Of course it would ruin the neighborhood! How could we think of getting rid of the Underberg Building and the trash on Pacific street?
This is what makes the neighborhood so great...right?
Yeah right! Look what the NIMBYs are protecting! This development would make the area better...not worse.
Ablarc: sure it is. it is just not a very nice one. But that is what the hold-out(s) like about the place, it is edgy. Ratner wants to de-edgy that part of Brooklyn and there are not to many edgy places left in the city that are close to E.vil. or Soho hence fight ensues.
So how many more votes or hassles before this development becomes a reality. What is next? Anyone knows?
I think PABC is next after comment period
" The Atlantic Yards project still has to be approved by the state's Public Authorities Control Board. A public hearing is scheduled for Aug. 23 and the Empire State Development Corp. will accept public comments until September 23 before making a final decision."
I've heard Silver hasn't objected to this plan. Hopefully he won't set the city back again when time comes for a vote.
http://ny.metro.us/metro/local/artic...ersy/3501.html
State report fans flames in Atlantic Yards controversy
by amy zimmer / metro new york
JUL 19, 2006
BROOKLYN — Controversy about a plan to build a basketball arena and 16 high rises at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues has been swirling throughout Brooklyn long before the Draft Environmental Impact Statement was released yesterday.
Now the public has more than 1,000 pages of grist and 60 days in which to give their opinion about the plan.
“I think all hell’s going to break loose over the next couple of months because of this document,” said Daniel Goldstein, spokesman for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, the plan’s arch foe. “The state had two and a half years to study this project. It’s an affront to the public to have 60 days in the dead of summer to review this 15-inch thick document. What’s the rush?”
The buildings’ shadows, for instance, “would result in a significant adverse impact on” the stained-glass windows of the Church of the Redeemer and other sites, the report said. Traffic studies show that with the project’s completion by 2016, “a total of 68 intersections would be significantly impacted.” The document, however, said the plan wouldn’t affect police, fire or emergency services, or strain the subway system, which would have to carry more riders on game days.
“When Brooklyn comes to a standstill, what are they going to do?” asked Goldstein.
For traffic, Forest City Ratner executive vice president Jim Stuckey said his company put together a 15-point plan that would offer MetroCards to people who would drive to games and create a space to park 400 bikes.
“The 22-acre site has many abandoned and vacant buildings,” he said. “There have been years of failed attempts to redevelop this area.”
Study of the study
• The City Council will fund a $130,000 independent review of the Atlantic Yards project’s DEIS.
• It will go to the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods, a coalition of community groups that has kept an eye on conflicts of interest in the plan.
While I think there are many problems with the Ratner scheme that still need to be worked out, statements such as this make the entrenched opposition look pretty darned idiotic:
Originally Posted by Transic
After reading that last quote, this comes to mind. Thanx Zippy.
Or how about this one:
This fellow Goldstein is the lead idiot.The buildings’ shadows, for instance, “would result in a significant adverse impact on” the stained-glass windows of the Church of the Redeemer and other sites...
In Push for Atlantic Yards Project, State Touts Eminent Domain
BY DAVID LOMBINO - Staff Reporter of the Sun
July 19, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/36276
The state yesterday released thousands of pages of documents in which it outlined its justification for the use of eminent domain and for overriding local zoning laws to clear the way for the 22-acre Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn.
A "blight study" released as part of the state's general project plan said "public action"would be required to improve the area around the Vanderbilt rail yards, which is "characterized by blighted conditions including structurally unsound buildings, debris-filled vacant lots, environmental concerns, high crime rates, and underutilization."
The causes of the area's blight include the presence of the rail yards and a "diversity of ownership" that "hindered site assemblage that is necessary for redevelopment," according to the state's study.
Opponents of the project, including neighbors who say the proposed density will destroy the neighborhood, are expected to mount a legal challenge to any condemnation of private property necessary to complete the project.
A lawyer for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, Jeffrey Baker, called state's finding of blight "an artificial construct," and said it is likely to be central to litigation brought by opponents.
"The private redevelopment effort in that area came to a screeching halt after December '03, when they announced this project," Mr. Baker said.
The state's general project plan details the need for eminent domain to clear as many as 22 different tax lots, containing both commercial and residential property — and about 118 people — that remain in the project's footprint but have not sold to the developer. The existence of blight will likely be used as the state's rationale for using eminent domain to condemn the remaining properties, as well as circumventing the city's land use approval process, which would ordinarily prohibit a project of the density proposed for Atlantic Yards.
The plan and a draft environmental impact statement were released by the leading state development agency yesterday for developer Forest City Ratner's proposal to build basketball arena and 16 towers containing more than 2,300 market rate condominiums, 4,500 rental apartments, and office and retail space in Prospect Heights.
The state's plan said the project would cost $4.2 billion, $700 million more than expected. Cost estimates had already risen to $3.5 billion from $2.5 billion. The latest increase is due to rising construction, interest, and fuel costs and more accurate estimates, according to an executive for Forest City Ratner, James Stuckey.
The developer also faced unexpected costs acquiring the private land around the site to "minimize the amount of condemnation involved in the project," Mr. Stuckey said. He would not say how much money the developer would profit from the proposal.
The draft EIS and general project plan will go before a public hearing on August 23 and a "community forum" on September 12. A final plan and EIS will be prepared by the state after consideration of all comments. Before construction can commence, state officials and the Public Authorities Control Board must approve those final documents, and any legal challenges must be cleared. The state's study said the arena would be completed by October 2009. The project would not be fully built out until 2016.
A spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, Daniel Goldstein, who owns a condominium in the project's footprint and has vowed a legal fight, said yesterday that 60 days is not enough time to prepare for the public hearing. He said the documents released today were riddled with inaccuracies, including the estimates for the project's public cost and benefits.
"Any politician or elected official who is going to stand by this document with a straight face is a lunatic," Mr. Goldstein said.
Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg cite job growth and the creation of affordable housing as reasons for their support of the project.
Yesterday, the state said the development would support an annual average of 6,573 new jobs in New York City and generate $1.1 billion in city and state tax revenues. The city and state have agreed to provide $100 million each for the project.
Measuring a Project’s Shadow, and Burden, on Brooklyn
A study says the proposed Atlantic Yards project, a residential, commercial and arena development in Brooklyn, would add traffic to intersections that are already busy, including Union Street and Fourth Avenue.
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: July 19, 2006
A new school’s worth of classrooms would be needed to handle all the children. Dozens of crowded intersections would be choked with more traffic. Brownstone neighborhoods would find themselves in shadow. The city’s sewer and water systems would face new challenges. And good luck getting a parking space on game day.
Multimedia
Graphic: Congestion Spots
The intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Fulton Street.
These were among the most striking findings of a 1,400-page study released yesterday, for the first time laying out all the potential effects of the proposed Atlantic Yards project, an 8.7-million-square-foot residential, commercial, and arena development that would spread over 22 acres near Downtown Brooklyn.
The study, released by the Empire State Development Corporation, was accompanied by a project plan that estimated the cost of the development at $4.2 billion, much more than the original cost, $2.5 billion.
Residents have known for more than two years that something big may be coming to the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, something that would affect their lives and neighborhoods in countless ways. But until yesterday, they did not have a picture of the details.
The draft environmental impact study provides the clearest view yet of what the Atlantic Yards would do for Brooklyn, and to it, with a welter of diagrams and cold hard facts.
Some of them are sure to be controversial. According to the study, the project would worsen what is already a tangled web of traffic. When it is fully built a decade from now, 68 of 93 intersections included in the study, all within about a mile of the project, would have significantly more congestion at one or more peak hours, most markedly during the morning rush hours and after Saturday games at the 18,000-seat basketball arena for the Nets.
The tallest of the project’s 16 buildings would block many views of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank. The new buildings would also throw more of the surrounding neighborhoods into shadow during the day, while street-level signs would create a new burst of neon at night, concentrated at the commercial corridors on the project’s western tip.
The project’s thousands of residents would impose new demands on the city’s sewage and storm drain systems, and include enough children to fill a new elementary and intermediate school.
Changes to the project and the city infrastructure supporting it may eliminate or minimize some of the predicted problems, the project’s backers have promised. In exchange, they say, Atlantic Yards would create 6,860 units of housing, thousands of construction jobs, and nearly $1.5 billion in city and state tax revenue beyond the amount needed to recoup the government’s contribution to the project.
“It’s a project of enormous magnitude, something that certainly will be important for the future and the economy of the city and state,” said Charles A. Gargano, the chairman of the development corporation, which is sponsoring the project.
The project’s developer, Forest City Ratner Companies, is the development partner of The New York Times Company in building its new headquarters on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. The study was commissioned by the development corporation and paid for by Forest City Ratner, as required by law.
The study found that if all the project’s children attended a primary or intermediate school within half a mile of their new home, the existing schools would be “over capacity,” and new satellite classrooms in less crowded schools, new school buildings or other measures would be needed.
In a detailed examination of the shadows cast by the new buildings in each season, the report found that new shadows would fall on many existing parks, as well as on open space incorporated into the new project, “throughout the year,” but with a “significant adverse impact” for only one such area, near the Atlantic Terminal public housing complex.
The study also included extensive mitigation measures that the developer said would alleviate most of the project’s negative impacts. An ecologically friendly storm-water capture system centered on the arena’s roof, for instance, is expected to help prevent sewage overflows.
The report’s release sets into motion a public comment period. The project faces a final vote by the development corporation’s board this fall, and if it is approved, it will face a vote by the state Public Authorities Control Board.
Critics of Atlantic Yards have questioned whether the scope of the impact study was comprehensive enough, and may choose to fight the project in court on those grounds. .
Opponents have already promised a vigorous legal struggle against the development corporation’s efforts to condemn the small amount of property that Forest City Ratner has not been able to acquire privately. Those efforts, in effect, began yesterday with the corporation’s formal declaration that the blocks on which the project would be built meet the state’s definition of “blighted,” and thus qualify for eminent domain.
Critics of the project complained yesterday that the 60-day public-comment period was too short to allow residents enough time to wade through the environmental study. Others questioned why it had been released in the middle of the summer, when the borough’s community boards are in recess.
“The E.S.D.C. is making a mockery of what has already been a completely flawed process,” said Daniel Goldstein, the spokesman for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, an umbrella group for opponents of the project.
At a press conference yesterday, Mr. Gargano, the development corporation’s chairman, tried to deflect criticism of the project’s scale, one of the main issues cited by Brooklyn residents. When asked whether he thought the project could be made smaller, he replied, “I don’t think it can be.” Later, however, he gave a slightly different answer, saying that though the developer would prefer to keep the project at 8.7 million square feet, the development corporation would contemplate reductions during the public comment period.
James P. Stuckey, the Forest City executive in charge of Atlantic Yards, said criticism of the project’s scale and other attributes came from “some people, who live close in, not liking tall buildings.”
“And I have to tell you that for most people who need affordable housing, that’s just not an argument that washes,” he said.
Those who oppose the project said that the documents released by the development corporation gave them yet more ammunition. According to the general project plan for Atlantic Yards, the project’s cost, which was originally estimated at $2.5 billion and was reassessed at $3.5 billion last year, is now $4.2 billion, which Mr. Goldstein called “bloated.”
Mr. Stuckey said the increases stemmed from rising construction costs, higher land acquisition costs, and a more detailed accounting of costs than was possible at earlier stages in the project’s development.
The general project plan also projects that Atlantic Yards will generate a total of $1.91 billion in total tax revenue over 30 years, calculated as net present value. The city and state together would contribute about $500 million to the project, a mix of direct payments, tax exemptions and financing costs. Overall, according to those projections, the development as currently proposed would produce about $1.4 billion in net tax revenues to the city and state, slightly less than a previous estimate used by Forest City Ratner, and less than projected when the development was originally announced.
Mr. Stuckey said the Empire State Development Corporation study had used a different methodology. “Their calculation tends to be a more conservative calculation,” he said. “But what their own numbers are saying is, even after you look at the contribution that the government will make, the government will earn $1.4 billion in excess tax revenues as a result of this project.”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
Why is there such a large discrepancy in the tax revenue numbers between the Sun's article and the NY Times? The Sun reports that the city and state will contribute $200 million (total), and will receive a net of $1.1 billion in revenue, while the Times says the contribution will be $500 million total, and net revenue will be $1.4 billion. That means the difference in gross tax revenues is an astounding $600 million dollars (!).
Brooklyn Papers
2,000-page report reveals impact of Atlantic Yards
State big to Brooklyn: You’re Manhattan now
Clock starts on 66-day ‘review’ of massive Yards project
By Ariella Cohen
The Brooklyn Papers
Atlantic Yards will cost more to build and benefit the public less than Bruce Ratner said it would — and carry with it environmental impacts that can not be mitigated, a state analysis disclosed this week.
But the state’s development czar said the publicly subsidized mega-development would be worth the price because it advances the Manhattanization of Brooklyn.
“We are a city of skyscrapers,” said Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, which released the project’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement on Tuesday. “We are a city of towers.”
Now, he says, it’s time the towers came to Brooklyn.
Gargano promised that if significant environmental impacts of the 16-skyscraper, 18,000-seat arena, residential, hotel, retail and office complex can’t be mitigated, the state “will respond.”
Coinciding with Tuesday’s release of the 2,000-page analysis, Gargano’s ESDC formally endorsed the project.
The action begins a 66-day period of public “review.”
Beyond the project’s size and scale, the DEIS revealed the fuzzy math behind Atlantic Yards.
Instead of generating $2.1 billion in tax revenue over the next 30 years, as Ratner promised in promotional materials and press releases, the plan certified Tuesday shows that the project would gross just over $1.9 billion — $1.1 billion for the state and $845.5 million for the city — over the next 40 years.
After subtracting $500 million in subsidies already committed by the state and city, the overall benefit to the public drops to $1.4 billion over those 40 years — $35 million a year split between the state and city.
“[The tax revenue shortfall] is big, it’s not a small difference,” said Evan Thies, a spokesman for City Councilman David Yassky (D–Brooklyn Heights).
Forest City Ratner Vice President Jim Stuckey downplayed the discrepancy in projected public benefit, calling the state’s calculations “conservative.”
In addition to the shrinking public benefit, the project’s costs are ballooning. Now Ratner’s project would cost at least $4.2 billion, up from an initial $2.5-billion pricetag, itself inflated to a more-recent $3.5-billion figure.
Stuckey said the cost of the decade-long construction project has jumped due to “a general increase in prices,” and an “incredible amount of design work” by Frank Gehry.
“Now we have a better idea of what the project will cost,” he said, adding that Ratner paid more than anticipated for homes, businesses and shops within the footprint.
Stuckey declined to reveal the company’s projected profits from the project.
Forest City Ratner has maintained that the project’s mammoth size — which the New York Observer reported Wednesday would be the most densely populated area in the United States — was necessary in order for the company to make a reasonable profit, provide affordable housing and build public space.
No members of the ESDC board raised any objections to the project’s vast scale or environmental impact before unanimously certifying the project plan and the DEIS on Tuesday.
But according to the DEIS, the project will bring a school’s worth of new children, thousands of new cars and significant noise to the residential streets closest to the project.
In addition, large segments of Fort Greene and Boerum Hill will be left in shadows, views of the historic Williamsburgh Savings Bank building will be lost, more than 600 residents of the site area will be forced to move, subways will be jam-packed, especially on game days (see sidebars, right).
When a reporter asked Gargano if the project could be scaled down to reduce effects on roads, infrastructure and local quality of life, yet still give Ratner a reasonable profit, he replied, “I don’t think it can be.”
“You aren’t going to get developers to build if they lose money,” said Gargano, a Park Slope native.
Gargano’s off-the-cuff response reflected the state’s comfort with the enormity of the project — which would occupy almost eight city blocks, would add 15,000 new residents to the area, and would include a building, Miss Brooklyn, that is 108-feet higher than the Williamsburgh, currently the borough’s tallest tower.
Opponents, predictably, said the pricetag was just too high.
“This is the most-expensive arena in the history of the country and clearly the negative impacts outweigh the benefits to the city and state,” said City Councilwoman Letitia James (D–Prospect Heights).
But the developer and his state allies still said the project would achieve its goals of both revitalizing an area they say is blighted, adding 2,250 affordable units to Brooklyn’s housing market, building seven acres of open space and returning a nifty profit for the builder.
“It’s an opportunity for people of all income levels” to make a home in an “underutilized” area, Gargano said.
“What is important is the public benefit and the fact that the [city and state] will receive $1.4 billion for its investment,” he said.
The City Council, Borough President Markowitz and state legislators all said they would do a new analysis — after already backing the project.
A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R–Brunswick), who has supported the project, admitted this week that his boss hadn’t closely examined the project’s finances, but would do so in the future.
Bruno, along with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D–Manhattan) and Governor Pataki, would be asked to approve the project following the pro forma 66-day public comment period that began on Tuesday.
__________________________________________________ ______
Gargano to B’klyn: Get big
Editorial
The Brooklyn Papers
The Manhattanization of Brooklyn is now official state policy. That’s what Empire State Development Corporation Chairman Charles Gargano said this week, as his agency released a disheartening draft environmental impact statement for Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project.
The 2,000 pages of detailed analysis shows that the development is out of scale with its neighbors, would enshroud large areas in shadows, would tax an already-overburdened traffic and transit system, would create an intimidating superblock, and would require the city to spend untold millions to build schools, provide for more cops and add fire service.
That’s progress, Gargano said.
“We are a city of skyscrapers,” he said, tellingly. “We are a city of towers.”
From his Albany aerie, Charles Gargano has decided that the very thing that makes Brooklyn unique — its neighborhood scale — is the very thing that must change.
Of course, that’s Gargano’s modus operandi. His agency cares little for the concerns of locals in the communities it would plunder, choosing to side with the big-time real-estate developers who give so generously to lawmakers’ political campaigns.
ESDC, after all, is also in charge of the so-called Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is not a park at all, but an 85-acre boondoggle crafted to enrich select developers. A decade ago, the community had a perfectly good plan for a park — but Gargano & Co. tossed it in favor of a scheme that would throw open the prime waterfront land for luxury condos.
Atlantic Yards is following the same narrative arc. The community around the Prospect Heights rail yards where Ratner would build does indeed want the area developed. Area leaders offered a sensible plan to connect Prospect Heights to Fort Greene with medium-scale housing and open space, but Gargano rejected it in favor of Manhattan skyscrapers that would overpower communities on all sides.
With a population of 15,000–18,000 living on 22 acres, Atlantic Yards would be the most-densely populated Census tract in the country.
Yet even in light of his own agency’s analysis, Gargano ignores local concern about the project’s mammoth scale. We live here — and Gargano does not. Is it too much to ask that he listen to the area’s reasonable concerns and downsize Atlantic Yards?
First of all, that is completely false. Secondly, since when has this been about the arena? I was under the impression that the arena was what people liked most about the project.
They're all idiots, pianoman; no point in refuting them. They're willing to spout nonsense till kingdom come, but it looks like it's all just impotent nattering; it's now obvious this project will go forward --and at the appropriate size (which is big and plump, not shriveled like a prune).
costs - so what?
I thought the costs were being borne by Ratner and private money, except for infrastructure from the city which stays the same. Why does anybody besides him care what it costs? Just trying to understand why that upsets them the costs are going up.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks