Marty Axes CB6 Members Who Opposed AY Project
In a move likely to cloud his legacy as the Brooklyn’s biggest professional cheerleader, Borough President Marty Markowitz purged Community Board 6 yesterday of nine members, apparently as retribution for having voted against the proposed plan for the Atlantic Yards project back in September 2006. I’m rather disappointed. I think that it could have been…
In a move likely to cloud his legacy as the Brooklyn’s biggest professional cheerleader, Borough President Marty Markowitz purged Community Board 6 yesterday of nine members, apparently as retribution for having voted against the proposed plan for the Atlantic Yards project back in September 2006. I’m rather disappointed. I think that it could have been handled better and I think that I will continue to work for my community and the greater good of the community through the Community Board, Jerry Armer, who had served on CB6 for more than two decades, told the NY Observer. What we were doing was giving the community a voice and reflecting the community. Today on the Atlantic Yard Report, Norman Oder notes that Armer and other dismissed members purposefully did not align themselves with the most vocal opponents of the project. Instead, Oder notes, he “participated in numerous meetings of the Brooklyn Borough Board Atlantic Yards Committee, cordially raising some worthy questions…He spoke courteously, even ponderously, in testimony to the Empire State Development Corporation.” What an embarrassment.
Project’s Foes Shown Door in Brooklyn [NY Times]
Markowitz Purges Community Board 6 [NY Observer]
The Ironies of the CB 6 Purge [AY Report]
Arena Foes Slam Dunked [NY Post]
CB6 Letter, 9/29/06 [DDDB]
Is anybody following this?
David, I doubt you ever cared about affordable housing a day in your life. But I would love to be proven wrong. What you consider affordable is what the majority of us (95% of the United States) consider to be luxury brand.
holla
David,
Oh no… stop…David, really you flatter me too much. Lets do it your way instead. Let’s build up all of Brooklyn with high-rises and pack it full of people and lets not bother to think about the existing infrastructure so that we will all have to wait for 3 or 4 subways to go by in the morning before we can squeeze our way onto a car (just like it is in Williamsburg now); so that the BQE, Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges moves even slower than they do now. Yes, lets line the sky with big tall buildings and make Brooklyn look just like Manhattan so that it looses all the charm that brought people here in the first place. Won’t this be a happy little borrow that we live in? Certainly the developers and politicians whose pockets are lined with “gobs” of money will be happy, because they will not live in Brooklyn anymore. And then all the people who came to Brooklyn looking because they loved its smaller scale will start to leave because they can’t get on the subway anymore and housing prices will start to drop, and then blah blah blah… Yes, your idea is just grand.
I’m tired of rehashing AY over and over, so I won’t, but this entry is a new low in the discussion.
Excuse me, Anon 12:31, but “basketball players would be much more comfortable working and living among their own kind in Brownsville and East New York…..Urban youth gets their stadium, sports stars and jobs, and we get to keep downtown Brooklyn safer, quieter and cleaner.”????
Well, turn back the clock, and call yourself George Wallace, Bull Conners or Strom Thurman, and let’s bring back the good old days of Jim Crow, segregation and apartheid! And people keep saying that you old racist dinosaurs are extinct.
First of all, you obviously have not been to a pro basketball game in, say, 75 years, you certainly know nothing about the players that make up teams, or the people who go to games. I don’t follow basketball that closely, but even I know that today’s teams are made up of Chinese players, Croation players, African players, as well as white American players, and black American players, who are from all kinds of economic and geographic backgrounds, not just poor black kids from an urban ghetto.
And while we are at it, the vast majority of people who attend games are white, upper middleclass suburbanites – check who’s stumbling out of MSG some night, it ain’t kids from Brownsville – they can’t afford the tickets. So your dream of a safe, clean stadium is not being ruined by “urban youth”, you need to look no further than in the mirror. You are right – we’d all be more comfortable with “our own kind” if that means not being around ridiculously archaic bigots like you.
now the true, nutty hyperbolist emerges!
Yes – 3:52 is right – If you really want to lower housing costs we should ban big developers and large buildings which would should lead to less employment in the building and real estate industries which should help lower housing prices…And by banning people from making “gobs” of money, we will further reduce employment and incomes which will also contribute to lower housing costs.
Then of course the resulting economic depression will result in a lower tax base for the city which should lead to a further decline in city services such as garbage removal, mass transit and policing…which of course will result in NYC being a terrible place to live and work and of course that will lead to even lower housing costs.
In fact if we would just follow 3:52 advice fully we can probably get housing costs so low that people would probably just abandon certain housing which of course means essentially FREE housing for those that remained.
You see how easy it is to solve the problem of affordability!
2:45,
Gowanus and 4th Avenue redevelopment have a lot in common with Atlantic Yards, most notably that they cater to developers with big pockets and don’t take into account what is best for the neighborhood. The big disappointment are people like you invoke working class people and affordable housing as a cover for the base truth that this is all about lining your pockets with gobs of money. And if you destroy all these neighborhoods in the process, so be it. The disappointment is you my friend.
But don’t you think that all the NY politicians have been briefed on Atlantic Yards by now to make an informed decision?
Can we get a congressional hearing started?