. The policy regarding the lights has apparently changed, as Peter Krashes notes on Atlantic Yards Watch, in Nighttime use of railyard floodlights may continue until September 2012 : According to ESDC Project Director Arana Hankin, LIRR and the FCRC contractors working on the Carlton Avenue Bridge are negotiating an agreement for the use of the lights that includes extending construction work hours. The rebuilding of the Carlton Avenue Bridge is not a LIRR project, although its completion is dependent on various elements of railyard construction being finished. The lights are planned to be used until reconstruction of the Carlton Avenue Bridge is complete, whic...

The New York Times's front-page coverage of how New York stretches the rules to aid EB-5 projects prompts Eric Hawthorn of the Llenrock Group, a real estate advisory and investment banking firm in Philadelphia, to observe : Commercial real estate, like any business, is rooted in practicality. Developers and officials will exploit any government incentive available if it’s in their interests. But companies are not immune to public backlash–just ask Bank of America (BAC). If the public perceives a company is cheating a struggling neighborhood out of opportunities, legally or not, it could create a P.R. nightmare that simply isn’t worth the few dollars that were saved. In other words, press coverage--from the big boys, at least--makes a difference.

In a recent interview by Roberto Perez on The Perez Notes, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz gave what likely will remain his standard line on Atlantic Yards: it all would've worked out if there had been no lawsuits. Well, that ignores the fact that developers of large, multi-phase projects must plan for up-and-down development cycles, and, as already noted by DDDB and NLG, developer Bruce Ratner admitted that his announced plan was never feasible. The question At 10:06, host Perez opened up the mike: "Borough President, talk a little bit about Atlantic Yards. There are both sides, of course, the people who are upset about eminent domain, people who are upset that the jobs, supposedly promised by Bruce Ratner have not materialized, and the job training, and the people that are upset over gentrification. Talk about some of the positives of the project, and what do you think of the overall so far, there's a lot of development left that's part of the fin...