Beep's Flip-Flop May Lead to AY Changes
After being one of the Atlantic Yards’ biggest cheerleaders, Marty Markowitz attracted lots of attention for the moderation of his tone and his call for scaling back the project. Trying to retain some old-school Brooklyn cred, he’s now saying that none of Ratner’s new buildings should trump the size of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank. Cynics,…
After being one of the Atlantic Yards’ biggest cheerleaders, Marty Markowitz attracted lots of attention for the moderation of his tone and his call for scaling back the project. Trying to retain some old-school Brooklyn cred, he’s now saying that none of Ratner’s new buildings should trump the size of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank. Cynics, including The Times and some commenters on yesterday’s thread point out that this is too-little-too-late political opportunism and that he should have been pounding the table on issues like traffic and infrastructure months ago. We’d tend to agree. Regardless, though, Markowitz change in tune may have a measurable impact: The Post reports that Ratner indicated yesterday that he would consider reducing the height of Miss Brooklyn.
A Little Change of Tune from AY’s Biggest Fan [NY Times]
Ratner Yields a Bit to Building Anger [NY Post]
The Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfront area rezoning went through a city process which involved the community boards in order to change that area’s density and allowable FAR and the developers there still have to conform to all other city zoning rules on the books. The Ratner-scr***wing of Boerum Fort Greene and Prospect Heights on the other hand is bypassing all the normal city procedures to have this plan evaluated and are also going allow Ratner to bypass ALL — YES ALL — other zoning rules and building codes. This includes setback rules, rules on light and air, rules on density, building code rules and so much more. The process by which the Ratnerization of our communities is being allowed is equally upsetting as their stated goal of ignoring actual human being’s needs. The blame for this falls squarely on politicians/aka cheerleaders like Marty Markowitz, Bloomberg and Pataki.
now if marty would say something about runaway skyscraper development in williamsburg, that would be nice. why is prospect heights the only neighborhood he and the papers care about?
I was mortified to hear Markowitz latch onto the misguided, narrow-minded train of thought that would force the Miss Brooklyn bldg to be lower than the WSB building. Hearing groups like the MAS refer to that bldg as “Brooklyn’s wristwatch” just makes me laugh. The whole tone of this debate has shifted from the reasonable and well-though out into something as superficial and hyperbolic as a presidential election.
Don’t worry, no conspiracy theories necessary. One of the downsides of not requiring registration is that we have to deleted well over a thousand spam comments a day. Sometimes in our efforts to do this quickly, some valid comments get mistakenly deleted. Comes with the territory.
Well said, triple duece! I agree!
‘Marty Markowitz signed’ what?
He is a borough president – a powerless position- figurehead – thats it.
He can’t make decisions and can only try to convince others. It is only public relations office.
The concept of ‘borough’ is pretty meaningless as far as city government goes.
Enough with the AY drama, already. Even the projected completion date makes you how old then? Then add another 10 years to that.
And market forces will see that it won’t be built as conceived today (for better or worse)- as with anything of this scope and duration.
Of course not, but if push comes to shove, most people don’t even know who Frank Gehry is, and could care less who designs some mega project. I think they care whether or not they can afford to get in on it, no matter who designs or builds it.
When the truth is made more clear – that the housing promised for your average Brooklyite, won’t be until at least 10 years from now, in some afterthought, Johnny-come-lately, probably won’t even get built “Phase 2”, (because they aren’t important enough for Phase 1) most of Brooklyn will have moved on, at least until they try to drive downtown. AY will be known throughout the borough as “that rich people’s development”, not some grand monument to Brooklyn’s greatness.
“I think that most of the people in most of Brooklyn are more concerned with mundane concerns such as crime, taxes, jobs and affordable housing, rather than whether or not our grand vision is bigger than someone elses.”
CHP, are the two mutually exclusive?
SuperAnon, of all the arguments for AY, I hardly think that Brooklyn’s ego stroking is a major plus. Somehow, I think that most of the people in most of Brooklyn are more concerned with mundane concerns such as crime, taxes, jobs and affordable housing, rather than whether or not our grand vision is bigger than someone elses. Let’s get some focus on the priorities of “real” Brooklynites, for whom this project is supposed to be such a great thing.
Also, anon 1:17, since when has the city, using our hard earned tax money, done all that is necessary for an area. Consider the closing of firehouses in neighborhoods whose populations are now rising, or consider all of the additional services that are needed on subway lines that are now over extended, due to rising populations, such as on the L line. What about sewers out in places like Mill Basin, and parts of Queens, which have been howling about them for years, or traffic lights in many, many intersections across the city? What about new or expanded schools or just repairing the ones we have? If they can’t do that, what makes you think they are going to be on the ball with this?