AY: Brooklyn Speaks Joins Timeline Challenge
While the Empire State Development Corporation approved the Atlantic Yards project for the second time last September, the deal details—the penalties and incentives to get the project done—weren’t resolved until the master closing in December. And then the ESDC waited a full month to make the voluminous print documents available to reporters and others willing…
While the Empire State Development Corporation approved the Atlantic Yards project for the second time last September, the deal details—the penalties and incentives to get the project done—weren’t resolved until the master closing in December. And then the ESDC waited a full month to make the voluminous print documents available to reporters and others willing to visit the agency’s office in business hours. That Development Agreement, which Norman Oder of the Atlantic Yards Report wrote about in late January lent credibility to what critics of the Atlantic Yards project have been saying for years: That there’s no way Forest City Ratner’s going to complete construction within the ten-year time frame and that the penalties for not doing so are as small as the wriggle room for avoiding them is large. (Back in April 2009 ESDC chief Marisa Lago even said on record that the project was expected to take “decades.”) What’s the problem with that? Well, the original Environmental Impact Statements, upon which the courts have relied, only evaluated the impact of the area being subjected to construction for a decade and twenty five years of construction could obviously take a bigger toll. (A Technical Memorandum issued last June briefly said a delay would be immaterial, but it was not a Supplementary EIS.)
Earlier this month Develop Don’t Destroy along with nineteen other community groups filed a motion for the New York State Supreme Court to reconsider its March 2010 dismissal of a case brought by project opponents against ESDC; in that case, the judge found that there was just enough evidence to support the ten-year time frame. However, the Development Agreement was released only after the oral argument in that case, and was not permitted to be added to the record. The new motion argues that the new evidence that the entire project is likely to take closer to 25 years means that the court should “reconsider its March 10th ruling and to allow oral argument that considers the revealing information in the omitted documents,” according to a DDDB press release.
On Friday, points out Atlantic Yards Report, Brooklyn Speaks spoke out on its decision to join the motion: The extended construction schedule will subject the adjoining residential neighborhoods to construction noise, dust, air pollution, traffic blockages and empty lots for 25 years or more a negative situation that was never addressed in the 2006 EIS or the 2009 Technical Memorandum, explained Deb Howard, Executive Director of the Pratt Area Community Council. The ESDC has a responsibility to evaluate the impacts of the project it agreed to, not the project it wishes would be built.
For more details on how the Development Agreement relaxed the deadlines publicly disclosed in September, check out Atlantic Yards Report‘s post this morning .
fsrq, you’re the one man (or woman) who actually thinks that Albany makes wise decisions.
You’re also the one woman (or man) who thinks that Tish James is a Tea Partier.
fsrq, you’re the man.
19 community groups? Each of which has 1-2 members.
D-O-N-E-D-E-A-L!!!
I’m amazed someone called me a tea bagger. Wow. Certainly . . . innovative.
Accurate, unfortunately much less so.
Good point fsrq. In representative democracies, citizens don’t have the recourse of taking grievances to court. But I’m unclear on another point- is sarcasm allowed?
FSRQ: There has been no public process with AY, none. It was backroom deal between Ratner, Bloomberg, Pataki and Markowitz. It was deliberately structured to by-pass NYC land use procedures which would have required a City Council vote and given our elected officials a real say in the project. Instead we were stitched up by the Albany “3-men-in-a-room” cabal and the totally non-transparent ESDC. There’s evidence from all over the country that sports arenas are a huge drag on public funds. And the out-dated single developer approach, creating superblocks and demapping streets, is so contrary to everything urban planners have learned in the last 40 years. It didn’t make sense in 2003 and it doesn’t make sense now.
If you (and your like minded tea-partiers) want a direct democracy move to Switzerland (or for a watered-down version, California) but if you live here in the regular USA you are blessed with a representative democracy – and this project has passed every hurdle that our system has, including judicial review – so if you dont like the outcome then maybe you should mobilize more of your “majority” to actually vote – because so far – virtually no politician has gotten elected (or anywhere else) on an anti-AY platform, so your sarcastic rant has as much foundation as a DDDB lawsuit – that is – ZERO.
You tell them fsrg! Damn those DDDB people who want to stop Atlantic Yards! I want my tax dollars to go to subsidize the new owner of the Nets! Our tax dollars should go to subsidize Russian basketball, not to the MTA! Why don’t people learn to shut up and listen to their wise rulers in Albany? We should stop all these lawsuits, especially since the arena plan was voted on by the voters! Progress means listening to Prokhorov, so thank you for your selfless defense of democracy!
southbrooklyn – 1st of all DDDB has publicly said (as well as here on brownstoner) that any plan with an arena would be fought.
As for the “alternative plan” it was an alternative in name only but even if for argument sake that it was the plan picked – I ask your question back to you – what evidence do you or MM or anyone have that “everyone” would have been on board and no fight/litigation/protests wouldnt have taken place? Because any look at NYC history indicates that it likely would have met some (if not alot) of opposition.