Atlantic Yards, How You've Changed
This chart put together earlier this week by the Brooklyn Speaks coalition pretty much, well, speaks for itself. You can check out the entire presentation here. Atlantic Yards Then and Now [Brooklyn Speaks]
This chart put together earlier this week by the Brooklyn Speaks coalition pretty much, well, speaks for itself. You can check out the entire presentation here.
Atlantic Yards Then and Now [Brooklyn Speaks]
D-O-N-E-D-E-A-L!!!
FGC: You need to check your facts.
The project was approved in late December 2006. It is now March 2010 and a groundbreaking is scheduled for next week. DDDB’s eminent domain litigation and environmental litigation began in 2007. The delay litigation caused is not six years, it is a little over three years.
The project was originally approved in 2006 without any enforced timetables for the second phase of the project, which is where most of the affordable housing and open space is located. An awful lot of good government and civic organizations, not just DDDB, noted that the second phase is unlikely to be built within ten years as was promised at the time. Real estate is cyclical, and most have always expected it at the best to be built on the timetable of around 25 years now established in the new project agreements. The project timetable has always been unrealistic and deceptive.
This has not stopped the ESDC from assessing the value of the project to the public on the basis that it will be built in full in ten years even though last year then head of the ESDC said it would take “decades.” It will not stop Forest City Ratner in the future from citing the fantasy project timetables as reasons they can’t or won’t mitigate unanticipated circumstances like the surface parking lots being in place longer than they are supposed to be.
FtGreeneCorey . There were 3 senate bills to reform eminent domain and 1 assembly bill to reform eminent domain back in 2005 after Kelo. They all never made it out of committee.
The political fix was in on AY well before the public even knew the project existed. DDDB’s goal has always been to stop the project. I think we’ve made that quite clear. And we’ve pursued that goal politically and legally.
And on top of all that, FCR retained all of the top lobbyists before announcing its project, and none of them would be willing to go against FCR, the city or state anyway, on this project.
But the bottom line is that armchair guidance about what should have been done is just armchair guidance based on a misapprehension of the political fix which has always been the fundamental problem with AY—all the rest are just symptoms of that illness.
@foolscap
The BrooklynSpeaks document is not just spin. It’s based on the ESDC documents. It’s worth reading the documents.
IMHO, many project opponents have done their homework, and many AY supporters don’t know what they are defending.
Most of the kids who have metrocards actually DO use them to travel to school. As a former teacher, I saw the kids in my class who had obviously traveled from great distances to get there.
No Child Left Behind requires school districts to provide open access (within capacity restraints) for students from underperforming schools to higher performing ones. While Obama may want to change NCLB, it is the current law. If metrocard subsidies are taken away, won’t that be a violation of NCLB since students will be financially prevented from having those choices? (unless they are wealthy; most of the students from the lower-performing schools are not awash in money). Lawsuits anyone? Oh, I did forget, under Emperor Bloomberg, (virtually) all schools are now A’s and B’s, so I guess few pupils really will be affected and they’ll be stuck in schools which really are subpar.
One last note: If Ratner’s housing ever gets built, as i remember, there were no plans for any school buildings to be part of the project. Just where will the resident children of Atlantic Yards attend school?
Sorry, one more last note: Gehry’s buildings were the UGLIEST monstrosities imaginable. I won’t be sorry if anything other than G. designs are eventually built in AY.
FGC: The law will only change when members of the NYS legislature decide it’s their job to make laws. Currently they roll over for “the three men in a room” (aka Silver, Smith, Patterson) and content themselves with collecting their salaries. Government at the state level in New York is so bad we might as well be in Louisiana or Alaska. It’s for this reason that activists often choose to pursue litigation. Though just to reiterate, MANY efforts have been made since AY was first announced in 2003 to work with state senators and assembly people. With a few honorable exceptions, the majority don’t care. Especially not when jobs and affordable housing (both pure fairy tales in the case of AY) are the crack cocaine of elected officials.
Remember when developers tore down the old Penn Station to build Madison Square Garden?
I fear that the disappointment we will feel (if we live long enough) when AY is completed will be similar, if somewhat smaller in scope.
Grand Army…all I’m saying is that the law is what it is…so the best bet is to CHANGE the law.
MM said it right. If there was nothing to discuss, the litigation would have been over a long time ago. And eminent domain is an iffy area- even though he law says it can happen for private developers, there is no law saying it is a given if a private developer wants your property he is automatically entitled to it. If DDDB lawsuits had no merit, why were there so many lawyers willing to take it on- and much of the work was pro bono?
Yes, they could have used the money to lobby Albany- but even you have to agree, getting anything done in Albany takes far more time than litigation, and judging from the talent pool we have up there, would be a waste of time anyway.
I think the real story is that DDDB brought the facts of how bad a deal this really is to light. Politicians are whining because they now have to actually explain themselves. The MTA looks even more incompetent and sleazy than ever before. That chart up top wouldn’t be visible but for DDDB and AY opponents forcing FCR into court. Ratner may want to roll over on Brooklyn but thankfully there are those who refused to let them do it without a fight.