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September 2, 2006
Atlantic Yards Shockwaves: Rent Hikes For Neighbors
Courier-Life
By Gary Buiso
The massive Atlantic Yards development could threaten to displace the very people who last week heartily cheered the project’s arrival, according to the language of the plan’s voluminous environmental impact study.
Renters in unregulated buildings in Bedford Stuyvesant, Prospect Heights, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene and Gowanus may be forced to search for new digs if the controversial project comes to pass, the draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) for Forest City Ratner’s plan reveals.
But in the future—and even already, there might be little to fear, the document notes. Real estate pressures have already forced out many lower- to moderate-income residents. It is assumed, then, that those left behind will have enough money to absorb the project’s impact. ...
“I don’t believe that at all,” [project supporter Reverend Herbert R.] Daughtry told this paper when asked about the displacement prediction. “Someone must be making that up.”Daughtry said he has been arguing quite the contrary: “This project will ensure the presence of minorities…where everything around [the project] is in the luxury class.”
NoLandGrab: On another note, Forest City Ratner Atlantic Yards Development Group President James P. Stuckey counters the fact that, if built, Atlantic Yards would become the densest residential community in the nation, by arguing that critics should be looking at "census tracts."
That would be more convenient for the developer, since the 22-acre Atlantic Yards proposal is so large that it is divided by FOUR different census tracts (click on map to enlarge), which would statistically dillute the effect of the project's unprecedented density.
Posted by lumi at September 2, 2006 9:26 AM