« More CBA Controversy | Main | Community Average Folk 101 »
June 19, 2006
"Gehry's Plan for Brooklyn"
VERITAS et VENUSTAS
Rose's family had the rights to the sight (sic) in the 1970s, and Rose's cousin Jonathan tried to develop the site in a more enlightened way, with a project designed by the New Urban planner Peter Calthorpe. You can find the design and its history in Peter Katz's New Urbanism book. They planned an office tower over the railyards, surrounded by low and medium rise development that knit the neighborhoods together where their form unraveled at Atlantic Avenue. Their plan was for the immediate site around the railyards, while Ratner has persuaded the Empire State Development Corporation to use its powers of eminent domain to considerably expand the site.But Jonathan Rose was stopped by the Natural Resources Defense Council, which sued to prevent the development, saying that Rose's single tower over the railyards would cause more pollution than low-rise development.
"If I don't build this project at this transportation hub, the pollution will be worse," Rose said (paraphrasing), "because the jobs in the tower will be spread around Long Island or New Jersey, where the workers will drive to them."
"Yes, but Long Island and New Jersey aren't under our watch," the NRDC said, "New York is," in a position just as focused on the short-term and individual interest as Ratner's.
NoLandGrab: The big question here is, why has the NRDC been silent on the Ratner proposal that contains 16 towers? To be clear, the Rose plan was NOT sited over the railyards (see re_lapse's animated timeline of the Atlantic Terminal Renewal Area); however, it did propose a more human scale than Ratner's. Both plans have been identified as colossal taxpayer-funded boondoggle.
Posted by lumi at June 19, 2006 8:07 AM