Ratner Wins Another Round of Yards Lawsuits

Despite voicing uneasiness with some aspects of the case, an Appeals Court panel did not find enough evidence of improper conduct on the part of the ESDC to rule in favor of the 26 neighborhood groups challenging the Atlantic Yards project on the basis of the project’s “sham” environmental review. While the court did not find legal grounds to grant the opposition’s petition, it did sympathize with its overall plight:

While we do not agree with petitioners’ legal arguments, we understand those arguments to be made largely as proxies for very legitimate concerns as to the effect of a project of such scale upon the face and social fabric of the area in which it is to be put. Those concerns, however, have relatively little to do with the project’s legality and nearly everything to do with its socio-economic and aesthetic desirability, matters upon which we may not pass. To the extent that the fate of this multi-billion dollar project remains, in an increasingly forbidding economy, a matter of social and political volition, the controlling judgments as to its merits are the province of the policy-making branches of government, not the courts.

Bruce Ratner joined Mayor Bloomberg in celebrating the victory: This project has been reviewed as thoroughly as any in the city and not it is time to put these cases behind us and get to work, he said. An appeal is planned, notes Atlantic Yards Report, though there is a chance that the Court of Appeals could decide not to hear it.
Appellate Court, Despite Some Misgivings, Dismisses EIS Case [AY Report]
Ratner Wins a Big Yards Case [Brooklyn Paper]
Legal Victory for Atlantic Yards Developer [NY Times]