No Land Grab

To the editor, Coverage of the Atlantic Yards hearing by your reporters (“Battle for Brooklyn,” Aug. 26) was not so bad — not old school Brooklyn Papers but acceptable, if not good.

The hearing was an excellent example of how money is the god of this world and development will always be a bloodbath. A friend of mine likes to say anything in New York will get opposed, but the hearing showed why it should be opposed: the real-estate industry is running the state.

Supporters of Ratner’s Atlantic Yards used every race-baiting trick in the book.

Why didn’t they talk about predatory lending, or when Brooklyn was redlined by the banks? Let’s not forget luxury decontrol of government housing. What about the education programs at Metrotech that did not provide jobs for residents of the Fort Greene projects? How about the condominiums built around the city with tax abatements? What about all the warehousing in the housing projects that the City Comptroller recently found?

Atlantic Yards will push out the last remaining black residents in Fort Greene and Prospect Heights. The project will kill the air quality, cause traffic and bring in shadows that will result in real blight. We will forever suffer the consequences of Bruce Ratner.

I live one block from Atlantic Yards, but I can’t afford to live in the neighborhood I grew up in.

As a young black man, I was taught that the elders marched, risking their lives for civil rights and for the right to vote and equality. But Atlantic Yards is the start of an unfortunate future that will open Pandora’s Box forever.

DanielMcCalla, Fort Greene

To the editor, The “Battle for Brooklyn” began more than 40 years ago. Back then, there would have been no controversy over any development promising new housing, commerce, and jobs in the proposed site, because Downtown had fallen into decay and abandonment, was threatened by crime and poverty, and slated for “slum clearance” and highway development.

But then, a migration of many thousands of people flooded neighborhoods around Downtown. These people came, aware of the risks, to buy and restore houses one house at a time. They came to raise families, send their children to local schools, revive local commerce, restore civic pride and return these neighborhoods to the tax rolls.

Their shared vision resulted in landmarking these neighborhoods, something that’s meant more than just the preservation of buildings, but a whole quality of life: human scale, sun-lit and tree-lined streets with open vistas, and a quiet leisurely pace.

This “battle” saved Brooklyn. If Atlantic Yards is built, would these brownstone neighborhoods continue to attract people who would invest in homes and raise their families, and continue Brooklyn’s tradition of civic involvement?

John Golobe, Park Slope