Yesterday the big news on the Atlantic Yards front was that a state appellate court unanimously upheld an earlier decision that a new Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the second phase of the mega-project will be required. This will not effect the Barclays Center or the first few residential towers on the site, covered under phase one, which also has some affordable housing requirements, but it does mean that the longer-term vision for the site, and most of its future buildings, will almost certainly need to be re-reviewed. Atlantic Yards Report has the most thorough coverage of the decision, and here is part of Norman Oder’s take from his first post on the decision: “In other words, the state should not have misled the public with its irrational insistence that Atlantic Yards could be built in a decade rather than, as is likely, a much longer period, even 25 years, as allowed by a belatedly released Development Agreement. …The ruling represents a moral victory, if not necessarily an instrumental one; ESD surely will re-approve the project and issue a study, already begun (as a hedge) that likely will find few significant new impacts. The SEIS surely will have to examine Forest City’s plans for untested modular construction.” In a follow-up post, Oder runs a transcript of the 2010 hearing on the case with a quote from ESDC lawyer Philip Karmel:

“But the reason why we think Forest City will go forward with this project, and we have every reason to believe so, is that we have a Development Agreement with Forest City that requires it to do so,” agency attorney Philip Karmel said in court in January 2010, as detailed below. “I don’t know what else ESDC can do.”

Oder’s comment on the quote: “Well, it could have released that document, which would have revealed how the developer had 12 years to build Phase 1 and 25 years for Phase 2, rather than incentives to get the whole thing done in a decade.” Meanwhile, the Eagle has a quote from Jo Anne Simon, 52nd A.D. Democratic district leader, that reads as follows: “Now that the Appellate Division has upheld the lower court’s decision, we strongly urge Governor Cuomo to act to restore credibility to this process, and direct his agency to conduct a thorough and transparent assessment of the environmental impact of this project on central Brooklyn that involves our communities in a meaningful way.”
Appellate Court Smacks Down ESD, Upholds Decision Ordering New Study of Long-Term Atlantic Yards Impact [AY Report]
How the Appellate Court, in its Way, Backed up Lupica: “It Was a Hustle in Broad Daylight by Caring Bruce Ratner From the Start” [AY Report]
Appellate Division Upholds Court Decision Critical of Atlantic Yards [Eagle]
Atlantic Yards Opponents Actually Win One [Brownstoner]
Photo by m_dougherty


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